T10/S01: Digital Archaeologies of Modernity, Modern Archaeologies of the Digital
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers: James Flexner, Archaeology, University of Sydney, Australia, james.flexner@sydney.edu.au
Katharine Watson, Christchurch Archaeology Project, New Zealand, katharine.watson@christchurcharchaeology.org
Sara Gonzalez, Dept of Anthropology, University of Washington, USA, gonzalsa@uw.edu
Archaeology is increasingly experienced as a digital pursuit, with everything from fieldwork data to publications mediated through electronic devices and screens. This session seeks to explore the intersections between the digital and the modern worlds in two directions. First, by defining and critically examining the ways that digital archaeologies contribute to what in many parts of the world are still called “historical archaeologies.” How are we increasingly using the digital tools available to archaeologists, from photogrammetry to geographical information systems to online databases, to understand the material transformations that defined the emergence of modernity during the last 500 years? Second, to experiment with the methodologies and theories of historical archaeology for understanding the emergence of the digital world that increasingly dominates contemporary experience. How does archaeology help us to understand the industrial processes, systems thinking, environmental impacts, and socio-cultural implications of recent and contemporary digital life?
T10/S02: Building an Anti-colonial Archaeology and Digital Heritage through CARE and FAIR Data Governance Principles
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers: Desiree Martinez, Gabrieliño (Tongva), California State Polytechnic University, California, USA, desireerm@gmail.com)
Neha Gupta, The University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada, neha.gupta@ubc.ca
Sarah Kansa, Alexandria Archive Institute, California, USA
Christopher Nicholson, Center for Digital Antiquity and tDAR, Arizona State University, Arizona, USA
Growing availability of digital tools and technologies has the potential to facilitate anti-colonial methods in archaeological practice. The social context of archaeology, ownership of the past and the digitisation of heritage are major themes underlying how archaeologists collect, use, manage, interpret, share and circulate archaeological data in 21st century. From the 1960s onwards, Indigenous, Black and racialised groups, archaeologists and heritage scholars have highlighted power relations in terms of inequalities in access to strategic resources (material, social and ideological), ownership of, and control over cultural heritage, the protection and preservation of their ancestors and ancestral sites, and the authority to create narratives about their past. While fruitful, these efforts have typically obscured computing and digital tools in the practice of archaeology, underestimating the interweaving of power, space, technologies and knowledge making. In light of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), archaeologists and Western holding institutions are increasingly using global data governance principles, such as the CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) and FAIR (Findability, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) in the collection, use, management, sharing and circulation of Indigenous data. Researchers concurrently use regional Indigenous data governance principles such as the OCAP® (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession), and the Maori Data Sovereignty Principles to shift power differentials, and restore decision-making about archaeology and digital heritage to Indigenous Peoples. This session invites presenters to showcase, share and discuss specific examples on how they are using Indigenous data governance principles to conceptualise, develop, and assert Indigenous rights to heritage data, and what challenges and barriers they have experienced in implementation. We especially encourage Tribal, Aboriginal, First Nation groups and scholars, early-career researchers and historically underrepresented scholars to contribute to the session.
This is a panel/discussion session that will include brief presentations with slides. Please email Desiree Martinez (desireerm@gmail.com) and Neha Gupta (neha.gupta@ubc.ca)with questions, or interest in participation.
T10/S03: Digital Applications in Storytelling for Cultural Heritage
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers: Max Adams, Lecturer, School of English, Language and Linguistics, University of Newcastle, UK, max.adams@ncl.ac.uk
We are looking to explore the span of digital techniques in storytelling, from community-based multimedia projects to major NGO and state-level research programmes and showcases. We want to hear about the most innovative mapping solutions; about solving tensions between academic frameworks and standards and the fuzzy data of anecdote, memory and pooled local knowledge. We’d like to celebrate visually ambitious narratives and cutting-edge representations of theoretical perspectives. We are also interested in low-tech and DIY digital storytelling initiatives.
Orthodox and unorthodox presentations are welcome, and we want to hear from non-academics as well as institutional professionals – this is to be an inclusive, sharing, generative and imaginative experience.
Imagine, for example, taking David Clarke’s model of the Glastonbury Lake Village – only digitised alongside Bulleid and Gray’s Victorian records; or constructing multi-layered maps of polyfocal landscapes such as an ecomuseum. Or bringing lost oral histories together with contemporary art into an online exhibition. Example presentations might include:
• Visualising multi-dimensional theoretical info-scapes such as the universe of curated objects;
• Building narrative histories, from paper records to online resource bases
• Using meta- and paradata from archaeological excavations past and present to tell complex stories about the construction of the past.
T10/S04: The FAIR Reuse of Archive Data
Format: Paper presentations with discussion
Organisers: Stephen Stead, Paveprime Ltd, UK, steadsds@outlook.com
Jane Jansen, Arkeologerna/Intrasis, Sweden, Jane.Jansen@arkeologerna.com
This hopes to start a dialogue concerning the reuse of archival data. We are particularly interested in the use of oral history and traditions and how they may be incorporated with excavation material.
The archaeological research community was an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. (Richards 2022). As several projects have shown, digital data can be shared, but how can those data be used? To address those questions, principles and ontologies have been created and are ready to be applied.
One such concept is FAIR data. FAIR data is data which meets the principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR). The acronym and principles were defined in the journal Scientific Data in 2016.
Digital archive access projects will revolutionise archaeological research and are vital if we want to attain the R in FAIR. However, it is necessary to apply an ontology to the data, otherwise the time needed to understand the semantics of each dataset is insurmountable. CRMarchaeo, an extension of the CIDOC CRM, is one way to link a wide range of existing documentation from archaeological investigations. It was created to promote a shared formalisation of the knowledge extracted from archaeological observations. It provides a set of concepts and properties that allow clear explanation (and separation) of the observations and interpretations made, both in the field and in post-excavation.
Using FAIR principles is critical to the creation of wider pictures of regions or periods and can also be a stepping stone to generating Big Data for further analysis.
In this session we invite presentations from organisations or projects who are addressing these issues. We are particularly interested in applications of the CIDOC CRM and its extension CRMarchaeo.
Richards, J. 2022 Presentation at CHNT Vienna