This Publication Series Digital Data Story is now published!
This exercise is best suited to those with an interest in teaching with narrative, archaeological data literacy, and critically engaging with published articles. Users should have some familiarity with academic language and an interest in teaching and learning, but previous experience with data literacy and archaeology is not required.
This page provides access to the resource in two ways. The first is through a series of links to digital documents and a playable online game that represent the complete Digital Data Story. These include the:
The reflection guide pairs with the recommended publications, listed within the Digital Data Story, to learn about teaching archaeology through narrative. The game Data stories to disrupt and delight is a piece of interactive fiction that walks users through how to make their own data story. A single-PDF for the combined Digital Data Story materials, except for the playable game, is available here.
These materials are also available through the Digital Data Stories code repository on Codeberg. The repository includes the code, text, and images for the Teaching and Reflection guides as markdown files and the underlying HTML for the game Data stories to disrupt and delight, which can be reused in Twine. Those files represent the source code, text, and select decorative images within the game and provide another way to adapt the text and images within the PDFs and digital documents by forking and altering the code from the Codeberg repository for use in different contexts. This code represents our commitment to open science and transparency in our process.
These materials, either through the single-PDF publication of record, dynamic 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 participant or for specific educational goals. To Disrupt and Delight and its resources are free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license unless otherwise noted. In addition, this Digital Data Story references FAIR Finds: Using Twine in Archaeological Education (CC BY).
Thank you so much for using our educational resources! Although this Digital Data Story is published, if you or your participants have the time, please consider contributing an open peer review for our ongoing review process. Such updates will be noted below and first available through the digital documents and Codeberg repository prior to PDF updating.
To attribute this Digital Data Story or any of its parts, please use our suggested citation:
Paulina F. Przystupa, 2025, “To Disrupt and Delight: Teaching Archaeology Through Narrative”, Data Stories Program, Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context, Published Online, DOI: https://doi.org/10.6078/M7X928FR.
Preprint page published: March 2025
Updated: July and August 2026 – This Digital Data Story completed peer review in 2025 and, after revision, is now published. Major updates included changes to the text of the reading and reflection guide to improve the tone; updates to the higher quality images and image preservation processes when creating the PDFs; rewriting before and after reading questions to better match one another; improved reader’s advisory and a limiting of the suggested readings; and additions of a back button, alteration of link colors, and the separation of passages in the Twine game to improve playability. There are other minor edits captured by the Codeberg histories and by comparison with Version 1.0, which is archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15692913. There was also a textual revision to this page and the image credits.
Image credit: “AAI-OC_DataStoryPublished_Header-ToDelightAndDisrupt” by Paulina F. Przystupa from the DLP / CC BY includes an adaptation of “Figure 014 from Africa/Egypt/Abydos/Operation 203” by Matthew Douglas Adams from Images Documenting Looting in the North Cemetery at Abydos, Egypt via Open Context (https://opencontext.org/media/c1e770ba-7844-44e1-9650-bb2d652ae965 or https://n2t.net/ark:/28722/k23r17177) / CC BY.
