In the spring semester of 2020, I developed and taught a class on archaeological data reuse and digital literacy at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. This semester is now seared in our minds as the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, which altered the structure of the course and its outcomes (not to mention everyone’s life). However, the students and I were able to complete the course and the entirety of the course tutorials and activities are available here.

In a recent article in Advances in Archaeological Practice that discussed this course, Teaching for Data Reuse and Working Toward Digital Literacy in Archaeology, I outlined a few themes that I believe need additional follow up: 1) Instructors should lean into visual and narrative ways for presenting data as a teaching focus, 2) messy data are good to use for teaching, 3) instructors must gauge students’ previous knowledge of digital tools and archaeological background and adjust the course accordingly, and 4) a larger infrastructure must be in place to support instructor data/digital literacy.

The final point is the most difficult and resource-intensive to accomplish but would likely have the largest impact on a disciplinary shift in data reuse, so I would like to elaborate on it a bit. As I said in this article, “as new tools continue to emerge with more advanced hardware, the onus of learning and becoming proficient with a tool rests with the instructor.“ That is not to say that resources do not already exist to facilitate instruction in digital archaeological methods (see for example, ODATE, The Programing Historian). But what I see as a necessary step toward expanding the teaching of data reuse is to combine tutorials for instructors with curated activities for students, located on one digital platform. In fact, the Programing Historian, with its structure that emphasized peer review of instructional content, is perhaps best suited to model for an archaeology-specific platform. In teaching this course, and ones since then, I realized that once I understand the basic logic of a tool AND I can see it used in a real context, such as an activity created previously, I am able to expand from there – create new applications of that tool or develop ways to let my students creatively design their own. Furthermore, such a platform could pull datasets from multiple repositories or research infrastructures that work well to demonstrate the capabilities of a particular digital tool or technique.

I would like to say that I have developed such a platform, but that would be a lie. Such an endeavor would require both significant financial support for infrastructure development and maintenance, and many individuals to volunteer their time and expertise. However, should it be possible, it would have wide-reaching impacts on nudging the discipline toward reuse as a core principle, perhaps only felt after a generation of people move from student to researcher. Fingers crossed.

Kevin Garstki is a Lecturer of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. His research broadly includes the impact of digital technology on modern archaeology, as well as the effect of emerging technology on prehistoric societies. He is interested in the critical use and reuse of digital archaeological data, specifically using 3D visualization technologies to enhance the documentation, research, dissemination, curation, and archiving of material heritage. You can find all of his publications here.