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

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The Data Management Lifecycle

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University of Missouri-St. Louis

Anne Austin

Anne Austin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Missouri St. Louis. She has recently participated in a three-year NEH-funded project focused on archaeological data reuse entitled, "Beyond Management: Data Curation as Scholarship in Archaeology" (PR-234235-16). This project includes an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and information scientists interested in better bridging the gap between archaeological data creation and reuse. The research included observations of archaeological data collection at four diverse archaeological field projects in conjunction with qualitative interviews with researchers within those projects. Separately, the team interviewed broader archaeological data reusers to understand their experiences with data reuse. The combination of field observations and interviews allowed the team to understand barriers to archaeological data reuse from the moment those data are created at the tip of the trowel. Austin and her colleagues have presented results from this study in both national and international venues including the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology and the European Association of Archaeologists. They have also published results in multiple peer-reviewed journals including Advances in Archaeological Practice and the International Journal of Digital Curation. This research has demonstrated how issues with archaeological data reuse not only impact future reusers, but also existing project team members as they attempt to synthesize data from multiple seasons and a variety of specialists working on archaeological field projects. Problems with reuse can also be impacted by the diversity of cultural, linguistic, and legal differences field projects experience when bridging team members and research questions at an international level. This research project has identified key findings related to archaeological data reuse and recommendations for best practices to assist project directors with overcoming these obstacles. Austin will provide project participants with both our findings and workshop ways they can apply best practices to their current and future field projects to ensure they create reusable data for future archaeologists and the broader public.

Bard College

Anne Hunnell Chen

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Anne Hunnell Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Art History and Visual Culture and Experimental Humanities Programs at Bard College. Dr. Chen specializes in the art and archaeology of the globally-connected Roman world, and is committed to exploring how low-barrier Linked Open Useable Data (LOUD) can be harnessed not only to provide more equitable access to archaeological data in the digital realm, but also to empower stakeholder audiences as collaborative curators. She is the founder and co-director of the NEH-funded International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), an archaeological data accessibility project whose documentation efforts are aimed at sharing-out workflows that help to overcome disciplinary data silos and work to dislodge enduring impacts of colonialism. Thanks to her work on IDEA, her role as the Co-Chair and Annotations Activity co-coordinator for the international Pelagios Network, and time spent as a fellow in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Dr. Chen has extensive experience working with GLAM professionals and collections. Additionally, she has published on Roman, Persian, and Digital Humanities topics, and taught equally wide-ranging coursework. She also serves as an historical consultant for the Virtual Center for Late Antiquity (VCLA).

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Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)

Ixchel M. Faniel

Ixchel M. Faniel, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research is interested in improving how people discover, access, and use/reuse content. For over a decade, she has examined how research data are managed, shared, and reused within various disciplinary communities with an eye toward improving the development and delivery of supportive research data management programs. During this time, she has examined archaeological data practices at different points in the data lifecycle – creation, sharing, curation, reuse. Focusing on the archaeological community in this way has allowed her to identify the challenges archaeologists experience meeting data reuse needs, partnering with data curators between data management planning and data deposit, and collaborating with their excavation teams to collectively curate data at the point of creation. With these findings she has been able to inform improvements in data creation and management practices that can have positive impacts on one’s own use as well as others’ reuse.

Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida

Michelle Lefebvre

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Michelle LeFebvre is an Assistant Curator of Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History (FM), University of Florida. She oversees the curation, management, and accessibility of the FM's South Florida Archaeology and Ethnography Collections. Centered within the synergy of culture and biology, she investigates long-term trends in human-environment engagements with an eye toward understanding the development of complex socio-ecological systems,  how Indigenous biocultural legacies shape contemporary biodiversity, and how deep-time perspectives may aid conservation efforts. Throughout her work in Florida and the Caribbean Archipelago, LeFebvre prioritizes equal, peer to peer, collaboration with local scientists, community leaders, students, and organizations. Archaeological data and museum collections accessibility and equity in collections care (e.g., representation of different voices and ontologies)  are central to her role as an archaeologist and museum curator. Since 2016, LeFebvre has supported and helped lead efforts to open-access publish both legacy and current zooarchaeological data curated at the FM. Ultimately, she views LOD as not only a way to link communities of researchers but also local communities with the data derived from their histories, an increasingly essential component of shaping data literacy across a diversity of people.

Data for Professional Communication

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University of North Dakota

William Caraher

William Caraher teaches at the University of North Dakota and is a field archaeologist, editor, and publisher who has worked in the US, Greece, and Cyprus. His research includes ancient, historical, and digital archaeology and includes the publication of books on the Bakken oil patch in North Dakota and the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria on Cyprus as well as the Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology and several digital datasets. As a publisher and founder of The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and editor of the century-old Annual of ASOR and the book series for the Contemporary Historical Archaeology in Theory group, he works closely with authors to integrate data into their publications in an effort to create more dynamic publications.  

Desert Archaeology

Sarah Herr

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​​Sarah Herr, Ph.D., is president of Desert Archaeology, Inc. a private sector cultural resource management firm that works in the Southwest United States. Since 2015 she has been an editor of the Society for American Archaeology journal Advances in Archaeological Practice. The journal seeks to support and promote best data practices while acknowledging the sensitivities of data to stakeholder and descendent communities and in certain types of governance. Working with authors who work or live around the world has provided a variety of experience related to the publication of data. The journal also publishes papers on topics related to data use, reuse, replicability, and teaching data literacy.

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University of Oxford

Angela Trentacoste

Angela Trentacoste is a research archaeologist at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel and the University of Oxford. She is an experienced material specialist and has worked on projects in the UK, Italy, and Turkey, as well as for both the commercial and academic sector. Her research focuses on human–environment interaction in the ancient Mediterranean, particularly on urban ecology and human adaptations to changing social, economic, and physical landscapes. As an archaeological specialist, data creation, curation, re-use, and publication is at the core of her work. She has published open access digital datasets, resources, code, and software, and advocated for better data transparency through workshops, mentoring, and other events.

Data for Diverse Publics

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Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Pınar Durgun

Dr. Pınar Durgun is a curator at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, where she works on curatorial and educational aspects of the ancient Anatolian and Mesopotamian collections. An art historically-trained archaeologist with a strong background in anthropology and museums, she is passionate about outreach and education. She is interested in how museums can help us understand, protect, and engage with the past and how they can  better serve our communities today. Her research focuses on ancient Anatolia and western Asia, the history of death and burial, image and identity making, archaeological reproductions, digital museums, and museum ethics.  She aims to make academic information about the ancient world accessible, engaging, and inclusive. Dr. Durgun creates and curates educational content about art and the ancient world for museums, academic/educational organizations, and for social media.  

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Edward González-Tennant

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Edward González-Tennant is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He earned his PhD in 2011 from the University of Florida for original work on the application of digital technologies for public archaeology while researching the 1923 Rosewood Massacre. His broader interests center on transdisciplinary approaches combining geographic information systems (GIS), 3D modeling, geophysics, and remote sensing to investigate the historical past. This includes connecting the legacies of racial violence in African American history to present forms of social inequality, decolonizing collaborative archaeology, modeling the impacts of climate change on heritage resources, and producing free educational content for digital heritage. All his work is grounded through a firm commitment to partnering with descendant communities, their allies, and the public. He currently serves as the Chair for the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) Technologies Committee and the editor forArchaeologies of Restorative Justice joint SHA – University of Alabama Press book series.

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The University of British Columbia

Neha Gupta

Neha Gupta is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at The University of British Columbia. Her research programme examines and addresses geospatial and digital methods in anti-colonial, decolonial and Indigenous archaeology. She directs DARE | Digital Archaeology Research Environment, a Canada Foundation for Innovation-funded research lab at UBC Okanagan that brings together First Nations and racialized women’s perspectives, interdisciplinary expertise and community-led research with the development of new tools appropriate for archaeology in the digital age. Her research interests are geovisualization and GIS, post-colonial, decolonial and Indigenous studies of heritage, and the archaeology of India and Canada. She is particularly interested in the relationship between knowledge, place and power, and how geospatial perspectives can re- center the views and narratives of Indigenous peoples and racialized groups in archaeology. Recent scholarship such as MINA | Map Indian Archaeology, Circles of Interaction, Open Digital Archaeology Textbook Environment and Digital Heritage Governance at Westbank First Nation examine and address colonial practices in archaeology. Her current project focuses on building an anti-colonial digital archaeology through Indigenous data governance, community-led archaeology, and Web maps.

The University of California, Berkeley

Jarre Hamilton

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Jarre Hamilton is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. She is earning her doctorate in anthropology-archaeology, where she works to address issues of race, identity, and heritage sites through community-collaborative scholarship. Her work as a certified interpretive guide, environmental educator, and scholar focuses on creating outdoor educational spaces to engage a wide range of public audiences in discussions on science communication and programming, cultural heritage, community engagement, and the environment. In all her work, she is committed to unearthing the multitude of ways that BIPOC folks have imagined and practiced more agentive lives. She received her BA in anthropology from Appalachian State University and her MA in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Cogstone Resource Management

Desireé Reneé Martinez

Desireé Reneé Martinez is President of Cogstone Resource Management and a Registered Professional Archaeologist with over 25 years of experience in archaeology. Ms. Martinez is also a Tongva (Gabrielino) community member. She received her MA (Anthropology) from Harvard University and her BA (Anthropology) from the University of Pennsylvania. Ms. Martinez has extensive experience consulting with Native American leaders and community members in a variety of contexts including the collection of ethnographic and historic data from an indigenous perspective and the repatriation of ancestral and funerary objects at the national and international levels. Finally, Ms. Martinez is at the forefront of creating and implementing collaborative archaeological agendas at the State and National levels.

Florida Public Archaeology Network, Flagler College

Sarah Miller

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Sarah Miller is the Regional Director for the Northeast and East Central Centers of the Florida Public Archaeology Network hosted by Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. She received her Master’s degree in Anthropology from East Carolina University in 2001 where she developed archaeology education programs at Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina. Upon graduation from ECU, Ms. Miller supervised field and lab projects with public involvement for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, as well as reviewed compliance projects for the Kentucky Heritage Council. She currently serves on the Board of Directors (Secretary) for the Society for Historical Archaeology, Chair of the Society for Historical Archaeology’s Heritage at Risk Committee, Chair of Public Outreach Grant Committee for the Southeastern Archaeological Society, Statewide Coordinator for Project Archaeology, and serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Archaeology and Education. Her specialties include historical archaeology, archaeology education, site stewardship, heritage at risk, advocacy, and historic cemeteries.

Data for the Classroom

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University of Western Ontario

Beth Compton

Mary Elizabeth Compton (Beth) is a PhD candidate and Trillium Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, Canada completing a dissertation that involves working with Indigenous communities in Southern Ontario and in the Arctic to help begin to develop community-driven standards and protocols for the 3D scanning and printing of heritage objects. Beth’s academic and professional career has focused on engaging diverse communities in both archaeological theory and practice and digital technologies. Drawing upon her background as an MSc in Archaeological Information Systems from the University of York (UK), Beth’s work blends community engagement, archaeology, and digital humanities in a way that has created an extensive and diverse global network that draws upon academia, community, and the cultural sector. As a co-founder of Canada’s first mobile makerspace and digital humanities classroom, the MakerBus Collaborative, she has directly engaged adults and youth in hands-on applications of digital humanities and has also led professional development workshops for educators.

University of Montreal

Katherine Cook

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Katherine Cook is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal. She founded the Laboratory for Public Archaeology, which specializes in public engagement through digital and hybrid experiences, and co-founded Anthropolab3D, which specializes in digital methods training and research for archaeology students and professionals (with Dr. Isabelle Ribot). She has more than a decade of experience teaching with digital data to improve digital literacy among anthropologists, archivists, museologists, and historians, developing pedagogical approaches to address issues of sustainability, ethics, inclusivity, and access in the digital humanities. 

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University of Central Florida

Tiffany Earley-Spadoni

Tiffany Earley-Spadoni is an Associate Professor whose research focuses on imperial landscapes in ancient Western Asia. She directs or co-directs two active field projects: the Vayots Dzor Fortress Landscapes Project (Armenia) and the Kurd Qaburstan Project (Iraq). Dr. Earley-Spadoni is an innovative educator who won an University-wide teaching award in 2021 and whose digital, community-focused projects have been recently supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Research Institute in the South Caucasus. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on digital methods and theory. Most recently, she co-designed and presented a series of digital literacy workshops for the American Society of Overseas Research in partnership with AAI/Open Context. She received her PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University in 2016. 

Brandeis University

Natalie Susmann

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Natalie Susmann, PhD is the Digital Literacy Librarian at Brandeis University, where she develops large scale campus programs for improving digital literacy research and teaching. Broadly speaking, Natalie is interested in using digital technology as a vehicle for redefining traditional academic career trajectories. She is currently developing a new digital interface—Digital Scholarship @ Brandeis—which provides each of the campus' graduate programs with targeted, discipline-specific digital training content. Before coming to Brandeis, Natalie held faculty positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Clark University, and the College of the Holy Cross, where she taught undergraduate courses in digital Greek archaeology and history. Natalie earned her PhD in 2019 from Boston University's Department of Archaeology, where she studied on Greek landscape archaeology. She is currently working on her book, Sanctuaries on High: Seeing, Moving, and Remembering Mountains in Ancient Greece. She uses geospatial technology, 3D modeling, and textual analysis to uncover how ancient worshipers were physically impacted by mountainous landscapes. She integrates ethnographic and phenomenological techniques into her workflows, as well as global case studies about mountain-based worship. Through her publications, she advocates for open access datasets, transparent workflows, and increased collaborations between extra and intra-Mediterranean archaeologists. 

 

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Eric Poehler

Eric Poehler is Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has published widely on Roman urbanism, infrastructure, and architectural history, authoring or co-authoring more than 25 articles and book chapters, as well as the books Pompeii: Art, Industry, and Infrastructure (2011) and The Traffic Systems of Pompeii (2017). Poehler is also active in the digital humanities, formerly serving as the Director of the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities programs and as Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His major digital project, The  Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project, was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s  2018 Award for Outstanding  Work in Digital Archaeology. This project served as the basis of his latest project, the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project, co-directed with Sebastian Heath and generously funded through the Getty Foundation.

Whatcom Community College

Jennifer Zovar

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Jennifer Zovar is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, WA. She has a dedication to hands-on, interactive learning, and is currently working as co-PI on a project to expand CUREs (Course-Based Undergraduate Research) in the community college curriculum. In her approaches to teaching, she also draws on place-based, community-engaged learning, and strives to create a classroom that is both accessible and culturally responsive. Recognizing that many students, especially students from underrepresented communities, begin their career at a community college, Zovar is dedicated to teaching and outreach, helping students to see themselves as researchers. She is a board member in the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges and is also an editor and chapter author for a new archaeology OER Textbook - Traces: An Open Invitation to Archaeology, which will be available in Fall 2022.

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).