CAA/SSLA workshop at CAA 2026, Vienna (-)
Organised by Petr Pajdla, Peter Tkáč and Vít Kozák
When: 2026-03-31, 9:00 - 16:30 CET
Where: In person, TU Wien, room AC 04 - 1 (Karlplatz 13, 1040 Vienna)
Format: Full-day workshop
We will close your brackets and find all your missing commas!
Description
Intimidated by R? You’re not alone. Whether you’ve never written a line of code or struggled through previous attempts, this workshop is designed for you. We’ll demystify R and show you that data analysis and visualization aren’t just possible for archaeologists‚ they’re powerful tools that will transform how you work.
Over this hands-on session, we’ll guide you through the complete workflow: installing essential packages, reading, transforming and plotting data and ultimately understanding why R matters for reproducible research. We’ll use archaeological data, clean it up, organize it the “tidy” way, transform it to answer your questions, and create publication-ready plots.
We want you to leave the workshop with confidence to keep on coding!
What You’ll Learn
- Starting R and R Studio for the first time
- Installing packages
- Working in scripts and projects
- Reading your data with readr package
- Data cleaning and organizing them the tidy way with tidyr package
- Transforming and summarizing data with dplyr package
- Creating compelling visualizations in ggplot2 package
Who Should Apply
- Complete beginners with no coding experience
- People who’ve tried R before and found it frustrating
- Archaeologists wanting to improve data analysis and visualization skills
- Anyone curious about reproducible research workflows
No prior programming experience necessary. Just bring your laptop (with R (https://cran.rstudio.com/) and RStudio (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/)installed) and willingness to learn.
Format
Hands-on coding workshop with guided examples, archaeological datasets, and time to practice. We’ll troubleshoot together and emphasize learning over perfection
Attendee requirements
- Laptop
- R (https://cran.rstudio.com/) installed
- RStudio (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/) installed, use this guide if needed: https://rstudio-education.github.io/hopr/starting.html
