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Data Curation…Crisis? Part 2 - Ep 215
692 Plays5 months ago
Recent discussions with colleagues and the February 2024 issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice had Paul thinking about what we do with our digital data. This is an evergreen topic, and one that we’ve touched on before, but is always good to revisit.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/archaeotech/215
Links
- Advances in Archaeological Practice February 2024 Issue
- Protocols.io
- FAIR and CARE
- Good overview of the issue: Domeischel J, Childs ST. A Collections-Based View of the Future of Archaeology. Advances in Archaeological Practice. 2024;12(1):1-4. doi:10.1017/aap.2023.37
Contact
- Chris Webster
Twitter: @archeowebby
Email: [email protected] - Paul Zimmerman
Twitter: @lugal
Email: [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Continuation
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, episode 215. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today, we continue our talk from episode 213 about data curation in context of the February 2024 issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice. Let's get to it.
Personal Updates and Weather
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. Paul, how's it going?
00:00:29
Speaker
going great today. It's a beautiful late spring. Well, no, it's not late spring, but it feels like it by the temperature. It's about 80 degrees today. So I spent the day out in the yard doing work. And I'm just bringing that up because I'm going to apologize in advance for all the noise that's going to bleed in. I've got neighbors doing yard work. So there's wee whackers and chainsaws. My daughter's out on the balcony, which is right next to my office here. She's got friends, so I'm sure we're going to hear them.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, they're drinking mimosas. I'm sure they're going to get louder as the recording goes on. And I'm almost says, what am I saying? They're drinking mojitos. I was going to say mimosas. Is it like evening for you? No, no, no. I think that's where they started. Yeah, exactly.
00:01:26
Speaker
I'm not doing too bad. We are on our furthest West position this year, pretty much on the Oregon coast, visiting my
00:01:34
Speaker
parents like we do every year and we're going to head north from here. We're in Florence, Oregon, which is normally it's, I mean, it's really nice here when it's hot in other places. It's nice and cool here, but it's practically winter here still. It's in the forties. We woke up this morning and it rained a lot of the day today, but it would, it would have these like thunderstorms and then clear up and be sunny. And now it's getting cloudy again. Oh, and I just looking out, it's now raining again too. So it's pretty much springtime in, in Oregon and the Oregon coast. And it's all craziness, but
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to be heading up towards Washington State and then making a six-week journey to, well, upstate New York, and then we're going to spend the summer in New England. So yeah. So the rain in springtime in Oregon, is that different than the rain in summertime in Oregon or the rain in the fall in Oregon or the rain, for that matter, in the winter in Oregon?
00:02:25
Speaker
No, fundamentally, but I think it's just probably more constant and reliable in the, in the springtime, the rain is, and it's probably a little bit colder. So yeah, it definitely depends on where you're at in Oregon, but for sure.
Reflections on Weather and Technology in RVing
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:41
Speaker
All right. Yeah. You know, when I grew up in Washington state, I, I couldn't wait to leave and go somewhere else where it didn't rain. And I'll tell you what I miss rain. I miss just like a, a nice long, you know, soaking rain. I mean, it sucks if you got to work outside and do stuff outside. I totally appreciate that. But when you work inside and you just can kind of, you know, grab a nice warm cup of coffee and, and get some work done with your computer and sit there and just listen to the rain outside. That's not too bad. Of course you're not like that when you're a teenager. You just want to get out and do stuff.
00:03:11
Speaker
But now, I appreciate it. So there you go. You hear the pitter-patter of the rain on the RV roof, and it lulls you into what you're doing? Yeah. Yeah, it makes your expensive RV sound like a $20,000 tin roof trailer. But that's OK. It's nice. Yeah, especially since most of the rain is falling on solar panels, which have a very different sound than the actual roof of the RV. And it provides a little bit of an insulating effect, actually, now that we're pretty much blanketed in solar panels.
00:03:40
Speaker
than normal. Although we don't have a rack yet. That's one of the next things we're probably going to do. There's a number of people in the community that will help you build a rack that basically sits above your air conditioners and everything else and is just literally lined with solar panels. It's a complete cover for your roof and protects your roof actually from sun damage and probably provides a rain barrier from all the noise too. Cause it can get pretty noisy in here when it's raining, but that'll be a conversation for another day when we get there. Cause I love talking about all the
00:04:09
Speaker
tech and electronics in here, which I think is applicable for or should be applicable for a lot of field situations only because I'm completely shocked that the RVing community has 100% embraced this solar lithium battery inverter lifestyle, whereas archeologists are still like, how am I going to charge my Trimble on a field project?
00:04:31
Speaker
I'll never forget being on a project out in central Nevada where we had, you know, computers and GPSs and all kinds of stuff. And we were very remote and they had a freaking generator out there that we had to sit and listen to run every single evening. When we got back, that generator ran long enough to get everything fully charged for the next day. And it was just super annoying. I mean, sure. This was back in like
00:04:54
Speaker
probably 2010, 11 timeframe and things like Jackery's and other stuff with the big power banks that you can lay out yet. No, they weren't, and they weren't as efficient, the ones that were out, right? So it'd be a different, different story. If I went out today and, and was in charge of a project like that and had to, had to do some charging, we'd have a much different setup. So.
00:05:14
Speaker
that I can guarantee from a recent work of mine, what you'd still be fighting around with is everybody, do you have a backup
Technological Challenges in Archaeology
00:05:21
Speaker
battery? Do you have a power bank? Everybody's got to have at least a power bank, maybe two in their backpack, you know, Hey, how come all the power banks are back on the table? Uh, you know, in the, uh, in the dig office and none of them are charged. Come on, people work with me. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They're never charged. That was one of the first big digital archeology projects I did when I was using tap forms.
00:05:44
Speaker
the big China Lake project I got, it was like half a million acres. It was half a million, 50,000 acres. It was a still, that's a lot, but I had supplied 30. I know. Yeah. You know, I supplied 30,000 amp goal, zero power banks to everybody. And I tell you what, you know, cause it, cause I also supplied iPads to everybody too, did to make sure we all had the same equipment and we were all, you know, had the same upgrades and everything like that constantly. And I could download everything and it was just consistent. So yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
that still provided problems. Like I took the iPads every night so we could get them, you know, we could get them reset basically, but I let them keep the power banks and I basically just said, Hey, make sure you get this charged. And eventually I had to just start taking those two because people just like forget to do it. And those iPads would just suck down the power. If you were really recording a big site, they would just suck it dry. And you really needed that 30,000 milliamp power bank just to cause that would give you probably three or four charges on an iPad, but they were also charging their phone and then it wasn't,
00:06:39
Speaker
I don't know. It was just enough, I think, but you're right. Trying to keep people to just plug those in when they get home is more of a difficult task than you would think. I have come to the conclusion that you need an office manager, basically, that handles that stuff.
00:06:56
Speaker
Make sure everything that has batteries is charged. Make sure that all the walkie talkies made it back to where they're supposed to be so that the next morning people aren't fussing around and trying to find things. Oh no, I left that in the truck. Oh no, it's in my backpack. Let me go find it for you. All that garbage that just wastes time and kind of gets on everybody's nerves over the course of a long project. Yeah. There's something to be said for those
00:07:23
Speaker
They're relatively, at least they used to be the last time I looked at it. It's been a while, but those like single charge point power banks where you can drop say 10 iPads into it or something like that, and they just slot in and charge, and you plug that one thing in, and they have power bank setups for that too, of course. You have to buy into the whole that power bank and that set of charging units, but there's something to be said for that because if you see like a slot missing or something and you're like, okay, whose is this, right? And then you know that something is not getting charged. I think there's a lot of,
00:07:52
Speaker
benefits to something along those lines. You know, this is also making me think of, let's just talk about future tech for a second. Why the hell not? I'm reading the books. I'm reading through audio books actually. Cause we do a lot of driving and I like to listen to podcasts. I'm reading audio books. It's really challenging actually. I've got to have it transcribed and then I'm reading it. It's it's yeah, no.
00:08:15
Speaker
we watched the series on Netflix, I want to say three body problem. And I never heard of the book series before. And if you haven't seen three body problem, it's actually really good. There's a lot of physics in it, which I really like, but it's based on a series of books written by a Chinese author. And I mean, I'll just, I'm not going to say anything about the series or the books if you haven't read about it, but basically at, at some point 200 years in the future, this guy's waking up, woken up from hibernation who came from basically our time period and he's dealing with what it's like 200 years in the future.
00:08:44
Speaker
And basically, and I was telling my wife this, I saw this at like an MIT paper or something like that, like 10 years ago, where they were essentially using something akin to like microwave radiation to basically shoot microwaves across a room to power something remotely, basically.
00:09:02
Speaker
power something on the other side that could take like inductive charging, basically like your toothbrush probably is, you know, something like that, except doing it from a distance, right? Rather than sitting in on a charging base. And the only reason that hasn't really taken off is because it's an incredible amount of loss. It's like 95% loss.
00:09:17
Speaker
on power. So what made it so this future society was able to actually do that was the ubiquitousness of power. They'd basically mastered cold fusion and they had an unlimited power supply. So they didn't care how much loss there was. They just pumped it out there in massive quantities and nothing really had a battery anymore. It just constantly had electricity.
00:09:37
Speaker
you know, he was, he was asking this nurse when she gave him a hot cup of something or other. And she's like, Oh, I just adjusted temperature on the bottom. And he's looking at it going, what the hell is this? Where's the battery? And she's like, what's a battery? And he's like, how does he, how do you recharge it? She's like, what does it mean recharge? And she's, he's like, what happens when it runs out of electricity? And she's like, laughs, you know, when he runs out of electricity, but
00:09:55
Speaker
But I was thinking, that's a weird thing to say, right? Because you would still have people like archaeologists doing fieldwork and other people where you're not going to have microwave electricity just like irradiating the whole entire planet, right? It's going to be in enclosed spaces and maybe even cities and streets and things like that. But I can't imagine that would be a foreign concept to even a society that has developed something like that. You're still going to need some sort of
00:10:18
Speaker
some sort of internal power supply, even if it's like kinetic energy, that's really, you know, that's really efficient or something like that, but something that you're charging basically. So you can use it. I just can't envision a future where that's not the case. But anyway, I'm really, I was really thinking about that. Cause I read that part in honor drive here yesterday and it really kind of stuck with me and it's like, would it really be like that? Would people, would there really be people that don't understand what the battery is? Is that, is that a possibility? I don't know. Anyway, I don't know.
00:10:46
Speaker
200 years in the future? I can't think that far in advance. I know, right? Yeah, it's hard to conceive of. And in the concept of the books, too, they haven't really necessarily increased in technology for various reasons. If you've seen the show, you'll know why. But they just improved on existing technologies, essentially. It did master a few things like Cold Fusion, but for the most part, they're not much further along than we are now. They just got really good at the stuff that we're doing now.
00:11:13
Speaker
Anyway, that was a long tangent that took up most of this first segment. So maybe we'll just introduce the show now and then take a break.
00:11:21
Speaker
Just give up the topic.
Data Curation in Archaeology: Challenges and Comparisons
00:11:24
Speaker
Exactly, basically. So back on episode 213, so two episodes ago, we talked about a special issue, a thematic issue of advances in archaeological practice, the February 2024 issue, which we are going to link to again here on the show notes for this podcast. And it was basically about data curation and essentially the data curation crisis, the
00:11:43
Speaker
And Paul and I on that show, basically, we talked about a bunch of things, but we didn't quite even get through all of our bullet points. So we wanted to just bring this up again and continue in talking about the project. Because on the last one, we talked about some of the big themes of the paper leading around how
00:11:58
Speaker
data is collected and the fact that it's collected in many different ways depending on where you're at and what agency or organization or company or university or institution you're working for. Then data is stored in exactly the same number of ways. There's no real consistency to it which causes problems for the future basically. I don't know, anything to add to the first episode we talked about this on Paul? Just in case you couldn't tell, 12 minutes into this, it's just going to be a chitchat.
00:12:28
Speaker
Right. This is a topic that, uh, that we've touched on briefly before. It comes up repeatedly and it's always worth revisiting and neither of us have any good answers. And I think that's one of the problems. I don't know that anybody has good answers, but lots of people have good ideas and good insights. And so we just wanted to, you know, continue the conversation that we were having fairly fruitfully a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, indeed. All right. Well, with that, let's continue the conversation on the other side of the break back in a minute.
00:12:58
Speaker
Welcome back to the archaeotech podcast episode two 15. And now we're going to actually talk about the data curation crisis again, from the February, 2024 issue of advances in archaeological practice. Check out those show notes and Paul, where do you want to pick this up from what we did last time?
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been saying that this is a an evergreen topic. We need to discuss this. We as a discipline need to discuss this frequently and repeatedly until we start doing things a little differently and a little better. I'm not sure how much I want to say there's a crisis, even though we've got it in the title of the podcast and the previous one as well. But it certainly could be viewed as such. And one of the articles is about a survey that was conducted about different curation practices in different institutions and.
00:13:46
Speaker
Why we need to talk about this repeatedly is because one of the points they make is that they compare the results of their survey to a survey that TDAR had done, similar survey that TDAR had done in 2010 and found that despite
00:14:01
Speaker
all the white papers on best practices, all the advances in computer technology, all the advances in storage capacity and such. Hardly anything had changed over nearly a decade and a half, which is, on the one hand, not surprising at all. And on the other hand, a little shocking and a little saddening. So I just wanted to lead off with that kind of, oh my God, no.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah. That is actually, it is very sad, but it's not very surprising to me because I think I mentioned in the last episode, the whole fact that people always seem to want to reinvent the wheel with this kind of stuff. Right. It's like, Oh, I've got a new project. I'm going to collect data and store it in this way. Right. Because somebody, somebody knew has taken over or maybe they weren't, I don't know, maybe they weren't trained and they just looked something up and said, you know, do we have any standards? No, I don't see any great. I'm going to do it this way. Right. Because there is, there doesn't seem to be any,
00:15:00
Speaker
like guiding, guiding standards, right? I mean, there's a few big organizations that we've already talked about, TDAR open context, things like that. But, but nobody's really beholden to them, right? Nobody's, nobody's forced to say, I'm going to, you know, collect data using this standard and store it using this standard. Even if I'm not storing it there, they're still doing it in kind of any way that they want, which is the crux of the problem.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that you hit the nail on the head and I think that that's probably one of the major takeaways I've gotten from the articles in this volume is that
00:15:33
Speaker
until people are forced to do things in a certain way, and that's probably going to be tied to grant funding and federal regulations, especially for anything that touches federal money, people are going to do it the way that they think is best. And the way that they think is best might be good, it might not be good, but it's going to be different from Project A to Project B. And that is one of the problems. I mean, it's a multifaceted issue, you know,
00:15:59
Speaker
related to the skill and the know-how of the various practitioners, but then also related to, you know, you could have two people that know how to do the thing very well, and one of them does it on the East Coast, and one does it on the West Coast, and there's no way for these data sets to really be comparable. Or they might even be both in the same region, but one is doing it for one set of purposes, and the other is doing it for a different set of purposes, and their data sets aren't comparable. You might think between academic and CRM archaeology.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think a good example of the mandate that could be handed down is GPSs. As soon as GPSs became just instantly overnight more accurate because of the government lift on the intentional restrictions, the intentional error that was put in there,
00:16:47
Speaker
As soon as that happened, it wasn't very long before federal agencies started requiring sites to be recorded with GPS, and not only GPS, but eventually submeter on certain things. Now it's just ubiquitous. Even if it's not required, people still have them, so they still use them on other projects.
00:17:05
Speaker
I can't think of a project where it probably wouldn't be required, maybe like a private development project or something like that. They may not have any explicit standards that they're going by, but people are still generally using that because we're just so used to it. We've gotten around it, but that had to be mandated. It had to be required for those federal land projects. Otherwise, nobody would have done it because they were pretty expensive back then, those GPS units. You're not going to have a bunch of archeology companies just going and buying a bunch of stuff. It's the same thing with digital recording.
00:17:31
Speaker
That's taken so long to take hold because A, there's no real standards behind what to use and how to actually do it. But there's no uniform way to do it. There's no app that everybody uses. And even if there are a number of different apps, which there are, that you can use to collect data, they all do it in slightly different ways because there's no, again, uniformity because there's no requirement for uniformity.
Standardization and Compliance in Data Curation
00:17:56
Speaker
So I hate to
00:17:58
Speaker
bring in more and more government regulation. I'm not opposed to or for that in any necessary sense from a political standpoint, but it has to be what it has to be. But I think in this sense, you're not going to get any sort of standard until it's mandated or people just ethically can't see another way to do it.
00:18:16
Speaker
But I think we're a ways from that. Well, you actually, and I hadn't thought about this before in all the kind of half-baked thoughts I've had about this issue and the topics brought up in it, but something you said there kind of just tickled something in the back of my brain was that it wasn't with the GPS, you know, I've used it on plenty of projects where it's not required. And in those cases, the killer app for using GPS is convenience.
00:18:45
Speaker
And for so many things in our tech lives, it might not be the best thing on a specs sheet that wins out, but it's the most convenient. The most convenient might be the easiest to purchase. It might be the easiest to get installed. It might be that for basic use, it just is easier for most people to use effectively.
00:19:08
Speaker
And GPS is one of those things, you know, people basically get it. And it's basically hard to screw up with. And in the end, you end up with stuff that are, you know, even if you're not using the best GPS, and you don't really know what you're doing, you end up with stuff that's basically geo reference to the world, as opposed to the old days with compasses and playing tables and looking at some printout, you know, quad sheet and trying to get your coordinates off of that. Yeah, we're far more accurate with far less work.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm wondering if, and this is where the tickle to the back of my brain is, I wonder if a two-pronged approach is actually the right way to go. One being mandates, and then on the other hand, making it just easier to comply with those mandates, easy enough that even if you aren't mandated, you still do it because it's easier than anything else that you would try to do.
00:20:02
Speaker
Hmm. I think so, right? I mean, it easier often means cheaper too, right? I mean... It can be, yeah. It can be, yeah. Convenience can be measured along a lot of different axes and expense is definitely one of them, you know? Yeah, true. So I think you're totally right.
00:20:19
Speaker
If this could be cheaper and easier than people would just do it because that usually, usually equates to less time spent on something and that drives the bottom line, right? That always drives the bottom line, especially from a development standpoint in CRM. So, but you know, like we've said, unless it's, unless it's one of those things, one of the quotes that one of us took out and put them on our notes from one of the articles was,
00:20:42
Speaker
We are conscious that just because digital repositories and guidance on best practices are available, it does not necessarily follow that everyone is using them. I would say that's absolutely true that not everyone is using them because most people probably don't even know those are available, let alone seeking those out and trying to implement on a project-to-project basis or even a company-wide basis from a CRM standpoint.
00:21:04
Speaker
So maybe contrary to what we were just talking about with expense, which I fully agree with, one of the points that was driven home, which I also agree with, so I don't know how to square these two, was that so long as everybody tries to do all these things themselves, I mean, we're a lot of over educated,
00:21:21
Speaker
hyper curious people in archaeology. We do a lot of our work ourselves and we think we can do all our work ourselves. One of the points that came out repeatedly was hiring professionals, trained professionals, and also to get real about the expense of curating your data after you've collected and produced that report or whatever.
00:21:41
Speaker
to bake those costs in, which is going to actually drive up the cost. So again, convenience could be measured along a bunch of different axes. But if one of the axes is, oh, I can hire so-and-so, and they can take this data and
00:21:59
Speaker
Bash into shapes so they can go into whatever repository that is actually rather than me having to do it that's a measure of convenience in a way too i don't might be contradictory to the least expensive way i mean expenses to our,
00:22:17
Speaker
It can be measured in a lot of things. It doesn't necessarily have to just be monetary expense. It could also be cognitive load, amount of time that you have in the day to finish these things out, to make your work efficient and to get those reports back in the hands of what was paying for them. Again, I don't have any good answers, nothing.
00:22:33
Speaker
What I've got is a lot of experience and a lot of failed attempts, and I've seen a lot of things that I like and that I want to replicate, but where do you go with it? That's really, for me, that's where the crisis is. The crisis is how to even actually think about this coherently. I know there's a problem with too much data and data that disappear or in other ways become inaccessible.
00:22:58
Speaker
For me, the crisis is, and thankfully there are other people who are much better versed at this and are thinking about this a lot harder and a lot longer than I have, who are going to solve the problem for me.
Economic Implications of Data Curation
00:23:09
Speaker
Which part of the crisis do you think it is? Is it the crisis that we're potentially losing data or is it the crisis that we don't even know how to think about not potentially losing the data?
00:23:19
Speaker
I don't necessarily see those as different things to be honest with you because we're definitely losing something, right? Just from some of the examples we've seen of even maybe if it's not happening as much anymore. But I mean, there's not like a week or two that goes by that I don't see that somebody online has put out their shingle and said, you know what, I've got my master's degree. I'm tired of working for other people. I'm going to start working for myself. And maybe they're just doing cell tower projects or maybe they're just doing, you know, small survey projects or a little, little one person projects, right?
00:23:49
Speaker
But even then, if they're doing it in a state like California, where in a lot of cases you're not working under any sort of agency, but California's environmental laws, CEQA, it requires that you do these sorts of cultural resources surveys. But then again,
00:24:07
Speaker
Where do they go? Where does the information go? It's supposed to go to the information center, but does it? Who's mandating that? It's not going to any sort of federal agency in a lot of cases. It's just something that the company, the development company, has to get done so you can write them a report. When they file for a permit or something, it says, hey, did you get this done? They say, yes, we got this done. Here's our evidence of that.
00:24:29
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. It's not really going anywhere. While I'm not trying to throw shade on the little guys, because I am a little guy, it's real easy to not do things that cost you more money because your margins are so small to begin with. I feel like the people that
00:24:46
Speaker
that do acknowledge their shortcomings, so to speak, and are willing to see the value in paying for that. Because a lot of people can't see the value in doing that either. Like, for example, you're doing some work for somebody that they either can't do it quickly themselves or don't have the time for it. And I've done the exact same thing. I've hired out my GIS work before, even though I have enough of an understanding of most GIS programs. I was just using QGIS because I didn't have the $6,000 to $8,000 ESRI license.
00:25:14
Speaker
with my small company and I didn't need it. QGIS was just fine enough. But I have enough knowledge to sit there and do my own maps and sketch maps and put stuff together. But I can also get this stuff done in a fraction of the time, which ultimately saves me money by having somebody else who knows what they're doing do it. If I can just send them the data and they send me back maps, they send me back everything that I need.
00:25:36
Speaker
to do this. And it's the same thing with some of these data collection practices and trying to figure out what we're going to do. Another quote that we pulled out here was hire professionals and get real about the real costs. But realistically, if you think about it, if you're doing it in the quote, right way,
00:25:53
Speaker
then it should actually cost you less. I don't know how many times I've had that argument with people trying to sell wild note when I was doing that and tap forms before that and any sort of digital codify, any sort of digital solution. It was like, yeah, sure, this has a cost to it, but it's going to save you money because here's a framework for you that's already built in for you to go and record data and you don't have to think about it and we'll maintain it for you, right? We'll maintain that code base and make sure it's always good.
00:26:21
Speaker
But here, you go collect data using this. And nobody, a lot of business owners have a hard time seeing that upfront cost as a backend savings. And that's probably where a lot of this lies. Well, and then touching on that and also what you were just saying about costs in slightly different capacities, and back to the thing about mandates is if you know what you're supposed to do and you build that cost into your proposal and some other guy
00:26:46
Speaker
doesn't because they know they can get the job by not doing it. Yeah. You just lost your project. You've just lost a job. And if it's mandated that things get treated in certain ways, then the data get treated in certain ways and deposit in certain formats in certain places, then everybody, it's a level playing field. Let me just put it that way. So that's where the mandates really become critical to this. So again, if it can be mandated so that nobody, you know, low balls and then
00:27:16
Speaker
can be easy enough that even people who aren't under the mandate for whatever reason still do it because it makes more sense.
Training and Technology in Archaeology
00:27:24
Speaker
It's cheaper for them in the long run, like the hiring the professional. Great. Then we start to ease our way out of the crisis. Right. All right. Well, let's ease our way out of this section and see what we can say about this on the other side. Back in a minute.
00:27:42
Speaker
Welcome back to the architect podcast, episode two 15, talking about the data curation issue crisis, something or other, and we'll go from there. And, you know, just looking at some of the remaining data points that we have left, Paul, I did, I did want to bring this up and I see you've reordered these and an order that I was going to just talk about them because I totally, I totally buy this. Cause one of the things that was also mentioned in one of these articles was
00:28:07
Speaker
poor data backup practices. And I guess in one of the surveys they did, two thirds of respondents said they have lost data. And I feel like that just goes back to how many people do you hear in this business that are business owners, their field techs, their crew chiefs, their project manager, whatever, and they say, Oh, technology hates me.
00:28:27
Speaker
I don't understand technology. I mean, it's just like, then why are you here? Because this is now a technological field. And if you don't understand that kind of stuff, you're doing more damage than good, I feel like. I'm sure you hear that all the time. I hear that all the time. It's always frustrated me. Part of me does get a sense of animism around certain tech. I think that printers are just inherently evil creatures that
00:28:53
Speaker
exist for no other reason than to do something really bad to you at the most inconvenient moment, so you can't get that paper turned in or the whatever. PC logo. I do. What does that mean? I do see people.
00:29:09
Speaker
I do see people that seem to just be cursed with tech and other people like me that seem to just be blessed. I've always said that computers are afraid of me because they know what I do to them when they're behaving too much. I will gladly just gut them and use their parts.
00:29:31
Speaker
But that's also hyperbole and goofy joking around. But yeah, back to your point is that we are in a tech industry and I realize nobody has to like tech. You certainly don't have to like all tech. I don't like all tech. There's certain things that just annoy the hell out of me.
00:29:53
Speaker
you have to not be afraid of it anymore. When I'm training people, that's one of the big things. Yes, I know you don't get GIS, you don't get photogrammetry, but you know what? It's mostly push button right now. What you can get is following a recipe and you're going to get good results at the end of it, good enough for our purposes at the moment.
00:30:16
Speaker
And then a little hand-holding, a little explanation, a little guidance and teaching. And most people actually do end up figuring out what they need to do with that tech. It's just that people get thrown into problems that are multivariate without a good sense of where to start solving the problem. Oh no, I can't get the GPS working with the iPad working with the software I've gone on. Where's the problem?
00:30:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Okay, let's start the beginning and work our way through. Is the GPS working? Yes. How do we know? Is it getting its corrections? Yes. How do we know? Is it talking to the iPad properly? Yes, it looks like it is. Okay. Is it talking to the software? Oh, that's where the problem is. You know, but if you're just thrown in GPS, no working.
00:31:03
Speaker
and you don't have that sense of how to solve the problem, it becomes very frightening. And I think that, to tie it back to the discussion of the data curation crisis, I think that's where a lot of things are. I mean, one of the points that was brought up was that people need to be trained specifically in data collection and storage.
00:31:18
Speaker
They need to have a sense of how you curate information from an excavation and from research in a way that's usable and has longevity and can be findable by other people and such. And if you're not trained in that, it just becomes this magic box of problems that you have to solve and you don't know where to get a toehold on.
00:31:37
Speaker
So maybe that's something that has to start being trained, and it probably is in certain places, but being trained in the regular archaeological post, enough, I almost said post-doctorate. No, it's got to be done well before that in the archaeological education for your undergrads and so on, and baked into our training all along. I mean, it's stuff that's going to change, but if you don't know how
00:32:01
Speaker
how to even begin working on it, how to even begin asking the right questions, you're never ever going to come up with the right answers. And that probably goes a long ways to explaining why so many people reported having lost
Digital Data Storage and Institutional Challenges
00:32:13
Speaker
data.
00:32:13
Speaker
Yeah, and another point that was pulled out of this issue too kind of relates to all that because people always do an archaeology project and one of the, you know, if you're doing the write up and analysis of the recorded information and you're putting together the report or, you know, whatever was put together as a result of this, what are the sections that you're excited as an academic
00:32:36
Speaker
to do is the analysis section and just kind of figure out what does this all mean? How does this fit into the greater context of things? That's like the biggest thing that we all want to and we want to understand it. We want to know how to do it and we want to know where these things are. That's why we do archaeology. So that's just like ingrained in our brains. Where does this all fit and how does this fit? But one of the things that was pointed out in the issue was that people don't generally look for
00:33:01
Speaker
existing collections that their dataset might fit into in order to actually collect it in the same way that it would just kind of plug into this dataset and then you could have a larger dataset about the same topic. That's common in say like BLM industries and BLM offices in like Nevada, Utah, things like that, where you do have to kind of fit it into something else. They do have some fairly rigorous standards, but there's definitely a lot of places in the country that do not have that and it's up to the
00:33:29
Speaker
It's up to the researchers to go find, you know, hey, how does this fit with the bigger picture and how do I collect my data to make that more understandable?
00:33:37
Speaker
And I'm going to pivot a little bit too. One of the other points that came as a bit of a shock was that, and it's obvious now that I think about it, but we're cramming a lot of different kinds of data curation into the same sorts of institutions, right? So a museum, for example, would get the artifacts from, you know, think 50 plus years ago that generated a lot of artifacts.
00:34:02
Speaker
They'd be getting the artifacts and they'd also be getting field notebooks and the dig cards and whatever else was going on with that project. Those all get housed in the same place because they're all part of the same project. Then as things transition to electronic media, whether they're born digital or whether they're scans of even these old 50 plus year old cards,
00:34:24
Speaker
the responsibility for doing that and the responsibility for holding onto that stays in the same place. A place that has expertise in maintaining physical artifacts and data is now having to also take on the task of maintaining digital data.
00:34:44
Speaker
totally different workflow. It's a totally different set of expectations and obligations. And I don't know what the, again, I don't know a lot, but I don't know with this case what the right answer is, but to see it spelled out like that,
00:34:59
Speaker
I was like, oh, yeah, why is that? Well, it is that because it's historical. But is that the way it has to be? I don't know.
Global Practices and Solutions in Data Curation
00:35:08
Speaker
Maybe, because I can see the value in having the data from a project, whether it's artifacts all the way through to the digital records that were born digital, all be under the same umbrella, the same institution. But that's not necessarily the best way to do it.
00:35:24
Speaker
because the needs again are totally different. This whole issue again is just a lot of food for thought and a lot of things that I just wanted to chat with you about Chris because I don't have any answers at all and I just like to.
00:35:40
Speaker
work my brain through these questions. And again, it does matter to me, particularly with the work that I'm doing in Lagash, where we are generating data and we're early enough in the project. We've got a few seasons under our belt, but it's at a point that we can
00:35:56
Speaker
regularize and standardize everything so that our field workflow all the way through publication all talk to each other in a good way. And we meet the obligations that certain funding groups like the NSF have placed on us, and maybe that's the regulation thing again, on making these accessible to other people, not just to ourselves.
00:36:16
Speaker
And that's huge, right? I've always said that 50% of our job as archaeologists is actually the excavation and report writing phase where you think that might be 100% of it. No, that's really 50% because the other half is telling people about it. If you don't tell people about it in some way, shape, or form, then what was the point of everything you just did, right? And even if those people are other academics at conferences and you're just, you know, you're adding to the dialogue,
00:36:42
Speaker
Sure, that's minimum viable product, I would say. But at the very least, do that, right? But so many projects just end up in a file cabinet somewhere. They call it the gray literature for a reason, because it's sitting in gray government file cabinets. That's why it's called that. And nobody knows it's there.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, and it's why that final scene of Ridges of the Lost Arcs kind of rings true, right? With the arches going into the humongous warehouse full of other crates. And yes, it wasn't obviously
00:37:15
Speaker
Indiana Jones is not an accurate representation of archaeologist that's ever been done. But somehow that big bureaucracy, and it doesn't have to necessarily be a bureaucracy, it could just be, you know, archaeologists, legitimate archaeologists that just doesn't think of
00:37:32
Speaker
processing their data in a way that's making it available to anybody else. And so they sit in that professor's file cabinet or maybe it's done a little more above the board and it sits in that, I don't know, in the county courthouse or someplace. And it just disappears. Well, I think that scene in Indiana Jones is probably the most accurate scene in all the Indiana Jones movies.
00:37:57
Speaker
in some way. I feel like that just, that just rings true with a lot of different things. But back to your point too, about, you know, how we don't really have any answers. That's one of the things I like about doing podcasts too, is because I'm hoping somebody listening to this, you know, somebody listening to this probably does have an answer, right? They just never really thought about it too clearly, perhaps, or maybe they didn't realize that what they had bouncing around their head actually is the answer and they didn't think to tell anybody about it. Right? So, I mean,
00:38:25
Speaker
Definitely bring this stuff up. Go to conferences where these kinds of things are being discussed. Talk to TDAR. Talk to open context and start making a difference with this stuff if you've got a good idea. Read what AHS has published because that's successful. It's been there for years and it's heavily used. Not in the US. Well, yeah.
00:38:46
Speaker
So that's another thing too. All the answers are not here necessarily, right? Somebody somewhere else may have already figured this out. Are we even talking to them? You know, the UK is, is one place where we might have some collaboration there because they're just a little more closer culturally, I guess, to us. If we're going to say that, I don't even know if that's the right word for it, but, but we seem to have a lot more
00:39:09
Speaker
affiliation and people go there for degrees and things like that. But there's plenty of other countries in this world and plenty of other people from those countries listening to these podcasts that would probably say, what are you guys talking about? Is this really a problem in the United States? Because we figured it out. Here it is. And I'd love to see smaller countries in Europe. I'm sure they've got a relatively easier time at something like this if they have figured it out because of the
00:39:35
Speaker
I mean, the smaller landmass, let's just be honest, right? There's probably one region or something like that that they're dealing with versus the United States, which has many different regions, all the different states. But I'd like to see how a country like China deals with an issue like this, or a country like Russia, something like that. First off, what kind of CRM programs do they even have? Is it all academic? Do they have CRM, that kind of thing? And then how are countries that have a little more heavy hand from a government to public standpoint
00:40:02
Speaker
How are they dealing with this? Is there a mandate? And is it working? Is there a mandated data standard? And is that actually working for them in that particular context? I don't know. I'd be really interested to find that out. Yeah. I mean, again, that's for other people other than me who are really, really into this. I am only, I don't say peripherally, but it's not the central part of my focus of my work. It's something that regardless
00:40:30
Speaker
of whether it's not central to your work, it has to be part of your work. And you could argue that it has to be a central part, but maybe not the research like what you're suggesting, but certainly the solutions, even if they're incomplete, even if they're not great, an attempt at them has to be part of your work.
00:40:50
Speaker
Why don't we just round this out right now, Chris, because we've asked a lot of questions and we've brought up a lot of problems and I don't think we have any real solutions other than things might get better if things get better.
Continuing the Dialogue on Data Curation Crisis
00:41:03
Speaker
I think that's the theme of this podcast.
00:41:05
Speaker
I think I've got a bunch of check boxes here that I still haven't brought up of things that kind of slightly blew my mind as I was reading this. But that can be saved for another day because this topic, this very topic is going to come up again. And hopefully it comes up again with an interview with somebody who's figured it out, who's cracked the nut. But even if it doesn't, and I'm not holding my breath for that, I'm not a gambling man and I wouldn't put money on that. We're going to talk about the same topic before too long again.
00:41:31
Speaker
Indeed. And if anybody listening to this does have any ideas or things they might want to bring onto the show, because again, people who may have some sort of way to handle this and a way to actually get some things done may be listening to the show, but don't actually have any answers and they could use some help in the brainstorming area. So if you want to talk about it, you got some ideas, send us an email, maybe we'll talk about it on the show, maybe we'll bring you on the show and see how that goes. Yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
So, I mean, there was a whole special issue that we're talking about that kicked off a two episode discussion. So there's definitely people talking about this and people concerned with this issue. We just haven't quite gotten there yet as far as what the real solution is. All right. Well, anything else to add, Paul? No, I'm going to go outside and enjoy the rest of this beautiful day while I can. And I hope you do the same though. I think it's raining where you're at right now. It's actually sunny now because it's Oregon. So yeah, it was raining when we started. Wait a minute.
00:42:28
Speaker
I know. Now it's sunny. Yeah. So anyway, all right. Well, thanks for that, Paul. This was a good discussion. Again, if you want to contact us, Chris at Archeology Podcast Network for my email address. Other contact information is in the show notes. Please go check that out and you can just leave a comment on this episode wherever you found it or at archepodnet.com forward slash Archeotech. Yeah. I'm going to say one more thing before we go is, and if you are a member of the APN, hop on the discord, ask us questions there.
00:42:58
Speaker
because we do have discussions going on there about this topic and others.
00:43:03
Speaker
And here's a little secret too. So far the discord is actually not for members only right now. So if you want to join the discord, we got rid of our Slack team, which was for members only. In fact, it's still live. We haven't actually dumped it yet, but now we have this discord channel and you can get that through our newsletter. So if you go to arcpotnet.com and just scroll the page for a little bit, you'll see a little pop up and that is an invitation to subscribe to our newsletter. And every Friday that comes out.
00:43:29
Speaker
And there's actually a link to the discord right in front there. We haven't put it anywhere online yet because we were really just transitioning members over, but we've had a discussion about it. And it's going to be, we're going to have member features within the discord server, but the, the general channels themselves are not members only anymore. So, but there are going to be some sections that are, so we're still kind of working that out. But anyway, yeah, they're joining the conversation over there. Thanks for bringing that up, Paul. And we will, we will hopefully see you there with that. I think we'll,
00:43:59
Speaker
Pause on this one and contemplate and maybe talk about it later. That's a point in the future. Certainly talk about it later. Indeed, indeed. With that, we'll see you next time. Paul, thanks for joining and go have a good barbecue. Yeah, thanks, Chris. Take care. Bye.
00:44:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:44:44
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.