In one way or another, I’ve been trying to resurrect the dead using a variety of digital technologies for some time. I even wrote a book on ‘raising the dead’ that inauspiciously was published in the middle of a global pandemic and which managed to come out just before OpenAI released ChatGPT and changed the direction of machine learning research, increased the climate impact of data centres, and reinvigorated the market for small modular nuclear technologies. Anything I might say is suspect. ‘AI’, as popularly understood, is a technology filled with ghosts and futures, religious fervour, and dodgy politics. I’ve been trying to equip my history students to make sensible decisions about what these technologies do, how they do it, how they came to be, and when or where it is appropriate to use them. I won’t promise much, but in this talk I explore how all of that has been going and show some experiments that I think are useful and ethical.
In this session, Sophie will share some insights from the in-progress research for Strand A (Collections) of the multi-institutional project, The Sensational Museum. After explaining the context of the whole project to date, Sophie will set out how she is testing what and how we put information in collections management systems, using a prototype digital system that is reconfigured to support and collect this new type of data. By asking new questions of collections, the system data and heritage work more broadly, the project seeks to provide tangible solutions that move to dismantle existing hierarchies of knowledge and access in the sector.
About the presenter
Sophie is the Research Associate on Strand A: Collections for The Sensational Museum at the University of Leicester. Grounded in the concept of disability gain and using new sensory logics, her work aims to radically dismantle and reimagine UK collections management. She is an academic and professional public historian who has worked in the UK heritage sector in a variety of roles since 2012. Sophie is also an Associate of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP) at the University of York, and a Fellow of the Institute of Digital Culture at the University of Leicester.
Members of the Toumba Serron + TETRARCHs team being filmed for local TV. From left to right: Epiloges cameraman, Despoina Sampatakou (University of York), James Taylor (University of York), Sara Perry (UCL), Aphrodite Spyridon (interviewer). Photo by TETRARCHs creative resident Chloé Dierckx.
The TETRARCHs project has been in northern Greece, at the site of Toumba Serron for the excavation’s second field season. Both the Toumba Serron Research Project and TETRARCHs featured on local TV, interviewed by Aphrodite Spyridon. Catch up on it here (video) and see the English summary of the news report below.
Toumba Serron: A unique and different project for archaeological research by scientists – Video
JT: Dr. James Taylor (Lecturer, University of York, co-director of the Toumba Serron excavation)
SP: Dr. Sara Perry (Associate Professor, UCL, Head of TETRARCHs)
PS: Panayiotis Spyropoulos (Deputy Governor of Serres)
DN: Dimitris Notas (Mayor of the Emm. Pappa Municipality)
GV: Giorgos Vasileiou (President of the Serres Flight Club)
ASG: Dr. Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw (Research Fellow, UCL, TETRARCHs researcher, translating for James Taylor)
DS: Dr. Despoina Sampatakou (Post-Doc researcher, University of York, TETRARCHs Visiting Scholar, translating for Sara Perry and James Taylor)
Summary
AS gave a general introduction to the “unique and different excavation in Toumba Serron of the Municipality of Emm. Pappa”, emphasising the fact that it is a new experimental approach during which finds are digitised into 3D models. She went on to introduce the Neolithic settlement, which dates back to around 5,000 BC, which was identified several decades ago and whose finds show a continuation of life in the same area. She explained that the research is part of a five-year project of the Ministry of Culture, which is being carried out as a collaboration between the Ephorate of Antiquities of Serres and the British School at Athens, led by the Director of the Ephorate, Dr. Dimitria Malamidou. She went on to say that scientific teams have been conducting systematic excavations since 2021 and that the excavation team consists of archaeologists from various universities. AS also focused on the visit, on Friday 12th July 2024, of the members of the Flight Club of Serres, who were accompanied by the Mayor of the Emm. Pappa Municipality, Dimitris Notas. All had the unique opportunity to take a tour of the site while the excavations are taking place.
Next came an interview by JT (translated by ASG), which gave more details about the site and the progress of the excavation. He explained that there was one week left of the excavations, as it was a short excavation season of two weeks this year, to explore some specific questions that the team need to address. He went on to say that e.g. some signs of burning need to be investigated through geophysical methods, and understood. He further explained that next summer the team will study the material that has come out from the last two or three excavation seasons, so that the team can evaluate exactly what kinds of finds have emerged. Answering a question from AS regarding whether current finds are encouraging, JT responded that there are a lot of ceramics and stone objects, which are to be expected from this kind of site, and which can tell us lots of information about the people of Toumba. At AS’s prompt regarding the significance and date of the site, JT responded that it is a site that belongs to the Late Neolithic period, and which dates to ca. 5000 BCE. It is a settlement which belonged to a network of numerous settlements, and which will help the team see, within this network, what life was like for these people in Neolithic times.
The President of the Flight Club of Serres, Giorgos Vasileiou, was interviewed next. He stated that he was impressed and expressed the Flight Club’s joy at being the first association of Serres to officially visit the archaeological research effort. He emphasised that this was an invitation that the Club could not have said no to, as they considered it an honour to be chosen from amongst many other associations. He relayed that they were pleasantly surprised that antiquities were found in that area and was thankful to the archaeologists for reaching out. He wished them to discover lots more finds and for the site to become a visiting place for Greeks and non Greeks alike, so that tourism and local heritage representation would be boosted.
DN was interviewed next. Apart from giving a summary of the site and its people (e.g. pre-metallurgical, exploiting the now defunct nearby lake, foraging and hunting, and so the area’s potential for the development of habitation), he emphasised the collaborative nature of the excavation, with its European Union backing and diverse university representation. He particularly thanked the Ephor, Dr. D. Malamidou: “besides her great endeavour to promote the Kasta Tumulus, she and her team have made time to look at more everyday things, which, nevertheless, are very important in understanding the development of humankind”.
It was TETRARCHs’ turn next. AS introduced this section by highlighting that the goal of the project is to find ways to make digitised material accessible to anyone who is interested. AS also mentioned that this is a unique and different excavation, as it has new experimental methods, during which the finds are digitised into 3D models. There followed statements by SP and JT, translated by DS. SP stated that the approach employed here is different for many reasons, one of them being the way we reach out to the public, and facilitate their ability to tell stories about the site and its finds. SP explained that the team’s several members come from many universities and include researchers, students and artists. JT added that the unique digital, experimental approach employed, of digitising everything in 3D, also aims to enable the reuse of archival archaeological data.
In the final part of the report, AS introduced a statement from PS, who had attended a briefing by ASG earlier on. He expressed his and his team’s interest about anything which happens in Serres and deemed the excavation a serious, worthwhile, positive endeavour that benefits the area. He reflected that the excavation members respect Greek culture and move archaeology forward, and so he promised his and his team’s support for the project. He concluded that “it’s a good and noteworthy excavation and I hope the finds will prove equally important.”
Blog by Sara Perry, summary by Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, with input from Sara Perry.
Local school children brainstorm how to create a story from archaeological photos. Photo by TETRARCHs member Aida Fadioui.
The Toumba Serron excavation and the TETRARCHs team were delighted to welcome a delegation of children and teachers from the Aristoteleio School of Serres in July 2024. They began their visit by being given a tour of the site by excavation co-director Dr. James Taylor (University of York, TETRARCHs Collaborating Member), with translation by Dr. Despoina Sampatakou (also University of York and TETRARCHs Visiting Scholar). Then they joined Dr. Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw (UCL, TETRARCHs Collaborating Member) and Dr. Sampatakou at the excavation’s base, in the modern village of Toumba Serron. In the context of TETRARCHs, Anna and Despoina ran a workshop, which had been co-designed by Dr. Sara Perry (UCL, TETRARCHs PI) and themselves. During that workshop, our visitors helped us come up with creative and imaginative readings of the Neolithic site and its artefacts.
A photo of sherds becomes the inspiration for a videogame called “Lithomania”. Photo by TETRARCHs member Aida Fadioui.
Our visitors were then given information about the artefacts in our handling collection by our excavation member Dimitra Zoi of the Toumba Serron Research Project, who discussed what we can glimpse about life in Neolithic times from these artefacts. She also explained in the lab about the process archaeologists follow in their work. We finished the visit with some wonderful reflections, many of them prompted by one of our TETRARCHs Creative Residents, Chloé Dierckx. We are thankful to all our visitors for their enthusiasm and creative inputs!
If you would like to see the school’s blog about their visit and further photos, these can be found here. A translation of the blog follows.
Young Archaeologists at the Excavation of Toumba Serron
On July 11, 2024, students of the Aristotle School of Serres visited the site of the ongoing excavation in the village of Toumba Serron and were guided by the archaeologists Mrs. Anna Simandiraki and Mrs. Despoina Sampatakou.
The Toumba Serron Research Project is a collaborative excavation project between the University of York in the United Kingdom, Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture (Ephorate of Antiquities of Serres) and Lund University in Sweden.
The work of the excavation and research program focuses on the late/final Neolithic site at the village of Toumba Serron (5,000 BC), located in the dynamic lacustrine environment of the northern side of the Strymonas river valley. The project, through its excavation, aims to date the site, understand the social and economic structure of the communities that lived there, as well as study the wider prehistoric landscape of the Strymon valley.
The students were informed by the archaeologists about the prehistory of the area, closely watched the excavation, talked with the members of the excavation crew, and participated in an archeology workshop. The workshop included a tour of the site and activities, such as creative storytelling and contact with the finds.
We sincerely thank all the members of the research project, especially Mrs. Anna Simandiraki and Mrs. Despina Sambatakou, for their welcome, hospitality and perfect presentation of their work.
Translation by Anna Simandiraki-Grimshaw, with input from Sara Perry
In the current research landscape, there is an emphasis on ensuring that digital data is made openly available so others can use it. The European Union has spent more than a decade investing in the aggregation and interoperability of heritage data, ensuring that data can be accessed and used. Despite this investment, current perceptions are that archaeological data is not being reused. Using the Archaeology Data Service as a case study has demonstrated that archaeological data is being reused, just not in the way we expected. This presentation will present a comprehensive analysis of the available evidence of the reuse of archaeological data archived with the ADS, providing the quantitative data that has been lacking in the current critiques of our practice.
About the presenter
KL Seaton is currently a doctoral student at the University of York studying the use and reuse of digital archaeological data. Using the Archaeology Data Service as a case study, the fragmented landscape of data reuse is being examined to challenge current assumptions that archaeological data is not being reused.
Growing numbers of archaeologists are interested in implementing data governance principles such as FAIR and CARE in archaeology and digital heritage. The FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) data governance principles have the potential to transform the way archaeology is practised. In this talk, I will present research with Westbank First Nation archaeologists that enacts Indigenous Data Governance principles in archaeology and digital heritage, and preliminary research to build FAIR+CARE practices for cultural heritage in American archaeology. I will discuss how contextualizing data practice can help build an anti-colonial digital archaeology.
About the presenter
Dr. Neha Gupta is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Neha’s research programme examines and addresses geospatial and digital methods in postcolonial, decolonial, anti-colonial and Indigenous studies of heritage and archaeology. Research interests include geovisualization and GIS, place-based heritage, data practice, community governance of data, anti-racism and archaeology in India and Canada. Neha builds and expands on these interests through DARE, a research lab at UBC Okanagan.
Within fiction and game creation, worldbuilding is the act of integrating history, ecology, geology to bring an imaginary world to life. I argue that archaeologists are intimately involved in worldbuilding, using archaeological remains to try to understand past lives. We bring together multiple lines of archaeological data to create representations of the past. The characterisation of archaeological interpretation as worldbuilding contrasts with the understanding of archaeologists as storytellers, those who create a narrative with a beginning and end, motivated by specific actors or events. To explore worldbuilding as a productive trope in archaeological investigation, I discuss examples from my research, including the OTHER EYES project, Catalhoyuk in Second Life, and working with artists as part of TETRARCHS and the Avebury Papers. Finally, I will note the political and prefigurative implications of worldbuilding, sometimes called worldmaking, in terms of queer and black envisioning of the future.
About the presenter
Dr. Colleen Morgan is Senior Lecturer in Digital Archaeology and Heritage in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She is Director of the Digital Archaeology and Heritage Lab, the MSc in Digital Archaeology and the MSc in Digital Heritage. Colleen is the PI on the UKRI-AHRC funded OTHER EYES project and the Co-I of The Avebury Papers with Professor Mark Gillings (University of Bristol) to creatively investigate the extensive personal and archaeological archive at Avebury. Her research contributions fall in three main areas: 1) bringing digital archaeology into conversation with current theory drawn from feminist, queer, posthuman, and anarchist approaches 2) multisensorial interventions and digital embodiment, with a focus on avatars of past people created from bioarchaeological data 3) issues surrounding craft, enskillment and pedagogy in analog and digital methods in field archaeology, including photography, videography.
Data management literature has emphasised the importance of contextual knowledge as a critical premise of successful (re)use of research data both in archaeology and other disciplines. A particular, important aspect of context of research data that informs its users is how data came about, how it has been processed and used in the past. A term that has become established to denote information on diverse data-related processes is paradata. It was first introduced in survey research in the 1990s, somewhat later in heritage visualisation and more recently in several other fields including field archaeology, research data management and archival studies. In a part of the archaeological literature, it has become almost a truism to note that it is important to document and preserve not only data itself but also metadata and paradata. A question remains, however: what is the paradata that is important to include and how it is different from data and metadata?
This presentation discusses paradata, its whatness (what is paradata) and aboutness (what it describes and informs about), and what types of problems it is expected to solve and how, through an exposé of findings from the research project CApturing Paradata for documenTing data creation and Use for the REsearch of the future (CAPTURE). Both conceptual analysis of paradata and evidence-based research of paradata in the wild show that many types of information and things can function as paradata but also that the notion of paradata can be understood in widely different ways, and how things can function as paradata in diverse manners with diverging theoretical and practical implications to process transparency. In a theoretical sense, the multifariousness of paradata and why process documentation persists as a wicked, difficult-to-solve problem can be approached through inquiring into the politics of how paradata as a meshwork-like cultural technology is conceptualised, generated and appropriated in use. Acknowledging paradata as a meshwork implies in practice that achieving process transparency through paradata is contextual and specific to research communities, and including paradata is both a more complex and simple question than adding a new descriptor called paradata to data documentation standards.
About the Presenter
Professor Isto Huvila holds the chair in information studies at the Department of ALM (Archival Studies, Library and Information Studies and Museums and Cultural Heritage Studies) at Uppsala University. He has conducted research on archaeological information work and information management for over two decades. He is currently the PI of the European Research Council funded project CApturing Paradata for documenTing data creation and Use for the REsearch of the future (CAPTURE) and a chair of the recent COST Action ARKWORK on archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment.
Since its founding, the Great Lakes Research Alliance (GRASAC) has sought to digitally reunite Great Lakes Indigenous heritage items dispersed across museums and archives globally with the peoples and knowledge systems of the Great Lakes. In 2023, we transformed our database into an open access Knowledge Sharing Platform guided by Great Lakes kinship ontologies in which artifacts (as well as plants, animals and political allies) can be considered relatives. In this talk, we share some of the features of the Platform that embody this kinship ontology as well as innovative data fields that extend traditional cataloguing practices. We offer critical reflections on our practices of reparative description and data stewardship, confront some of the technological challenges, and offer observations on why and how heritage data matters.
About the presenters
Cara Krmpotich (she/her) is Co-Director of GRASAC and Associate Professor of Museum Studies at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.
Heidi Bohaker (she/her) is Co-Director of GRASAC and Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.
After a successful first year of seminars featuring 11 speakers over 7 sessions, with more than 1000 registrants from 43 countries, we on Transforming Data Reuse in Archaeology are excited to announce our 2024 speakers!
Please keep your eyes peeled for exact dates and times, more detail on the topics, and registration links on our website. We aim to advertise our seminars at least one month in advance, and we will update the timetable below as we confirm specifics with our kind speakers. Note that we break in August and December for rest and rejuvenation.
POSTPONED – Dr Sharon Howard (University of Southampton), The Beyond Notability project, Linked Open Data, & re-evaluating women’s work in archaeology, history and heritage.
Monday, 5February 2024, 16:30 GMT – Dr Cara Krmpotich& Dr Heidi Bohaker (University of Toronto), Data Ontologies: designing digital encounters with cultural heritage through the lens of kinship. Read more HERE.
Tuesday, 5 March 2024, 16:30 GMT – Prof Isto Huvila (Uppsala University), Paradata and the technopolitics of process transparency. Read more HERE.
Wednesday, 24April 2024, 16:30 GMT – Dr Colleen Morgan (University of York), Making People and Worlds with Digital Archaeology. Read more HERE.
Wednesday, 8 May 2024, 17:30 GMT – Dr Neha Gupta (University of British Columbia), Building an anti-colonial digital archaeology through FAIR and CARE data governance principles. Read more HERE.
Wednesday, 12 June 2024, 16:30 BST, KL Seaton (University of York, UK), Hiding in plain sight: Understanding data reuse at the Archaeology Data Service. Read more HERE.
Thursday, 17 October 2024, 16:30 BST – Dr Sophie Vohra (University of Leicester), The Sensational Museum. Read more HERE.
Thursday, 28November 2024, 16:30 GMT – Dr Shawn Graham (Carleton University), Practical Necromancy for Beginners. On ‘AI’, its ghosts, corpses, gods, and other use cases in archaeology. Register HERE.
December 2024 (date to be confirmed) – University of Antwerp and Ghent University, TETRARCHs’ storytelling ontology. Registration details to follow.
If you would like to recommend a potential contributor to our 2025 series, please contact us.
Stay tuned, and hope you can join us and spread the word!
