This past January, the SSLA organized the inaugural Digital Archaeology Maintainathon, a week-long event promoting sound and sustainable coding practices. Archaeologists were invited to to revisit and update older codebases, learn about each other’s work, and reflect on how they make and maintain software as part of their research all while posting using the #DigiArchMaintainathon hashtag.

Members of our special interest group assembled their collective expertise and produced a great set of practical guidelines to support archaeologists during and after the event. For example, Lisa Steinmann provided instructions for how to write unit tests, Matteo Tomasini contributed a section on how to implement continuous integration, Clemens Schmidt presented guidance on how to make code more efficient, and I wrote about various mechanisms of project management and documentation.

We’re now starting to plan the next iteration for January 2027, with a few improvements. First, we want to re-work the website and reorganize the community-written write-ups and practical guides so that they are more accessible, useful, and referenceable. We also intend to invite additional experts to contribute content to the resources page. And finally, we want to be more proactive in promoting the event among research groups to ensure more widespread impact.

If you have any other ideas for the next maintainathon or want to get involved, please let us know on Matrix or Mastodon!