Here’s the published Solo Series Data Story.
This exercise is best suited to those with an interest in belonging or material culture analysis, archaeological data collection, or using mindful observation skills for archaeology and daily life. Users should have a basic understanding of observation and recording methods, such as handwritten, audio, or video recording, but little previous experience with archaeology or data collection is required.
This page provides access to the resource in two ways. The first is through a series of digital documents that represent the completed Digital Data Story. The documents include the:
A single PDF for the combined Digital Data Story materials is available here. The text is also available through the Digital Data Stories code repository on Codeberg. These markdown files represent the source material for the text and primary images within the PDFs, minus additional formatting, and with only a general placement of images. The markdown files may be altered and forked from the Codeberg repository for custom use in different contexts. This code represents our commitment to open science and transparency in our process.
These materials, either through the single PDF, digital documents, or the code, are designed to be used synergistically. However, any piece of this Digital Data Story may be used separately or re-ordered according to the requirements of the individual or to specific educational goals. In addition, this Digital Data Story references Gabbing about Gabii: Going from Notes to Data to Narrative (CC BY-SA 2.0), specifically, Part One: Notes to Data. The Stop and Smell…the Material Culture resources are available free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
Thank you so much for using our educational resources! If you or you participants have the time, please consider contributing an open peer review to our ongoing review process. Such updates will be noted here but will be first available through the code repository prior to digital document updating.
To attribute this Digital Data Story or any of it’s parts, please use our suggested citation:
Paulina F. Przystupa and L. Meghan Dennis, 2024, “Stop and Smell the…Material Culture?: An Object-Oriented Observation Guide”, Data Stories Program, Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context, Published Online, DOI: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7FJ2DXR
First published: November 2023
Updated: 5 June 2024 – This Digital Data Story completed peer review in 2023 and, after revision, is now published. Major updates included reordering the observation rounds and adding more spaces for interaction with the document. 11 June 2024 – URL shortened due to slight name change for the Data Story and updated images. 6 November 2024 – Added suggested citation. 19 November 2025 – All documents now route to Version 2.2, which includes updated an updated funding acknowledgement, higher resolution images, updated links, and some additional image provenance.
Image credit: “AAI-OC_DataStoryPublished_Header-StopAndSmellTheMaterialCulture” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the Data Literacy Program (DLP) / CC BY-SA. It includes an adaptation of “SASTMC_TrowelFlowers” by L. Meghan Dennis from the DLP, which includes some Adobe Stock images generated by AI with further attribution and provenance information forthcoming.
