This summer school on emerging practices in archaeological research and what to do with the digital legacy of previous fieldwork projects is offered as part of ARIADNE’s TNA program.  It is hosted by the Athena Research Centre, Digital Curation Unit in Athens, Greece.

The goal is to enable researchers and professionals to engage with cutting edge and emerging digital practices of archaeological research, ranging from new methods to capture, organize and curate fieldwork information to new approaches to archaeological interpretation and dissemination, mediated by digital infrastructures.  The TNA will provide ca. 20 researchers already engaged to some extent in digitally-enabled work (innovators, early adopters and early majority researchers, in Rogers’ diffusion of innovation model) with a structured format to share, discuss and elaborate innovative research practices and methods.

Format: the TNA will focus on a detailed elaboration of a small number of scenarios or digitally-enabled archaeological research that make use of emerging digital infrastructures, tools and services, put in the context of select methodological sources on digital archaeology, bringing together the research experiences of participants, and leveraging the ARIADNE registry and other information systems, as well as ontological work on understanding archaeological practices and methods. It will combine formal presentations with structured discussion and breakout learner-oriented activities. Invited discussants and presenters will include members of the ARIADNE Special Interest Group on archaeological research methods and practices, collectively possessing significant expertise on digital archaeology, as well as visiting researchers attached to the network of foreign archaeological schools in Greece and neighboring countries. Participants will be invited to co-author a report, summarizing lessons learned from the summer school, individual contributions, and a futures view on digital archaeology.

Pre-requisites:

An understanding of archaeological research principles and methods (excavation, survey, post-excavation, or artifact-based); exposure to at least one aspect of digitally-enabled archaeological work (e.g., digital capture, databases, GIS, 3D modeling, statistical analysis, e-publishing). Prior experience with digital methods, tools or infrastructures for research purposes is desirable.