Goals for this week
Carrying on from our theme last week, we’ll explore two more methods that are predicated on using networks as a tool for computation. These kinds of neural network approaches can lead to what I think constitutes ‘an enchantment of digital archaeology’, but there is disquiet out there too… then in the main reading we take digital archaeology into outer space.
Listen
Let’s change things up with a video this week; this is me talking about the history of generative ai and some of the things I’m thinking about.
That’s a longish video (about 40 minutes); play it at double-speed if you want.
Read
- Perry S. The Enchantment of the Archaeological Record. European Journal of Archaeology. 2019;22(3):354-371. doi:10.1017/eaa.2019.24 link
- Walsh, Justin, Shawn Graham, Alice C. Gorman, Chantal Brousseau, Salma Abdullah. 2024. Archaeology in space: The Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE) on the International Space Station. Report 1: Squares 03 and 05. PLOS One https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304229 link.
Then select ONE of:
- Morgan, Colleen. 2019. ‘Avatars, Monsters, and Machines: A Cyborg Archaeology’. European Journal of Archaeology 22.3, 324-337 link
- Kersel, Morag. 2016. ‘Living a Semi-digital Kinda Life’ in Erin Walcek Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, and Derek B. Counts (eds) Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology. Grand Forks: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. pp. 475-492. link
- Huggett, J. (2022). ‘Is Less More? Slow Data and Datafication in Archaeology’. In K. Garstki (Ed.), Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age. UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. pp. 97–110. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0vh9t9jq#page=112 (scroll to chapter 6 if that link doesn’t quite take you there)
Do
- Build an image classifier
- Resurrect the ghost of Flinders’ Petrie…. kinda
- Talk with your Harris Matrix Data
Record and Reflect
Your github repository is where you will deposit all of the artefacts you make for this course, including your reflections. Depositing everything you make gives me a vision of your process and learning, so I encourage you to be expansive.
Make sure to ‘invite user shawngraham’ to your repository so that I may view it.
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As you did for week one, make another notes.md entry and put it in your github repository for week 7.
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In your reflective journal, drawing on your annotations of what you’ve read, your notes from what you’ve listened to, and the work you’ve done (both the successes and the not-quite-successes) discuss these applications of neural networks. Think about the ethical issues that these approaches might raise, the questions of labour. Think about the friction you encounter using these. Begin the reflection by quoting (w/ citation) one sentence from the readings that resonates with you. You might select something that is personally meaningful, or leaves you confused, or makes you happy, or intrigues you to know more… explain. Point to evidence in your log that underpins your reflection. Put your journal entry in your repo.
Log Your Work
You can log the link to your repository in this form