This year’s TrowelBlazers Digital Fieldwork built on the strengths of our first ever season and then went over and above. Despite juggling a return to ‘real’ fieldwork, the UCL students who took the TrowelBlazers Digital Fieldwork course this year managed to deliver some amazing, inspiring posts. And that’s not all! We conquered all the media, from poetry to animation, got some fantastic archive interviews up on our YouTube channel, and we even finally got our first TikTok!
Penelope showed us the ways children encounter archaeology, and even included lists of books and activities.
Hannah traced the fascinating career of ceramics legend, Ruth Amiran
Josephine introduced Ghana’s first female Doctor of Archaeology, Gertrude Eyifa-Dzidzienyo
Sara caught a spy: Dorothy Hannah Cox
Naomi dove into recent Greek history to find out about more about the doyenne of Greek archaeology, Anna Apostalaki
Eponine gave us a new post on Iraqi archaeologist Lamia Al-Gailani Werr
Mayuka shone a spotlight on the women of Japanese archaeology, creating our first ever bilingual English / Japanese posts on Tomoko Nagatomo and Kiyoko Ozeki
Norah blended art and science to research her post on Ruth Shady, leading to the first ever poem on TrowelBlazers, Dama de Caral!
Iqrra brought the TrowelBlazing of south asia and the middle east to light with her posts. She introduced presenter and explorer Ella Al-Shamahi, interviewed Indian archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar, and Pakistani archaeologist Asma Ibrahim — our first bilingual English/Urdu post!!!!
Together, Eponine and Iqrra inaugurated our TrowelBlazers interview archive with absolutely fascinating video interviews with Salima Ikram and Asma Ibrahim
Genevieve spoke to Alison Betts about her career in archaeology.
Together, Sara and Genevieve created a brand new TrowelToon for Chinese archaeologist Zheng Zhenxiang — as an animated story too!
Zoey tracked down Grace Simpson at Chester Roman Fort
Holly rubbed up against the legacy of Merle Greene Robertson
Simon told us about Hetty Goldman, part of a real TrowelBlazing crew of early archaeologists.
Gabby spoke to the brilliant Ruth Whitehouse about just about everything that matters
And last but not least, David brought us an interview (video here!) with the current Director of the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, Sue Hamilton!
This year’s class was given a brief to look around for women who inspire them — and not just to look in the usual places, but to really search, and find stories from around the globe, especially areas where women’s achievements don’t get talked about enough. Without the kind of hard work that the team put in this summer, we will never get a good picture of what it is women do when they dig; we wouldn’t have the insight from in-person interviews, or the reflection and engagement that the artistic contributions offer.
In short: Fieldwork Team 2021, we couldn’t do this without you. Full trowel salute!
