CAA/SSLA session at CAA 2020 (cancelled) (S27)

Organised by Clemens Schmid and Martin Hinz

Update: As CAA2020 is not going to take place this session will not happen either. We will think about the concept and may resubmit for CAA 2021.

Pre-session discussion: https://github.com/sslarch/caa2020_hackathon/issues

Abstract

Scientific scripting languages are a very powerful tool for scientists to translate research questions and quantitative analysis into a machine-readable, executable and thus reproducible form. In order to promote and support their dissemination to the archaeological community, we have de facto established the Special Interest Group for Scientific Scripting Languages in Archaeology at CAA2019 in Krakow. To celebrate the de jure affiliation of this SIG to the CAA organization in 2020, this session will provide an open hackerspace for users of scripting languages.

The general session layout will follow the style of an Unconference. We will not define a session topic nor require standardised presentations. Instead all participants will collectively identify one or multiple worthwhile ToDos for the time together. That might be a missing research software package for a scripting language like R or Python, a useful webapp, that would immediately simplify the lives of archaeologists, or a Best Practice Guide for a typical task in archaeological data analysis.

After this phase of topic identification, we form groups in which the identified tasks are discussed and worked on. It is unlikely that it will be possible to complete the project during this session, but the work can continue afterwards, as all results in data, code and text will be openly accessible online.

We invite users of all kinds of scripting languages (R, Python, Javascript, Bash, SQL, …) in archaeology to join us on this endeavour. The participants will have the chance to pitch interesting project ideas, work together, learn from each other and form lasting connections beyond the typical barriers of academic hierarchies. Ideally we will also start to close one or multiple gaps in the archaeological research software landscape during this session.

We highly value an open and welcoming environment for this event and explicitly adopt the Code of Conduct established by the rOpenSci community for their Unconference meetings: https://unconf18.ropensci.org/coc.html

This session is organized by the SIG SSLA (sslarch.github.io) and the working group ISAAK (isaakiel.de)