6 ppl attended

General exchange

• Clemens Schmid: A new version of ggpointgrid (https://github.com/nevrome/ggpointgrid) with a core algorithm in futhark (https://futhark-lang.org) has been released. This setup allows for performant implementations without having to write C/C++. Clemens asked the meeting attendants to test the installation on their systems.
• Matteo Tomasini : International Research Software Engineering day is celebrated on 9th October 2025 (second Thursday of October each year, already added to the SIG SSLA Google calender). Organisations in the RSE space will actively use the day to promote this cause with events/announcements etc. The SIG SSLA could also toot about it.
• James Allison: Minor progress on the TFQA revival project (see previous minutes) over the summer.
• Discussion: Compositional data analysis (e.g. pXRF data). Matt Peeples and Robert Bischoff have developed a shiny app for this purpose, available at https://github.com/mpeeples2008/NAA_analytical_dashboard (also at https://cybersw.org/analysis for users with credentials).

SIG SSLA summer meetings

• As in the previous years, SIG SSLA went into a summer break for the last 3 months. Zack Batist thankfully organised basic meetings in this period in case urgent matters arise. These meetings were not well attended, confirming that a summer break is generally a sensible idea.
• The first of these meetings featured an invited speaker, Shawn Graham, and was well attended. It can clearly be excluded from above’s statement. We got minutes for this meeting from Zack, which Martin Hinz will publish on the SIG SSLA website (https://sslarch.github.io/minutes).

EAA2025

• 2nd–6th September 2025, took place online because of the security situation in the originally planned location Belgrade (https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2025/Home/EAA2025)
• Multiple SIG members participated, but were overall not satisfied. Major points of criticism:
  • The known disadvantages of online conferences
  • Perceived low attendance
  • Technical issues with the conference WebApp

ASTR workshop 2025

• Workshop: Towards an Archaeological Science Toolbox in R “ASTR”
• 20th-24th October 2025, Leiden, NL (https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/towards-an-archaeological-science-toolbox-in-r-astr.html)
• Workshop to develop an R package for Lead isotope analysis
• Some SIG members are involved in the organisation (Ben Marwick) or as participants (Clemens Schmid)

CAA2026

• 31st March-4th April, Vienna (https://2026.caaconference.org)
• Sessions submitted by SIG members (not yet accepted, review is happening right now):
  • Joe Roe & Matteo Tomasini: “All models are wrong”: learning from failure in computational archaeology
  • Martin Hinz & Eythan Levy: Computational Archaeology Revisited: Building Bridges with Mathematics and Computer Science

Interesting, recently released papers

• Ben Marwick, Is archaeology a science? Insights and imperatives from 10,000 articles and a year of reproducibility reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106281
• Alain Queffelec, Replication report for Marwick (2025) “Is archaeology a science?”, including new data from OpenAlex, https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/97a6q_v1
• Zachary Batist, Locating Creative Agency in Archaeological Data Work, https://doi.org/10.17613/v4a04-9de61 (maybe Zack would like to comment on this in one of the next meetings?)
• Enrico R. Crema: Statistical modelling in archaeology: some recent trends and future perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106295

Next SIG Meeting: Friday, October 3, 2025

• We have abother invited speaker. Details will be announced as soon as possible on the mailing list.
• Zack Batist had the idea to organize a “Maintainathon” event. We could discuss this in the upcoming meeting.