Networking Archaeological Data
and Communities

An NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities

Institute Format

Networking Archaeological Data and Communities is organized around four semesters devoted to specific themes: The Data Management Lifecycle (Spring 2023), Data for Professional Communication (Fall 2023), Data for Diverse Publics (Spring 2024), and Data for the Classroom (Fall 2024). Each semester includes three or four online, synchronous workshops, scheduled on Saturdays from 10:30am - 1:10pm and 1:45pm - 3:30pm eastern time. Participants will be asked to complete a bit of preparatory work before each workshop, which will itself consist of faculty-led lectures and learning activities that contribute to individual and collective outcomes.

In addition to these online workshops, members of the Core Team will host two, in-person, multi-day summer programs (July 24 - 28, 2023 and July 22 - 26, 2024) at the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley. These programs will offer participants opportunities for in person collaboration, learning, and networking with other institute participants and members of the institute's Core Team. Furthermore, these programs will help cultivate a sense of community and accountability among participants.

Between the time spent in the online workshops and the in-person summer programs, participants, Faculty, and Core Team members will be encouraged to keep the conversation going on the AAI/OC's Discord server. Moreover, at the conclusion of our formal curriculum, in Spring and Summer 2025, members of the Core Team, Advisors, and Faculty will finalize and publish the Data Literacy for Archaeologists Practice Guide and will support participants as they finish up and share their individual projects.

Curriculum

Last updated: August 14, 2023

Please note that the curriculum that follows is tentative; both schedule and scope are subject to change at the discretion of the Program Director or the members of the Faculty. To download this curriculum as a pdf, click here.

Spring Semester I: The Data Management Lifecycle

January - April 2023

January 21, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Melissa Cradic (Facilitator)
Leigh Anne Lieberman
Paulina F. Przystupa

Pre-Workshop Assignment 
Read: Kansa, S. W., L. Atici, E. C. Kansa, and R. H. Meadow (2020) “Archaeological Analysis in the Information Age: Guidelines for Maximizing the Reach, Comprehensiveness, and Longevity of Data.” Advances in Archaeological Practice, 8 (1), 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2019.36.

Download & Install: Open Refine

Watch: Open Refine for Archaeology: Open Source Data Cleaning

Additional Resources
Dennis, L. Meghan and Paulina F. Przystupa. Cow-culating your Data with Spreadsheets and R. Data Story Tutorial. The Alexandria Archive Institute. 2022, DOI: https://doi.org/10.6078/M73N21HR.

Lincoln, Matthew D. "Tidy Data for the Humanities." Matthew Lincoln, PhD(blog), 26 May 2020, https://matthewlincoln.net/2020/05/26/tidy-data-for-humanities.html.

OpenRefine User Manual

Rawson, Katie, and Trevor Muñoz. “Against Cleaning.” In Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, 279–92. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Rivard, Courtney, Taylor Arnold, and Lauren Tilton. “Building Pedagogy into Project Development: Making Data Construction Visible in Digital Projects.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 13, no. 2 (August 1, 2019). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/13/2/000419/000419.html.

Rosenberg, Daniel. “Data before the Fact.” In “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron, 15–40. Infrastructures Series. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013.

van Hooland, Seth, Ruben Verborgh, and Max De Wilde, "Cleaning Data with OpenRefine," Programming Historian 2 (2013), https://doi.org/10.46430/phen0023.

Participant Outcomes
Familiarity with attributes of data quality, including unique identifiers, controlled vocabulary, appropriate documentation, etc.

Experience finding and evaluating open archaeological data in online repositories.

Experience cleaning messy data with a program like OpenRefine.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated samples of clean archaeological data sets.

Next Steps
Practice cleaning messy data using the tool of your choice.

Continue to define (and refine) your project-specific needs and standards. 

February 11, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Anne Austin
Sarah Whitcher Kansa
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Pre-Workshop Assignment
Read: Faniel, Ixchel, Anne Austin, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, Eric Kansa, Jennifer Jacobs, and Phoebe France (2021). “Identifying Opportunities for Collective Curation During Archaeological Excavations.” International Journal of Digital Curation 15, no. 1: 13. https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v15i1.699.

Consider: Kansa, Sarah Whitcher, Austin, Anne, Faniel, Ixchel M, & Kansa, Eric C. (2020). Specialist Agreement Template. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4346486.

As you consider the Specialist Agreement Template, how would you modify it for your own project? What’s missing? What would you cut? We’ll spend some time in our session reflection on these questions, so jot down some ideas and begin to adapt the template for your own context.

Prepare: If you have a current paper or digital data collection form for some aspect of archaeological field work, come ready to share that with the group, and be prepared to share an annotated version of that for our Data Literacy for Archaeologists Practice Guide.

Additional Resources
Ross, Shawn, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Steve Cassidy, Penny Crook, Jens Klump, and Adela Sobotkova. “FAIRer Data through Digital Recording: The FAIMS Mobile Experience.” Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology 5, no. 1 (2022): 271–85. https://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.96.

White, Roger (2009) “Data Collection by Excavation.” The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology, eds. Chris Gosden, B. Cunliffe, and R. A. Joyce. New York City, NY: Oxford University Press.

Participant Outcomes
Understanding of the ways that paper or digital data collection forms guide the types of data that are collected.

Create paper and/or digital data collection forms for individual research projects that incorporate attributes of data quality.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated samples that demonstrate how the Specialist Agreement Template can be adapted to fit a given project.

Annotated samples of paper and digital data collection forms for multiple aspects of archaeological field work (e.g.: excavation, survey, flotation, materials analysis, etc.)

Next Steps
Revise a specialist agreement to suit your project(s).

Revise the ways you collect data to make your data structures more resusable.

Produce or revise written guidelines for data collection for your project(s). 

March 18, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Anne Hunnell Chen
Sarah Whitcher Kansa (Facilitator)
Leigh Anne Lieberman

Pre-Workshop Assignment
Watch: this short video with reflections from NADAC faculty and friends. (Link to mp4 file here; Link to YouTube video with auto captions here; 25 minutes).

Create: a Wikipedia account so that you’ll be ready for our Wikidata exercise. If you’ve ever worked on Wikipedia, you can use that same account.

Complete: Wikidata Professional Development Training Modules. All of these modules should take about an hour and twenty minutes to complete, and are broken into 15-20 minute sections. If you need to prioritize, please be sure you have covered Introduction to Wikidata, Databases and Linked Data, Adding to Wikidata, and Querying Wikidata - SPARQL.

Think about your project and the legacy data you would like to integrate into it. In what format does the information currently reside? Are there traditional publications (i.e.: excavation reports) or other text-based resources that you have access to (i.e.: field notebooks)? Do you have old spreadsheets of data collected by previous projects? Do you have material like maps/photographs/drawings/plans that need to be digitized? If you can, bring a report, field notebook, spreadsheet, or static database to work with during our Saturday session. Don’t worry if nothing comes to mind or if you don’t feel comfortable working with your data yet. We’ll provide material drawn from our own projects such that all participants will be able to engage in the exercises, but we welcome you to experiment with data that are relevant to the specifics of your own project.

Additional Resources
Aspöck, Edeltraud. “Old Excavation Data. What Can We Do? An Introduction.” Edited by Edeltraud Aspöck, Seta Štuhec, Karin Kopetzky, and Matthias Kucera. Vol. 16. Old Excavation Data. What Can We Do? Wien, Austria: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2020. doi:10.1553/0x003bca0e. PDF.

Linked Open Data Management Systems Comparison Tool, cited in Nasarek, Robert, & Rossenova, Lozana. (2023). Linked Open Data Management Services: A Comparison (1.0.0) [Data set]. DHd2023 Open Humanities Open Culture (DHd2023), Trier and Luxembourg. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7738424.

Schmidt, Sophie C., Florian Thiery, and Martina Trognitz. “Practices of Linked Open Data in Archaeology and Their Realisation in Wikidata.” Digital 2, no. 3 (2022): 333–64. https://doi.org/10.3390/digital2030019. PDF.

Participant Outcomes 
Understanding of the challenges of working with legacy data, especially with respect to data curation and data management.

Experience working through text-based, tabular, and visual resources in Wikidata.

Collective Outcomes
Reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of using a tool like Wikidata to process and publish legacy data.

Next Steps
Identify the kinds of legacy resources that you have to contend with (handwritten notebooks, photographs, reports, etc.) and brainstorm how you want to consistently process each type.

Continue to explore Wikidata (and other open vocabularies, gazetteers, etc.) to find resources that work for your project. Using SQID or querying, see if Wikidata would be appropriate for the kind of work you’re doing.

Play around with Wikidata in a very low stakes way by adding references to records about something you know.

April 15, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Ixchel M. Faniel
Eric Kansa
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Pre-Workshop Assignment
Read: Faniel, I.M., A. Austin, E. C. Kansa, S. W. Kansa, P. France, J. Jacobs, R. Boytner, and E. Yakel (2018) “Beyond the archive: bridging data creation and reuse in archaeology.” Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(2), 105-116. doi:10.1017/aap.2018.2. PDF.

Read: Nicholson, C., Kansa, S., Gupta, N., & Fernandez, R. (2023). “Will It Ever Be FAIR?: Making Archaeological Data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.” Advances in Archaeological Practice, 11(1), 63-75. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2022.40. PDF.

Additional Resources

Data Sharing, Part 1 of 3 - Request (Data management gone wrong!

Kansa, E. C., and Sarah Whitcher Kansa. “Promoting Data Quality and Reuse in Archaeology through Collaborative Identifier Practices.” PNAS 119 (2022): 43. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109313118. PDF.

Online services available to build a data management plan (DMP) - DMPTool and DMPonline

SAA Guidance Regarding National Science Foundation Archaeological Data Management Plans (n.d.)

PARTHENOS DMP Research Template for Archaeological Datasets (n.d.)

Digital Curation Centre v1 (2011)

Digital Curation Centre v2 (2021) (NB: Found by searching under Funder Requirements on the DMPTool website) 

Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management - Extended Edition (2021) 

Research Data Management Organizer

Participant Outcomes 
Familiarity with the attributes of a good data management plan (DMP).

Identification of a model for individual research projects’ DMP.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated samples of data management plans for archaeological research projects.

Next Steps
Using the DMP guidance documents shared above, start outlining a draft of your DMP. Keep a running list of your questions and concerns. Continue to identify and meet people you need to go to for help (e.g., librarians, stakeholders, collaborators, colleagues).

Summer Workshop I

July 2023

July 24 - 28, 2023
Berkeley, California, co-sponsored by the Bade Museum at Pacific School of Religion

Faculty
Leigh Anne Lieberman
Sarah Whitcher Kansa
Eric Kansa
Melissa Cradic
L. Meghan Dennis
Paulina F. Przystupa

Pre-Workshop Assignment
Draft: an internally-facing DMP (BYO DMP) to bring to the Summer Workshop to share and review with fellow Scholars and members of the Institute’s Core Team.

Identify: an ontology, set of standard vocabulary, open data set, etc., to map their existing data structures to or to adapt for use in their projects.

Plan: a short presentation (no more than 10 minutes) that introduces the rest of the Institute to their project’s goals. This presentation should showcase one place where you've made progress on your project since the start of the program in January 2023. This presentation should also outline one challenge or difficulty that you'd like to get feedback on during the course of the Summer Workshop. What do you want feedback about from other members of this Institute? In other words, how can this group help you this week and beyond?

Additional Resources
Chavez, Felicia Rose. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop : How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. BreakBeat Poets Series. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2021. Chapters 6, 7, and 8.

Lerman, Liz. Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process : A Method for Getting Useful Feedback on Anything You Make, from Dance to Dessert. 1st ed. Takoma Park, MD: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, 2003.

Participant Outcomes
Opportunities to network with other Scholars and Institute Core Team.

Data management plan for individual research projects drafted.

Plan to incorporate appropriate Linked Open Data ontologies, vocabularies, and other resources into their research data sets drafted.

Opportunity to present a brief update about progress since the start of the Institute.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated examples of Data Management Plans (DMPs) for archaeological research projects.

Annotated examples of why and how to integrate Linked Open Data (LOD) into general data management practices for archaeological research projects. 

Annotated list of LOD resources and their potential uses.

Fall Semester I: Data for Professional Communication

September - December 2023

September 9, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
L. Meghan Dennis
Eric Kansa
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
Dennis, L. M. (2020) “Digital archaeological ethics: Successes and failures in disciplinary attention.” Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 3(1).

Participant Outcomes
- Familiarity with FAIR and CARE principles.

- Comprehensive working list of the ways in which individual research projects will put FAIR and CARE principles into practice.

Collective Outcomes
- Compilation of approaches where data-driven archaeological research and public engagement projects can align practices with FAIR and CARE principles.

October 21, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
William Caraher
Sarah Herr
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
Caraher, W. (2022) “Collaborative Digital Publishing in Archaeology: Data, Workflows, and Books in the Age of Logistics.” Critical Archaeology in a Digital Age, ed. K. Garstki. Los Angeles, CA: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

Participant Outcomes
- Identification of methods (“green”, “gold”, “diamond”) and venues for open access publication related to individual research projects.

- Identification of data set to be integrated into open access publication related to individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
- Annotated samples of digital publications that integrate research data.

December 2, 2023
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)
Angela Trentecosta
Kevin Garstki

Bibliography
Lodwick, L. (2019) “Sowing the seeds of future research: data sharing, citation and reuse in Archaeobotany.” Open Quaternary, 5(1).

Participant Outcomes
- Comprehensive working list of the ways in which data sets related to individual research projects can be reused, as well as specific measures that will help promote reuse.

Collective Outcomes
- Principle ways in which archaeological research data sets can be reused together with good practices that facilitate data reuse.

Spring Semester II: Data for Diverse Publics

January - April 2024

January 20, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Neha Gupta
Edward González-Tennant
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
TBD

Participant Outcomes
Draft of a pathway to collaboration for individual research projects and publication with relevant community stakeholders, especially those with indigenous, BIPOC, low-incoming, diaspora, refugee, and other underserved communities, where appropriate.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated samples of pathways to collaboration for archaeological research projects and publications with relevant community stakeholders, especially those with indigenous, BIPOC, low-incoming, diaspora, refugee, and other underserved communities.

February 24, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)
Sarah Miller
Paulina F. Przystupa

Bibliography
Przystupa, P. F. (Forthcoming) “Archaeology and Comics: Cons, concerns, and creativity.”

Participant Outcomes
- Outline for potential application that prioritizes engagement with diverse communities around individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated list of potential applications that prioritize engagement with diverse communities around individual research projects.

March 16, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Melissa Cradic
Pınar Durgun
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
Durgun, P. (2021) “Digging Digital Museum Collections Blog Series.” https://alexandriaarchive.org/digging-digital-museum-collections/

Participant Outcomes
- Outline for potential collaborative didactic and/or program with museum and/or archaeological site personnel that prioritizes engagement with diverse communities around individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated list of potential collaborative didactics and/or programs with museums and/or archaeological site personnel that prioritize engagement with diverse communities around individual research projects. 

- Compile good practices for museums to make online collections better support multiple forms of public engagement.

April 20, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Jarre Hamilton
Desireé Reneé Martinez
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
Hacıgüzeller, P., J. S. Taylor, and S. Perry, (2021) "On the Emerging Supremacy of Structured Digital Data in Archaeology: A Preliminary Assessment of Information, Knowledge and Wisdom Left Behind." Open Archaeology, 7(1), pp.1709-1730.

Participant Outcomes
List of the strategies by which individual research projects can prioritize transparency and showcasing diverse perspectives.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated list of strategies by which archaeological  research projects can prioritize transparency and showcasing diverse perspectives.

Summer Workshop II

July 2024

July 22 - 26, 2024
Berkeley, California

Faculty
Leigh Anne Lieberman
Sarah Whitcher Kansa
Eric Kansa
Melissa Cradic
L. Meghan Dennis
Paulina F. Przystupa

Schedule
Monday: Welcome
Tuesday & Wednesday: Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap
Thursday & Friday: Proof-of-Concept Community or Classroom Project

Participant Outcomes
Opportunities to network with each other and institute Core Team.

Socio-Technical Sustainability Roadmap (STSR) for individual research projects drafted.

- Outline of a short-term, feasible, proof-of-concept for outreach or pedagogical application related to individual research projects drafted.

- Opportunity to present a brief update about progress since the start of the institute.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated examples that demonstrate how good, long-term project documentation (like the STSR) relates to short-term, feasible, proof-of-concept applications.

Fall Semester II: Data for the Classroom

September - November 2024

September 21, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Beth Compton
Katherine Cook
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)

Bibliography
Cook, K. (2018) “Open Data as Public Archaeology: The Monumental Archive Project.” AP: Online Journal of Public Archaeology 3: 177-194. revistas.jasarqueologia.es/index.php/APJournal/article/view/152 

Participant Outcomes
A student-oriented, data-driven exercise that targets some aspect of archaeological data literacy using data from individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated collection of student-oriented, data-driven exercises that target some aspect of archaeological data literacy using data from individual research projects.

October 19, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
Tiffany Earley-Spadoni
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)
Eric Poehler

Bibliography
Earley-Spadoni, T. (2017) “Spatial History, Deep Mapping and Digital Storytelling: Archaeology's Future Imagined through an Engagement with the Digital Humanities.” Journal of Archaeological Science 84: 95–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2017.05.003

Participant Outcomes
Syllabus that prioritizes student learning around archaeological data literacy using data-driven exercises from individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
Annotated collection of syllabuses that prioritize student learning around archaeological data literacy using data-driven exercises from individual research projects.

November 16, 2024
10:30am - 1:10pm / 1:45pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Online Workshop

Faculty
L. Meghan Dennis
Leigh Anne Lieberman (Facilitator)
Jennifer Zovar

Bibliography
Muir, S., and Y. Oliver, (2021) Strategies for Recruiting Students to the Humanities: A Comprehensive Overview. Washington, D.C.: National Humanities Alliance. https://www.nhalliance.org/study_the_humanities

Participant Outcomes
Understanding of the pedagogical impact of individual research projects.

Collective Outcomes
Comprehensive working list of the ways in which data-driven exercises that target some aspect of archaeological data literacy fit in larger institutional, departmental, and disciplinary missions.