Digital History & Digital Archaeology with Shawn Graham: Recent Episodes
Shawn Graham
Bits and bobs to support my courses - Crafting Digital History; Introduction to Digital Archaeology; DH + Museums, at Carleton University
In this episode, we talk with Danuta Sierhuis, digital development officer at the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery, and CU DH grad.
The rubber hits the road this week, as you start building things in this class; we also hear from Kristy von Moos of Ingenium, who implores you: learn a bit of code!
This week, you start the first of two weeks prepping your selected materials for our asynchronous seminar experiment. You also begin to explore Jupyter Notebooks. Prepare yourself! What is the mindset that leads to success? A willingness to try things out, to let things break, but with a focus on the process. The goal is not perfection; the goal is not to 'perform' being a student. I'm not interested in perfection. I want to hear about what worked, what didn't. I want you to share that with the rest of us. We are joined by Dan Pett, of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, who shares his own perspectives on what this means in a professional setting.
This week, choose your own adventure through our potential readings. Also, we hear from Sean Tudor of the Canadian Museum of Nature and how he came to cultural heritage informatics.
This episode introduces some of the main themes of the course, explaining what the end goal is, and how the course is structured. In part 2, we hear from Erica Vanden Bosch, from Ingenium, the Crown Corporation that runs the Canadian Science and Technology Museum, the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum, and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum.
You've made it! You've reached the end! A valedictory address, with contributions by Aydin and Callista. Thanks everyone.
In this episode, we're joined by Sarah Kansa and Eric Kansa of the Alexandria Archive Institute / Open Context
Last week there was no episode; this week we begin the final module in the course, 'Communicating'. There are lots of different contexts in which we share archaeological data, and lots of different ways to achieve that. Lots of different 'publics', too! In this week's materials, we're looking at the ways archaeologists inform each other about their work, share their data, and the 'open science' movement, which aims for both reproducibility and replicability. We're joined by Dr. Ethan Watrall, of Michigan State University, who, along with his colleague Lynne Goldstein, has pioneered new ways for archaeologists to communicate with each other and the broader public.
We close this module of the course by raising the dead through simulation, and 'enchanting' prospect. We're also joined by Dr. Iza Romanowska, who offers us her thoughts on simulation and a more data-driven future for archaeology.
In this week's episode, I reflect a bit on the nature of libraries. After all, a topic model is a kind of automagically generated index showing you the discourses hidden in the very pattern of words themselves. Some of these discourses presage/prefigure/predestine? trends that later become so big - like Digital Archaeology - that they warrant their own label. We are also joined by Dr. Erin Averett of Creighton University who reflects on the nature of her training in Classical Archaeology and the disconnect between being a good archaeologist, and a good (on paper) job candidate.
Last week, there was no episode. This week, we start 'Module 2: Considering/Critiquing'. The major exercise this week involves re-designing the graveyard project's recording schema to take into account the problems and issues you may have encountered. Did you encounter things about your graveyard that the schema I put together for you just couldn't account for?
We're joined this week by Dr. Colleen Morgan of York University's Digital Archaeology MA programme and Dr. Ben Carter of Muhlenberg College in Allentown PA.
This week, you should be continuing to do your graveyard survey. But I also want you to try to do some 3d photogrammetry; when we try to fit archaeological data into a recording scheme, or we try to take the 'right' kind of pictures to build a 3d model, we have to attend to the physicality of the remains in ways that make us think hard about what the act of recording does to knowledge creation. A digital close reading, if you will. In this week's episode, Bill Caraher of the University of North Dakota takes us through his reflections on what 'digital archaeologies' might mean for the nuts-and-bolts of doing archaeology. Bill's reflection is also on his blog.
In this episode, I offer some advice on what to look for in the materials this week, as well as things to think about as you get started with the Graveyard Project. Also, Robyn S. Lacy, a professional archaeologist working in the cultural resource management sector in Ontario provides some reflections on her work and her evolution as an archaeologist, especially given her research interests in mortuary archaeology. Robyn can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/robyn_la.
Sound effects from users OneOddEgg and KvGarlic. Opening instrumental music is a clip from 'Reflexivity', a sonification of archaeological data by Andrew Reinhard, Eric Kansa, and Shawn Graham. Jazz piano by JazzKeys.
Welcome to HIST3000|CLCV3000! You can find the course website at https://hist3000.netlify.app.
In this episode, I introduce some of the important themes for this class, bring you up to speed on what needs to be done this week, and try to reassure you that when things break, all is not lost: digital work at its best understands that 'failures' happen. Since digital archaeology is a team sport, we can draw on each other to understand the kind of failures we're dealing with, and use that process of reflection to move forward.
This episode is a bit longer than what will be the usual in this class. Some of the material comes from the 'failing gloriously' chapter of my book.
Eventually, after many cycles of cleaning data, making exploratory visualizations, and rerunning your analyzes, you will arrive at a point where you have this thing that you want to communicate.
The syllabus for the course is all laid out at craftingdh.netlify.com , but it's helpful if I underline a few important bits and pieces that I really want you to pay attention to.