Transforming data rE-use in ARCHaeology (TEtrARCHs)
Lead Research Organisation:
Museum of London Archaeology
Department Name: Research and Education
Abstract
Digital data curation for cultural heritage has reached a critical impasse. A central tension exists between the need to preserve cultural resources, and the dynamic potential for their use and re-use in democratic and just ways. In archaeology, much work has been done to make data Findable, Accessible and Interoperable (according to the FAIR Principles), but little is understood about whether data are Reusable-and by whom. TEtrARCHs argues the future of digital curation depends upon reconciling this divide, and aims to demonstrate that data optimised for ethical and emotive storytelling will provide the bridge between those who find or preserve heritage assets, and the diverse cross-European audiences for whom they might generate meaning.
Through an interdisciplinary team of archaeological specialists, data scientists, and museum practitioners, collaborating with three key user groups-domain experts, creative practitioners, and memory institutions- TEtrARCHs will offer those who capture, curate and apply cultural heritage data with critically-aware workflows to prepare their data for enhanced re-use at every point in the data lifecycle (e.g., capture, mapping, lab-based analysis), then scenario-test such re-use through the dissemination of new narrative outputs authored by cross-European creative practitioners. The project embraces three scales of data collection in archaeology-landscape, site and artefact-exploring them via four increasingly ubiquitous technologies for data capture: airborne LiDAR, 3D scanning, digital field drawing and photography. Alongside novel workflows for field, post-excavation and archival practice, TEtrARCHs will produce the world's first controlled vocabulary for cultural heritage storytelling, the first assessments of data reuse effectiveness following ISO Standard 25022: Measurement of Quality in Use, and the first best practice recommendations for trusted digital repositories to optimise archaeological data for re-use.
Through an interdisciplinary team of archaeological specialists, data scientists, and museum practitioners, collaborating with three key user groups-domain experts, creative practitioners, and memory institutions- TEtrARCHs will offer those who capture, curate and apply cultural heritage data with critically-aware workflows to prepare their data for enhanced re-use at every point in the data lifecycle (e.g., capture, mapping, lab-based analysis), then scenario-test such re-use through the dissemination of new narrative outputs authored by cross-European creative practitioners. The project embraces three scales of data collection in archaeology-landscape, site and artefact-exploring them via four increasingly ubiquitous technologies for data capture: airborne LiDAR, 3D scanning, digital field drawing and photography. Alongside novel workflows for field, post-excavation and archival practice, TEtrARCHs will produce the world's first controlled vocabulary for cultural heritage storytelling, the first assessments of data reuse effectiveness following ISO Standard 25022: Measurement of Quality in Use, and the first best practice recommendations for trusted digital repositories to optimise archaeological data for re-use.
Organisations
- Museum of London Archaeology (Lead Research Organisation)
- National Cheng Kung University (Collaboration)
- The British Academy (Collaboration)
- Kingston University London (Collaboration)
- Museum of London (Project Partner)
- XR Stories (Project Partner)
- Museum Leuven (Project Partner)
- Ghent University (Project Partner)
- SEADDA Cost Action (Project Partner)
- Museum of Cultural History (Project Partner)
Publications
Štular B
(2023)
TETRARCHs D5.1 Legacy Data Incorporation
Štular, B.
(2023)
D4.1 Data Capture Workflow Report
| Description | Influence on archaeological data management best practice |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
| Description | ATRIUM |
| Amount | € 9,849,493 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 101132163 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 01/2024 |
| End | 12/2027 |
| Description | AUTOMATA |
| Amount | € 4,026,823 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | 101158046 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 08/2024 |
| End | 02/2029 |
| Description | SHADE COST Innovators Grant |
| Amount | € 120,000 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | IG18128 |
| Organisation | European Commission |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | European Union (EU) |
| Start | 11/2023 |
| End | 10/2024 |
| Description | British International Research Institutes (BIRI) |
| Organisation | The British Academy |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Through the TETRARCHs project and its partnership with the TSRP, the University of York research team have been able to build a collaboration with the British International Research Institutes (BIRI), an initiative of The British Academy. The BIRI comprise eight institutes that are hubs in a network of regional contacts and activities that cover the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and southern Europe, Africa, Turkey, the Middle East, Iran and Central Asia. As a fieldwork project permitted by the British School in Athens, the TSRP has a direct connection with the BIRI initiative, which is currently undertaking work to both increase the Open Data they make available online, and make the data held by the different BIRIs cross-searchable. As such, the York research team has been commissioned to provide training and consultancy for the BIRIs, informed by the best practice research being undertaken by TETRARCHs. The BIRIs will be working with the York team to develop capacity to make their data available online, either through archiving with the Archaeology Data Service (alongside the outputs of TETRARCHs and the TSRP) or through the existing online resources of the individual BIRIs (as appropriate). All of this data will then become cross-searchable within the ARIADNE Portal. https://portal.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/ |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collaboration with the BIRIs contributes to TETRARCHs, by allowing the project to work more closely with the British foreign schools, and the foreign school community more generally. The goals of TETRARCHs, to `'provide those who capture, curate and apply cultural heritage data with critically-aware methodologies to prepare their data for enhanced reuse, then experiment with such reuse through storytelling scenarios involving cross-European audiences" are highly relevant to the foreign school community, as they navigate their future in a post-colonial environment and understanding the challenges and opportunities they face is important to the successful implementation of TETRARCHs. TETRARCHs also brings a range of digital best-practice expertise and experience to these conversations, helping BIRIs make pragmatic decisions about where to focus their time and effort in their changing practice. |
| Impact | In the first instance, the BIRIs have chosen to contract with TETRARCHs partner, the Archaeology Data Service to provide training and consultancy on open data best practice in the amount of £7,500. Over the next year this support will be allocated across the BIRIs to undertake planning and capacity building to increase their Open Data offerings, and make their data cross-searchable. |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | Kingston School of Art |
| Organisation | Kingston University London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We have hosted Kingston School of Art students at MOLA, introduced them to aspects of archaeological practice, engaged them in a workshop about storytelling with archaeological information, and supported their learning by providing feedback on their curated finds boxes. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Kingston School of Art's instructors and students have contributed to MOLA experiments and facilitated another relationship with Long Ditton St. Mary's CE (Aided) Junior School. |
| Impact | The collaboration has led to results for experiments which are informing TETRARCH's data model, multiple in-progress presentations and publications. The collaboration is multi disciplinary - KSA caters to creative arts / museums practitioners. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | Toumba Serron Research Project (TSRP) |
| Organisation | National Cheng Kung University |
| Country | Taiwan, Province of China |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The TETRARCHs research team partnered directly with National Cheng Kung University through the Toumba Serron Research Project (TSRP). This project is centred around the excavation of the Late Neolithic village site of Toumba (???´µpa) Serron (c.5300-4500 B.C.), at Toumba village, Central Macedonia, Greece (c.100 km North-East of Thessaloniki). Survey of site was begun by the Greek Archaeological Service (Ephoreia) in 2019, followed by a first official collaboration between the Greek Ministry of Culture, National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) and the University of York, in October 2021. As TETRARCHs requires 'ground truthing' in the field, a partnership was formed with the TSRP and TETRARCHs, with TETRARCHs team members from the University of York (James Stuart Taylor and Holly Wright) organising, undertaking and assessing the TETRARCHs activities related to digital data capture and fieldwork within the larger TSRP. TETRARCHs representatives from Lund University also participated in the TSRP (Nicolo Dell'Unto and Paola Derudas). TSRP agreed to undertake born-digital field recording in the form of drone-based 3D photogrammetry and to test the AIR Dynamic Reporting System, the technologies and methodologies for which were developed by the TETRARCHs parteners at Lund and are key to facilitating the goals of the project. The Lund team has participated both in and out of the field in setting up the systems and training the TSRP staff to use them. TETRARCHs partner University of Antwerp also participated in the TSRP, with Aida Fadioui joining the excavation to better understand how archaeologists create their data in order to build the enhanced controlled vocabularies within TETRARCHs. Through this collaboration, TETRARCHs has raised the profile of the TSRP as a project implementing cutting-edge technologies and methodologies. The outputs from the TSRP, which was originally envisioned as a traditional excavation, will now be multidisciplinary across archaeology and computer. science, and have a much wider reach and impact. The collaboration has also raised the profile of the TSRP with the British School in Athens, and the Greek Archaeological Service (Ephoreia), resulting in discussions about the value of closer collaboration between the Ephoreia and foreign schools. |
| Collaborator Contribution | It is very difficult to find fieldwork opportunities that are receptive to experimentation, but accessing such an opportunity as a test-bed for the research objectives of TETRARCHs was a critical aspect of the project. Archaeological interventions undertaken in advance of building work is always highly time constrained, and research projects that include fieldwork and few and far between (and generally averse to experimentation). The TSRP was an existing fieldwork project when the TETRARCHs project began, but as one of the Co-Directors (James Taylor) was also a member of the York TETRARCHs team, discussions were undertaken as to whether the project could/should become the key partner where the experimentation necessary for TETRARCHs could take place. This was received positively as long as the work was done in addition to the traditional forms of recording as required by the Ephoreia, and in 2023 a small group of TETRARCHs partners joined the fieldwork to start putting the technologies and methodologies in place for the 2024 field season. While smaller experiments are going on in other fieldwork projects associated with other TETRARCHs partners (Sweden, Slovenia), the TSRP has fully partnered with TETRARCHs and simply put, the successful implementation of TETRARCHs would not be possible without their contribution. |
| Impact | The 2023 collaboration between the TSRP and TETRARCHs focussed on understanding the goals and workflows between the two projects and how to design the upcoming implementation planned for July of 2024. The details of this collaboration are documented in Štular, B., Taylor, J. S., Dell'Unto, N., Fadioui, A., & Lozic, E. (2023). D4.1 Data Capture Workflow Report. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10800502. This work is entirely multi-disciplinary and incorporates archaeology and computer science. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | Computer Applications in Archaeology International Conference, Amsterdam |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presented the paper "Reuse and the Archaeology Data Service" about the role of TETRARCHs in changing the way accredited digital archives must engage with the new approach to data reuse advocated by the project. The paper was part of a TETRARCHs sponsored session on the reuse of digital archaeological data, and was attended by around 60 professionals and post-graduate students expert in this area. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/app/uploads/2023/10/CAA-Amsterdam-Wright.pdf |
| Description | Conference session at 50th meeting of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Amsterdam |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This 18-paper, day-long session at the CAA conference was centred around the premise of TETRARCHs: Putting the R in FAIR for archaeological data: How do we ensure archaeological data are usable and Reusable, and for whom? Over the course of the day it was attended by more than 100 people. It resulted in significant conversation and debate, in the session and beyond, new relationships and contacts between presenters, and new ideas for TETRARCHs. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://2023.caaconference.org/programme/sessions/ |
| Description | Invited presentation at MOLA Collaborative Doctoral Partnership all-day event programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Approx 30 people attended this event for CPD students, supervisors and staff at MOLA. It led to questions, discussion and further contacts for the TETRARCHs project, as well as the building of relationships with PGR students at other universities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Online seminar - Re-investing wealth and power in archaeology |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The online seminar, as part of the TETRARCHs seminar series, attracted more than 100 registrants, and has been subsequently watched online, by people from around the world. It led to a series of discussions and questions which have further informed TETRARCHs. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.tetrarchs.org/index.php/2023/07/07/re-investing-wealth-and-power-in-archaeology/ |
| Description | School visit (Kingston) - Long Ditton St. Mary's CE (Aided) Junior School |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 50 primary school pupils plus a dozen Kingston School of Art postgraduates participated in this archaeological storytelling workshop, which led to questions and discussion immediately following the event, and a longer-term collaboration with KSA which is developing in 2024. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | TETRARCHs Monthly Online Seminar Series "What can data do for us?" |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Since its launch in early 2023, the seminar series has hosted 13 speakers over 9 sessions, with more than 1150 registrants from 45 countries (including Angola, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, KSA Saudi, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, UK (4 nations), USA). The series has led to new question, new contacts, new relationships between attendees, new insights onto our own research, and new ideas for future research and practice. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023,2024 |
| URL | https://www.tetrarchs.org/index.php/category/seminars/ |
| Description | TETRARCHs website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | We have launched an active website and blog that is updated at least monthly, with thousands of visits from around the world since its launch at the beginning of 2023. Specifically, to date we've recorded 7,630 pageviews and 6,487 unique pageviews since the site was launched. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022,2023,2024 |
| URL | https://www.tetrarchs.org/ |
| Description | University of York Digital Lunch Seminar Series |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Around 30 students and researchers attended in person, with around another 50 joining online. It was an opportunity to showcase the aim and objectives of the TETRARCHs project for the first time and prompted excellent discussion both in the room and online. It raised awareness and engagement early on about the project with the key digital archaeological research community which has continued. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/dah-lab/lectures?authuser=0 |
| Description | Video introduction to TETRARCHs |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The video was created as a brief introduction to the TETRARCHs project for interested members of the public and researchers. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.tetrarchs.org/index.php/about/ |