On the Track of Recent Advances in Data Science in Archaeology. Research stay in New-Zealand, March to May 2024.

One of the major aims of the OCSEAN project is the integration of data generated from linguistical, bioanthropological, and archaeological studies. The latter is particularly challenging, given the past and current situations of data standardisation and sharing in this discipline. Accordingly, Sébastien Plutniak made a 2-months research stay in New Zealand, looking for latest advances in this field in the context of Pacific archaeology.

Auckland, where geeky archaeologists meet

For five days, Auckland was the beating heart of computer-focused world archaeologists, who gathered in New Zealand largest city for the 51st international conference of the Computer Application and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology organisation (CAA). It was the second time that the CAA conference has been hosted in the southern hemisphere (after CAA 2013 in Perth, Australia) and the first time in the Pacific region. The CAA Australasia chapterh was created in 2013, promoting computer approaches in region since that time. In a similar vein, Sébastien Plutniak and colleagues proposed in turn the creation of a French CAA chapter during the 2024 conference. He also gave a talk during the conference, entitled “Fostering Field Data Publication in Archaeology and Paleontology through Agile Web Visualisation: the archeoViz Open Source Application and its Web Platform”.

Presentations on data sharing and scientific reproducibility in archaeology

University of Auckland School of social sciences has been historically the largest anthropology research centre in New Zealand (Webster 1999). All along their development, anthropology studies in Auckland combined the four parts of the American anthropology tradition, namely ethnography, bioanthropology, linguistics, and archaeology (Webster 1999). Sébastien did his research stay there, hosted by archaeologist and OCSEAN partner Ethan Cochrane, continuing on the collaboration started during OCSEAN 2023 Workshop on Modelling Archaeological Data in Pühajärve, Estonia.

During his stay, Sébastien gave a presentation and a short course. 

The short course, entitled, “From Re-enactment to Computer-based Simulation: Reproducibility in Archaeological Practices” developed this large topic in four presentations:

• “Piecing together the Past”: Experimentation and Simulation as a Means to Reconstruct the Past. An example from Refitting Studies. May 2, 2024.

• Sharing Archaeological Observations: the archeoViz Decentralised Approach. May 3, 2024.

• Working within a Reproducible Framework: Contemporary Tools and Concepts. May 9, 2024.

• A Long-term Perspective on Reproducibility in Archaeology: Aspects of Southwestern European Experiences. May 10, 2024.

Besides computational archaeology, Sébastien has been part of the archaeological fieldwork team in New Guinea since 2017. In this context, he also developed a sociological approach of local environmental knowledge in the Sepik area. This research was the topic he developed on May 23 during the department seminar series, presenting: “What do Locals Know, Think they Know, and What it Teaches Us? The Case of Caves-related Knowledge in a Rural Community, Northern New Guinea”. More information about this work is available on the Papuan Past Project website.

Among the few archaeologists active in Papua New Guinea are University of Otago researchers, Glenn Summerhayes and Anne Ford in particular. Sébastien visited them in Dunedin for few days and was offered to give a presentation on “Fostering the Publication of Spatial Archaeological Data: a Decentralized Approach. The archeoViz Web Application and its Portal” on May, 17. Interestingly, Dunedin was at the forefront of computing in New Zealand from the 1960s, as reflected by Otago Settlers Museum collections, where computers become historical artifacts and heritage, binding in a different way computation practices and archaeology.

References:

Webster, Steven. “AMERICAN-PLAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN NEW ZEALAND.” Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 43, no. 2 (1999): 96–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23166523.