Module 1: Capturing/Creating

Getting Started

Goals for this week

• getting our Github accounts set up and making our first log entries
• getting Hypothes.is set up
• getting Zotero installed
• getting Obsidian set up
• understanding what the hang you’ve signed up for
• getting a sense of what digital archaeology is; also, ‘failing gloriously’

Listen

Feed for the podcast here. Transcript here.

Advice on how to listen to a podcast for a class. It’s not as straightforward as you might think.

Read

• An Introduction to Digital Archaeology ODATE, sections 1.1 to 1.1.2
• Cook, Katherine, and Beth. Compton. Canadian Digital Archaeology: On Boundaries and Futures. Invited submission for special anniversary issue of Canadian Journal of Archaeology 42: 38-45.link
• Cook, Katherine. 2019. EmoboDIYing Disruption: Queer, Feminist & Inclusive Digital Archaeologies. European Journal of Archaeology 22 (Special Issue 3 Digital Archaeologies): 398-414. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2019.23 full text
• Bollwerk, Elizabeth. 2015. Co-Creation’s Role in Digital Public Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Practice 3.3, 223-234 https://doi.org/10.7183/2326-3768.3.3.223 pdf

Each reading is ‘seeded’ with annotations by me; some of my annotations contain video from me directing you to pay attention to particular issues or ideas. Annotate anything interesting you find with Hypothes.is while logged into our reading group, keeping in mind what you’ve already heard/read. As a reminder, the invitation to join our reading group is here.

A good annotation draws connections between what you’ve read and other things you’ve read/heard/experienced. I explicitly encourage you to connect what you read in this class with what you’re reading/doing in other classes. Also add anything you read or anything interesting you find to your Zotero library.

Do

• Follow the instructions for Setting Up Github, Setting up Hypothesis, Setting up Zotero, and asking for help. You should read the discord page if you’re new to that platform.

• Read the readings. Annotate them freely (and/or respond to my annotations to get started). ** <- Nb ** On this site I might not explicitly state this under the ‘do’ part each week, since I have it under the ‘read’ part further up, but I realize that this might not have been clearly apparent at the start of the week; so no worries for this week, you can catch up on this later, but remember this moving forward)

• Annotate the syllabus part of this website while being logged into our private Hypothesis group; here’s the link if you haven’t already joined (indeed as with the readings mentioned above, and with all annotations for this class, always make the annotations as part of our group). Use the 3 w’s: what is ‘weird’ (eg, unfamiliar to your experience or expectations), ‘wonderful’ (eg, makes you see your studies in a new or exciting way), or ‘worrying’ (eg, something that seems problematic to you)

• Log your reflection in your appropriate github repository

• When/if you run into trouble, take screenshots (google how to do that for your particular machine) and these can be uploaded into your repository as well. Indeed, you should also keep track of any files you create as part of your weekly work in your repo: these are evidence!

Record and Reflect

You may make your repository private or public.

If you make it private, make sure to ‘invite user shawngraham’ to your repository so that I may view it. (See the Github instructions for a reminder.)

1. Being a digital archaeologist means keeping track of what you’ve done, as a gift to your future self (ie, so that when you come back to something, you can pick up where you left off). Make a new text document, and put into it any new terms you’ve encountered, commands you used, error messages you encountered, websites that helped, and so on: this document is a lab notebook, as it were. Bullet points and memos-to-self are fine. Put this text document into your week one repo on github, along with any other files or digital things you happen to make. Call it your ‘notes.md’.

2. In a new text document, jot down some reflections - narrative, or bullet points, whatever works for you; both are fine. Call it ‘journal-week-1.md’ This document also goes into your week one repo on github.

Begin the reflection by quoting (w/ citation) one sentence from the readings that resonates with you: you don’t have to explain why, but you might select something that is personally meaningful, or leaves you confused, or makes you happy, or intrigues you to know more… etc.

In this document, you will detail any issues you had with getting started, any parts that caused you difficulty, anything you annotated that you really want me to address for you. If you got any error messages while trying to get set up, copy those into your reflection; google them. Do you find any websites that help you? What kind of ‘failures’ might you have encountered this week?

Going beyond the mere mechanical aspects of getting started, draw on your annotations of what you’ve read (and/or your notes from what you’ve listened to), discuss your idea of what ‘digital archaeology’ might be prior to starting this course, and think through whether any of the materials we’ve seen this week confirm or upset those notions. What kind of archaeology have you encountered so far at Carleton, if at all? Where do you want to go, with digital archaeology?

Log Your Work

You can log the link to your repository on this form.

PS

If you missed it in the syllabus, this spreadsheet can be used to keep track of what’s due when.