Michelle Rathgaber, Educational Outreach Coordiator
"Archeology is..." series - December 2025
When people go to school to be archeologists, most assume that they will be in the great outdoors, looking for archeological sites or evidence of people living in different areas across the landscape. Many people quickly discover that lab work is another viable and important path to research and a career in archeology. And as you have seen over the last two years of Archeology is… articles, there are so many ways to specialize and learn about the human past. Most archeologists discover somewhere along the way that, whichever path you choose, archeology is a topic about which not many people have a good understanding.
That is where social media comes in. More and more people are getting their news and information from social media platforms, from TikTok to Facebook to YouTube. For this reason, it's become increasingly important to make sure that good, science-based archeological research is available to the public online. There are a number of archeologists with TikTok and other short video-based accounts and in the last few years there have been sessions at national and international archeology conferences about using social media in archeology. Presentations in these sessions range from how to create an account, to what kinds of information to share, to how pseudoarcheology is taking over because of the lack of real archeologists in the space.
In this vein, the Arkansas Archeological Survey has social media and YouTube accounts that we try to populate with interesting and accurate archeological information. Sometimes real archeology doesn’t seem as attention-grabbing as pseudoarcheology, but it is! And we’re trying to reframe it to come across that way with a quick glance (which is often how social media content is viewed). We’ve started creating more and more in-depth YouTube content to engage with people on a deeper level about the research that Survey archeologists have done and are currently doing. We’re also making shorter, image- and text-based posts for other social media platforms to get people excited about Arkansas archeology without having to stop their scroll to watch a 7 minute video.
We’re also trying to make sure that the really neat, science-based research that our archeologists in Arkansas are doing and publishing for other academic archeologists is getting out to the public in a variety of ways. Scientific research is often published behind a paywall, but we strive to get a public version of that research onto our website and then out onto our social media accounts so that people in Arkansas can stay up-to-date on what is happening in archeological research in Arkansas. After all, as a state agency, our responsibility is to the people of Arkansas. To see everything that we are doing across the state, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We’d love to hear about topics that you would like to see us feature on our social media accounts. Reach out to Michelle with ideas: mmrathga@uark.edu
If you want some fun and educational accounts to follow in addition to the Arkansas Archeological Survey, check out: The Arkansas Archeological Society (AAS), The Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OkPAN), Historic Jamestowne, Dirt Diaries, Oxford Archaeology, and Annelise the Archaeologist. There are many more, but these are some that we know are putting out science-based information about archeology from different parts of the world.
