CAA/SSLA session at CAA 2023, Amsterdam (S15)

Organised by James R. Allison, Sophie C. Schmidt and Florian Thiery

When: 2023-04-05,08:30-13:00 CEST
Where: Room E107, RAI Congress Center, Europaplein 24, 1078 GZ Amsterdam

Abstract

This session aims at evaluating how reproducible research in archaeology is actually faring. It has been argued that reproducible research techniques such as publishing and sharing code as well as data speed up scientific progress (Marwick 2017, Schmidt & Marwick 2020). With the FAIR movement and the rise of (Linked) Open Data approaches there seem to be more and more archaeological data sets available. Code used for archaeological analysis is also increasingly published online. There are a growing number of openly available code examples that have been used for articles (see for R https://github.com/benmarwick/ctv-archaeology, or for Netlogo https://www.comses.net/codebases/?query=archaeology ). In some cases, this shared code may be adapted into “little helpers”, small modules of research software, aka Little Minions (Thiery et al. 2021), that can be reused and individually adapted. The community of Research Software Engineers (RSE), people who create software applications for research, is growing. For better dissemination of these programs, they created the FAIR4RS principles (Hong et al. 2022). RSEs are fighting for scientific recognition by e.g. implementing the CFF format to cite software (Anzt et al. 2020). But despite this general progress, published articles reusing or adapting open data or code are rare in archaeology. It is difficult to assess how often code and data are reused for research, but the rate of reuse appears to be low (Huggett 2018, Marwick and Birch 2018). Open data and code may be reused more often for teaching (Cook et al. 2018, Gartski 2022, Marwick et al. 2019), but it is not clear how often this happens. In this session we would like to ask the following questions

• How often does it happen that archaeologists try to reproduce each others’ analysis, or borrow code from each other?
• Can fruitful examples be shown?
• Are there examples of replication or reproduction of analyses failing?
• Which techniques are needed to successfully reuse data and code from other persons – on the side of the provider as well as the reuser (forking, data papers, …) ?
• Are these methods taught to students and how are they taught?
• What reproducibility techniques should be focused on in the future?
• What problems arise in trying to re-use data (not just tabular, but also eg 3D and geophysical data)

By discussing these topics we want to encourage the re-use of openly available data sets and published code in archaeology. We particularly welcome papers that reuse or adapt openly available code to analyze new datasets, or papers that reanalyze existing open data in new ways. We would very much like to see contributions that generate open code to replicate previous analyses or create newly open data sets from existing data that is currently difficult to access (e.g., data found only in printed tables in reports or articles). Papers that examine the use of open data and code in teaching are also very welcome. We hope to fuel a debate about the usefulness and worthwhileness of creating open data and code. Reproducibility needs to be evaluated not just from a theoretical viewpoint but also in practice.

Presentations

1. Statistics, Data, and the History of the New Archaeology
   James R. Allison

2. Percolation Package - From script sharing to package publication
   Sophie C. Schmidt and Simon Maddison

3. XRONOS: a global open repository enhancing reproducible research with chronometric data
   Martin Hinz and Joe Roe

4. Detection of Temporal Changes of the Omega House at the Athenian Agora
   Antigoni Panagiotopoulou, Lemonia Ragia, Dorina Moullou, and Colin Wallace

5. Implementing a Database and Information System in a Heavily Heterogeneous Research Data Environment
   Steffen Strohm

6. Efforts and outcomes to making the ROAD database reusable
   Christian Sommer and Volker Hochschild

7. An Example of Data Integration Using the ArchaMap Application
   Robert Bischoff, Matthew Peeples, and Daniel Hruschka

8. OpenHistoryMap - A case of reuse and refactoring
   Silvia Bernardoni, Lucia Marsicano, Marco Montanari, and Raffaele Trojanis

9. Citizen science supports megalithic research - virtual reconstructions through old photographs
   Louise Tharandt

10. PyREnArA – Spatio-temporal analysis of artefact morphology with multivariate approaches
    Robin John, Florian Linsel, Hubert Mara, Georg Roth, Isabell Schmidt, and Andreas Maier

References

• Anzt H., Bach F., Druskat S. et al. (2021). An Environment for Sustainable Research Software in Germany and Beyond: Current State, Open Challenges, and Call for Action [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research, 9:295 (https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.23224.2)
• Chue Hong, N. P., Katz, D. S., Barker, M., Lamprecht, A-L, Martinez, C., Psomopoulos, F. E., Harrow, J., Castro, L. J., Gruenpeter, M., Martinez, P. A., Honeyman, T., et al. (2022). FAIR Principles for Research Software version 1.0. (FAIR4RS Principles v1.0). Research Data Alliance. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00068
• Cook, K., Çakirlar, C., Goddard, T., DeMuth, R. C., and Wells, J. (2018). Teaching Open Science: Published Data and Digital Literacy in Archaeology Classrooms. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(2), 144–156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2018.5
• Garstki, K. (2022). Teaching for Data Reuse and Working toward Digital Literacy in Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 10(2), 177-186. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2022.3
• Huggett, J. (2018). Reuse Remix Recycle: Repurposing Archaeological Digital Data. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(2), 93-104. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2018.1
• Marwick, B. (2017). Computational reproducibility in archaeological research: Basic principles and a case study of their implementation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24(2), 424-450. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9272-9
• Marwick, B., & Birch, S. (2018). A Standard for the Scholarly Citation of Archaeological Data as an Incentive to Data Sharing. Advances in Archaeological Practice 1-19, https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2018.3
• Marwick, B., Wang, L.-Y., Robinson, R., & Loiselle, H. (2019). How to Use Replication Assignments for Teaching Integrity in Empirical Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2019.38
• Schmidt, S. C., & Marwick, B. (2020). Tool-Driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 3(1), 18–32. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.29
• F. Thiery, Visser, R. & Mennenga, M. (2021). Little Minions in Archaeology: An Open Space for RSE Software and Small Scripts in Digital Archaeology. SORSE – International Series of Online Research Software Events (SORSE), virtual. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4575168