12 More Months of Dig It!

Since 2019, Dig It! has been part of real and virtual excavations, organised three national campaigns, commissioned creatives, helped crowdfund a tabletop roleplaying game, and more.

The team is now excited to announce that Historic Environment Scotland has granted the project another year of funding to continue our work as a hub for Scottish archaeology.

In addition to advertising over 800 free or low-cost events for members of the public and publishing nearly 150 articles on the website (many available in Gaelic and/or Scots) written by experts from across the sector, the team has engaged in a number of projects and initiatives over the past three years.

CRAFTING THE PAST: SHARED HISTORY

Dig It! has partnered with digital education specialists Immersive Minds to bring Scotland’s stories to life through Minecraft in a project called Crafting the Past. Often described as “virtual LEGO”, Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time with nearly 140 million monthly active users as of 2021.

In 2019, the Crafting the Past website was launched at the Edinburgh Science Festival with nine Scottish sites meticulously recreated in Minecraft. Since then, these builds (known as ‘maps’) have been available to download for free to anyone who already has Minecraft installed on their device. One of the most detailed maps (built on a 1:2 scale) is the entire island of Hirta in Hiort (St Kilda) off the west coast of Scotland, which includes Gaelic song, archaeology and tales from the island’s more recent past.

In 2021, the Crafting the Past team decided to join forces with a class of students from a school in Sweden to tell an older chapter of the Hiort story: the Norse presence on the islands over a thousand years ago. The Shared History project involved students digitally excavating and researching artefacts, meeting with experts from Scotland, and creating their own Norse Minecraft characters with a script explaining something about their life. The scripts were recorded by the students in Swedish and are now available through the Hiort map on the Crafting the Past website with a shortened English translation.

The project was such a success that it forms a case study for the Swedish Department of Education, and the Crafting the Past team are exploring how to run it again while expanding the scope and partnership.

WIKIPEDIA AND WOMEN IN SCOTTISH ARCHAEOLOGY

In 2019, Dig It! collaborated with Edinburgh Central Library and Wikimedia UK to deliver a workshop teaching people how to add to and improve the world’s collective knowledge about women in Scottish archaeology.

Participants documented the achievements of Scottish women working in archaeology and women researching Scottish archaeology both past and present, and made this information freely available to the world via Wikipedia.

In just one day, the editors created 4 new articles, edited 21 articles, added almost 9,000 words to Wikipedia, and uploaded 48 images to Wikimedia Commons, the online home of all freely licensed images on Wikipedia. The new articles and those they edited received over 55,000 views over the subsequent four weeks.

SCOTLAND DIGS

In 2019, the team also launched Scotland Digs: the annual campaign celebrating Scotland’s summer dig season. Scotland Digs 2019 built a buzz around summer fieldwork, increased the visibility of the sector’s content, and created a one-stop-shop hashtag which offered “live updates” from Orkney to the Borders.

In 2020, most fieldwork was postponed or cancelled due to COVID-19, but commercial archaeologists, heritage bodies and community groups sprang into action and adapted their programme of physical events into online activities. Recognising this collective effort to keep the dig season momentum going, Dig It! adapted the campaign into Scotland Digs Digital with the addition of press coverage and new webpages featuring the online events. The campaign was later shortlisted for the Association for Heritage Interpretation’s 2021 Engaging People Awards in the Lockdown Response category which provided another opportunity to showcase the work that the sector had produced during that first pandemic summer.

The campaign then returned to its original format: sharing opportunities and updates for the public from fieldwork activities across Scotland. Scotland Digs 2021 also helped highlight the work of commercial units through social media—particularly with regards to fieldwork that wasn’t physically accessible to the public. This time, the team included free webinars for the sector on topics such as making events more accessible and using social media to encourage public engagement. The Scotland Digs 2021 webpages attracted thousands of visitors, people engaged with the hashtag almost 40,000 times, and the campaign received regional and national press coverage which helped shine a spotlight on the work of archaeological organisations across the country.

OUR HERITAGE WITH JAMBO! RADIO

Dig It! has also teamed up with Jambo! Radio to help with their National Heritage Lottery-funded Our Heritage project. Established in 2020 to encourage visibility, participation, and community empowerment for people of African and Caribbean heritage, Jambo! Radio has been working to bring more heritage content to their listener base of over 14,000 people.

Dig It! has been working closely with their radio presenters to immerse them in the world of archaeology, which has included hands-on experience at excavations in Glasgow with Archaeology Scotland and on Eilean Arainn (Arran) with Northlight Heritage and the University of Glasgow.

Interviews, debate and music have featured in Jambo! Radio’s programming as a result and a forthcoming podcast series will be released with the Archaeology Podcast Network.

MAKE YOUR MARK

The Historic Environment Strategy for Scotland – Our Place in Time – has five Working Groups that support strategy delivery for different aspects of the heritage sector. The Working Group for volunteering, known as Make Your Mark, aims to increase the number and diversity of heritage volunteers. Chaired by Volunteer Scotland, it comprises representatives from organisations and projects across the sector, including Dig It!.

Over 60 organisations have currently signed up to a Manifesto to support the campaign’s inclusive approach to volunteering. Make Your Mark is also encouraging partners to offer new programming and is providing a dedicated volunteering opportunities listing service.

CARVED IN STONE

In 2021, Dig It! teamed up with Stout Stoat (formerly Dungeons on a Dime) to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Carved in Stone. This collaboration between tabletop roleplaying game designers and archaeologists will enable players to learn more about the Picts while utilising research which highlights that Scotland has been a multicultural, multilingual and socially diverse place since at least the 7th century AD.

Over £30,000 was raised by 877 backers in just a few weeks which means that the game will arrive later this year (click here to preorder) with an additional 400+ free copies made available to community and education groups.

THE EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN SCOTTISH HERITAGE (EDISH) PROJECT

Created to deliver a collaborative programme of engagement with Scottish heritage organisations around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), this project is designed to create capacity to address EDI issues (with a special focus on race) in some of Scotland’s largest and most influential heritage organisations through working with partners from within the sector.

Along with the University of Strathclyde, the University of Stirling and Museums Galleries Scotland, Dig It! has been involved since its inception. Part of this project has involved working with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and Ando Glaso to enable young people from Scotland’s Roma community – Leon, Blanka, Laura and Lubo – to explore the heritage sector (particularly archaeology) as a potential career option.

Before these paid placements came to an end, the young people presented at a Museums Galleries Scotland event for the sector. The work of young people on the project as a whole has also been shortlisted for a Young Scot Award.

SUPPORTING CREATIVES

Over the past three years, Dig It! has shifted its marketing budget to support creatives rather than platforms such as Facebook. In 2020, the team hired Dr Li Caswell-Sou FSAScot, Miranda Stuart and Sara Julia Campbell to digitally recreate some of the most intriguing finds from the summer dig season. The following year, they worked with photographers Chris Dooks, Demelza Kingston and Shahbaz Majeed who captured unique perspectives on fieldwork.

In 2021, the team commissioned Mae Diansangu, a spoken word artist and performer, to produce a poem to coincide with StAnza 2021, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, which was inspired by a site from Dumfries & Galloway linked to the Can You Dig It (CYDI) community archaeology program. They also hired artist Abz Mills to reimagine three scenes featuring Black figures in Scottish history with archaeological details, as well as storyteller Niall Moorjani to create an original story based on the Brora Saltpans in the Highlands to mark Scotland’s Year of Coasts & Waters and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival.

In 2022, the team celebrated LGBT History Month by commissioning non-binary artist Jem Milton to explore the connections between archaeology and folklore through the selkie legends and ushered in Scotland’s Year of Stories by running a flash fiction competition.

Simon Gilmour, Director of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (who coordinate Dig It!), said:

“I am very pleased that Dig It! has been granted another year of funding which will enable them to continue coordinating and supporting these initiatives and many others, from the well-established Scottish Heritage Social Media Group to a new ArchaeoGolf project. The team have brought their values of inclusivity, innovation and collaboration to all of their work over the past three years and will continue to do so as they contribute to Scotland’s Archaeology Strategy and the Society.”

Amy Eastwood, Head of Grants at Historic Environment Scotland, said:

“We’re delighted to support Dig It! with £95,500 funding for 2022-23. Archaeology not only celebrates the diversity of our heritage but allows us to better understand the history of Scotland’s people, culture and landscape. Dig It! is an important hub for Scottish archaeology and the work they do to share stories from the community and engage new audiences helps to ensure Scotland’s heritage can be enjoyed by everyone.”

If you’d like to stay up to date, sign up to the monthly Dig It! Digest or follow along on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Header Image: Photography from Threave Estate commissioned as part of Scotland Digs 2021 (Image © Chris Dooks 2021)

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Dig It! is coordinated by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and primarily funded by Historic Environment Scotland