Last year, as the pandemic set in, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) was making plans to celebrate the tenth anniversary of International Archaeology Day (IAD). The pandemic threatened the very nature of the celebration as our traditional model of groups holding community events throughout the month of October suddenly seemed implausible. And yet, thankfully, because of both technology and the creative and resilient network of Collaborating Organizations we have built up over the years, IAD was able to continue in a number of different formats with wider participation than ever before.

What does this look like in 2021? Since May 2020, the AIA Programs Department has held 24 listening sessions via Zoom for our diverse group of collaborators who work and volunteer in many different capacities within the heritage sector. What started off as checking in on everyone as the pandemic unfolded quickly developed into themed sessions of mutual interest—tips for virtual school visits, troubleshooting how to distribute hands-on kits in a pandemic, preliminary discussions on inclusion and access, and more. We built a dedicated community that attends our hour-long sessions on Wednesdays and a long list of future topics to explore. We are always looking to bring in new voices—join the IAD Collaborator mailing list to learn more.

Today, with IAD just under three months away, I am planning some of the online activities we will use this year to highlight our Collaborators: #IADArtifact of the Day, Tweetathons, and online scavenger hunts, and these will be the focus of the next listening session.

#IADArtifact of the Day will use the AIA’s social media platforms to highlight an artifact from a different Collaborator’s collection each weekday leading up to IAD. Last week we put out a call for submissions and today I’ll download the latest submissions and do some light editing to make the series of posts more cohesive.

Last year, we invited the archaeological community to participate in an IAD Tweetathon on four different days in October. Equipped with a series of hashtags such as #IADKickoff, #ArchaeologyFunFact, #ArchaeologistsAtWork, #FavoriteArchaeologyTool, #FieldBoots, #LabLife, and #WhyArchaeology, archaeologists all over the world shared insights and photos on Twitter. The total potential reach of the tweets was in the millions! This week I will talk to our Collaborators and look at last year’s results to devise a new schedule of Tweetathons and hashtags. This year, to ensure the Tweetathon content is accessible to those with visual impairments, I will include instructions on including alt text on Twitter images.

Scavenger Hunts are a new initiative this year and I am excited to get feedback and suggestions from our listening session crew later this week. The idea is to group together content from different collaborators by theme and highlight some of the online materials they have created. Then, leading up to IAD, we will post different scavenger hunts with a short series of questions to challenge our online audiences and introduce them to some great engaging materials they may not have previously encountered.

The events of this past year transformed how we will celebrate IAD moving forward. While the AIA continues to provide a platform through the Archaeology Day website for groups around the world to share information about events, we are turning our focus towards connecting, inspiring, and supporting the groups that make IAD a success. Seeing this transformation translate into a robust network as well as new and innovative ways to celebrate archaeology wherever you are has been deeply rewarding and I can’t wait to see what the future holds.