antipinkkitten What are we selling to you
You may have noticed some recent changes to our site and communications. Especially the inclusion of a store.
When we started this site, we saw voids in the Archaeological world, the we felt like could be fixed. We’ve always been involved in making Archaeology, and Archaeological knowledge, more accessible. It’s not unknown that the industry is very insular. It’s even safe to say, in some cases, combative.
Anyone who has ever written or read a thesis would be aware they are an echo chamber to coax the ego of most advisors. This is due to the value in the field being set by those who have ran the departments for 70 years. This can be seen as an experience thing, but we think it’s a bit more:
We are taught hold our knowledge close because it allows us to obtain funding, over others. In fact, this behavior has hurt our industry more, because the general public struggles to see the value in what we do.
When we find artifacts during construction, people think it’s great until it postpones a build by 6-10 months. Then, we discover something interesting, but not quite flashy, and it’s ignored due to not being groundbreaking, even though it may be for the field.
A large part of why the public may not see the value in it is that we don’t communicate these properly.
A lot of this is due to us being terrible at promoting ourselves. We come into a room and throw out a ton of lab jargon, and when people give us a curious look, we tone it down to an almost infantile method, causing them to feel like we are talking down to them.
With this, we are trying to change this.
How are we changing this?
Patreon
This is more than just our usual “Please support us on Patreon” kind of mention. Meghan has been working with the brains at Patreon to create a Club for Archaeology Creators on Patreon. This will allow us to collaborate together and understand how we engage Patrons, form our identities and help ensure participation in our communities. We’re so excited for this to launch – Sign-ups will be on the A-Club hub starting September 22nd, but we’ve opened it up for even smaller Patreon accounts (Typical rules were 5 or more Patrons).
The Store
We did a soft launch of our store two weeks, and have launched a store this week. We took some of our previous products that were Patreon-Exclusive, and put them on the store for the general public. However, the biggest change would be the Archaeological focused items. Brad’s vision has always been to make things Archaeologist and educators need, more accessible. Often, the cost of products for this field are ultra-expensive. This is due to the small batch productions, gatekeeping and exclusive deals with specific companies, limiting demand for cheaper sources. With that, we are happy to announce some of the items, and intentions of future products:
Archaeological Replicas
When Bradly was in college, he saw a major gap between how he learned vs. how they were teaching. Brad is tactile. He visualizes with his hands. Maybe it’s the understanding of it. Maybe it’s the ability to visualize being the person who pulled this thing out the ground.
It’s inspiring. It’s another way to teach. With this, replicas are really expensive. They are produced in limited runs, often from casts, and depending on what it is – could be $300-800.
We plan to make more replicas, so if there is something you need for classes, personal enjoyment or even your own collection – let us know.
Our goal with these is to provided an educational tool for a reasonable price, for everyone.
Archaeological Tools
Being an Archaeologist is expensive. When you start school, the cost tally increases yearly. First, it’s the textbook written by the head of your department, selling for $300 new, with a code that prevents you to resell it. The next year, it’s a $200 field kit, so you can do your unpaid but tuition-required field school.
All of these objects that are required for the field can’t be made by us. However, we can help reduce the cost barrier for certain items.
One of those, is our Photo Scales. Whenever you are taking photos of an artifact or anything you want to photograph with a scale, our centimeter scales are the perfect accompaniment to explaining how large something is. These are in a set of 3, for $10, plus shipping and tax. We’ll also be selling these in red and white, and other field tools, coming soon.
No longer need to use a banana for scale.
Archaeological Art
Finally, on our store, we are going to be selling productions of art, specific to archaeological items. These will include prints and digital images for download.
Overall, our goal with these has been to spotlight the educational style of archaeological drawing, while also producing highly stylized art that you may just want to decorate your home.
