Networking Archaeological Data
and Communities
An NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities
Advisors

University of Iowa
Sarah E. Bond
Sarah E. Bond is Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa and an affiliated scholar at the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio at the University of Iowa. She works on how and why we should translate data, scholarship, and other types of academic research for the public. She is currently an editor for the open access Pleiades gazetteer which provides open geodata for linked reuse in Digital Humanities projects, but also has contributed to and run a number of her own digital projects focused on database construction, geolocation, and open access data. Additionally, Dr. Bond is a public historian who regularly writes for large publications such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, Forbes, The Washington Post, and Hyperallergic about research on the ancient world. From covering new GIS projects focused on Pompeii to museum use of 3D modeling, much of her work is focused on how to make the public literate about the digital and physical research currently being conducted in the ancient Mediterranean.
Carleton University
Shawn Graham

Shawn Graham trained in Roman archaeology but has become over the years a digital archaeologist and digital humanist. In 2016, he won a Provost’s Fellowship in Teaching Award and was designated a Carleton University Teaching Fellow. He recently won a SSHRC Insight Grant for a project called ‘The Bone Trade: Studying the Online Trade in Human Remains with Machine Learning and Neural Networks’. The project website is at bonetrade.github.io. He is part of the multi-institution SSHRC Partnership Grant funded project, ‘CRANE: Computational Research in the Ancient Near East’ led by Tim Harrison of the University of Toronto. Graham’s sub-project involves using neural networks to complete archival photographs for photogrammetric reconstructions. He is also part of the SSHRC Insight Development Grant funded project ‘Nanohistory‘, led by Dr. Matt Milner of Memorial University, exploring graph-theoretic representations of historical events; his subproject seeks to reconstruct museum collecting histories using the nanohistory method. Most recently, he and his collaborator at the University of Maastricht, Dr. Donna Yates, won a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to explore knowledge graphs and the antiquities trade. Graham also recently launched the XLab: A Virtual Cultural Heritage Informatics Collaboratory with a Carleton Catalyst Grant.

New York University, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
Sebastian Heath
Sebastian Heath is a Roman Archaeologist who incorporates digital methods into all aspects of his work. Areas of particular digital expertise include data modelling, graph databases, network analysis, linked open data, geospatial technologies, and 3D modeling. He has published on all these topics as well as on approaches to incorporating digital methods into teaching the Ancient World. He is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Computational Humanities and Roman Archaeology at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
Michigan State University
Ethan Watrall

An anthropological archaeologist who has worked in Canada, the United States, Egypt, and the Sudan, Ethan Watrall is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University. He is Director of the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative and Director of the Digital Heritage Imaging & Innovation Lab. Ethan is Head of Tangible Heritage & Archaeology Projects at Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, where he served as Associate Director from 2009-2020. Ethan also serves as Adjunct Curator of Archaeology at the Michigan State University Museum. His primarily scholarly interests lie in how digital methods and computational approaches can be leveraged to preserve and provide access to archaeological and heritage materials, collections, knowledge, and data in order to facilitate research, advance knowledge, fuel interpretation, and democratize our collective understanding and appreciation of the past.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed through this Institute do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, please contact the Program Director, Leigh Anne Lieberman (leigh@opencontext.org).