SAA workshops provide continuing education on a wide range of practical issues relevant to the professional archaeological community. Workshops have limited enrollments, so sign up soon! As noted, specific workshops are open to both meeting attendees and those not attending the meeting.
Workshops and excursion fees are non-refundable. In the event SAA cancels a workshop or excursion from undersubscription, the SAA office will not charge a processing fee and will refund the money in the same form of payment received (such as a credit card payment will be refunded with a credit back to the account.)
Wednesday, April 22
Repatriation Workshop
Sponsored by the Committee on Native American Relations and the Committee on Repatriation
11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.; maximum 25 persons; $28 for Annual Meeting attendees
Instructors: Kristen Barnett and Lauren Sieg
The 2020 repatriation workshop will be an opportunity for examining the specific perspectives and challenges for repatriation in Texas and discussing their relationship to broader repatriation concerns in the United States and abroad. It is intended to establish respectful and collaborative partnerships between the SAA and local tribal communities associated with the locale of our annual meeting.
The workshop will be open to meeting attendees who are repatriation practitioners and will include the participation of local tribal leadership. The specific content of the workshop will be customized according to the responses to an independent survey submitted to local Tribal Historic Preservation Officers or tribal NAGPRA representatives, local museum professionals, federal agency representatives, universities, regional professional archaeological societies, and CRM firms. The survey is aimed at identifying local concerns, barriers, and challenges to repatriation.
The workshop facilitators will consist of the chairs of CNAR and the Committee on Repatriation as well as local tribal officials. The workshop activities will include small-group and large-group discussions as well as exercises aimed at realizing the multitude of challenges for different entities (e.g., tribal, government, and private) and how we can collaborate to address these issues. We will also reflect on how we currently situate ourselves and what our goals should be as SAA members in relation to the results of the survey. The workshop will facilitate an ongoing dialogue that will allow us, as SAA members, to identify our aspirations for how to address concerns and work toward a more equitable process in the future.
A Gentle Introduction to Bayesian Statistics for Archaeologists
12:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m.; maximum 20 persons; $50 for Annual Meeting attendees
Instructors: Ben Utting and Ben Marwick
Statistical approaches toward interpreting archaeological data have traditionally relied on null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). However, recent papers have raised several critiques of NHST, which they argue is both unintuitive to interpret and promotes dichotomous thinking (i.e., significant or not significant). A Bayesian framework offers techniques that, while computationally intensive, allow for more intuitive and detailed interpretations of data. As adjacent scientific fields move away from NHST and toward Bayesian statistical frameworks, it is crucial that we as archaeologists develop the basic tools required to (1) interpret Bayesian analyses and (2) develop those of our own. This session will provide SAA members with a gentle introduction to the philosophical underpinnings of Bayesian statistics, an interactive demonstration of how Bayesian modeling works with archaeological data, and a primer on R and its free software packages that offer Bayesian alternatives to common frequentist tests (e.g., t-test, chi-square test, ANOVA, linear regression).
Culture Shifts: How to Improve Climate
Sponsored by the Society for American Archaeology
3:30 p.m.–5:00 p.m.; $5 for all discount rate country registrants, students, and associate registrants; $30 for all other meeting registrants from standard rate countries
Instructors: SAFE Institute of Austin
Behaviors that may have once been tolerated in professional spaces have now come into question. Other acts are increasingly prosecuted for being illegal. How do we improve? During this session, trainers from Austin’s SAFE Institute will explore gray areas such as personal space, touch, compliments, and flirting or dating in the places we work. We’ll also look at how to intervene when it looks like a colleague is crossing boundaries and how to handle a disclosure conversation with empathy. This will not be a VHS tape on how not to sexually harass people but rather a nuanced conversation about how to create safe and respectful environments for all.
Thursday, April 23
Integrating Unmanned Aerial System (“Drone”) Sensors into your Archaeological Project
Sponsored by the SPARC (Spatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations) Program
8:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m.; maximum 25 persons; $35 for Annual Meeting attendees
Instructors: Malcolm Williamson, Katie Simon, Adam Barnes, Vance Green, Carla Klehm, and Jeremy Menzer
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS; “drones”) are becoming popular alternatives to purchase of satellite and airborne remotely sensed data for archaeological applications due to their increasing capabilities and decreasing costs. With an increase in accessibility to researchers and cultural resource management professionals, questions regarding sensor systems comparison and cost-benefits proliferate: would flying my own photogrammetric survey, hiring a UAS lidar survey, or purchasing an airborne lidar dataset best benefit my project’s topographic data needs? What’s the difference between and utility of visible light (RGB), thermal, multispectral, and hyperspectral sensor imagery? Would a more expensive sensor and UAS platform be worth the cost? What software is best to meet my project goals given the datasets I have? The research required to answer these questions can be overwhelming.
This workshop will focus on UAS-based sensors and their archaeological applications. Using examples, instructors will
introduce various sensor and platform types and combinations
- provide an overview of suitability for conditions, environments, and project goals
- review availability and cost
- present the trajectory of their use in projects, from data collection to data processing and product generation
- discuss associated issues and challenges including ground control, flight plan, data storage, and processing requirements
- workshop one or more scenarios posed by the group in order to illustrate how researchers can write geospatial components into their grants effectively
This workshop is part of the educational outreach for the SPARC (Spatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations) program. Details about SPARC are available at https://sparc.cast.uark.edu/.
Friday, April 24
Go Figure: Submitting Publication-Ready Artwork that Works
Sponsored by the University Presses of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Utah
9:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m.; maximum 25 persons; free for Annual Meeting attendees; preregistration required; walk-ins welcome on a seat-available basis
Instructors: Meredith Babb, Allyson Carter, Darrin Pratt, and Rebecca Rauch
No one disputes that images and artwork are essential parts of any archaeological publication. One of the more vexing issues in publication preparation are the images. What size? What software? What file type? How big? Black and white or color? Why is line art different from photographs? When is a map not really a map? What are plates and what are illustrations? What formats can be used? A panel of publishing experts and published authors will discuss all of these pesky details and more to help wade through the requirements, explain the essentials, and add new meaning to “garbage in, garbage out.” Time permitting, there will also be discussion on permissions and fair use in publications.
Culture Shifts: How to Improve Climate
Sponsored by the Society for American Archaeology
12:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m.; $5 for all discount rate country registrants, students, and associate registrants; $30 for all other meeting registrants from standard rate countries
Instructors: SAFE Institute of Austin
Behaviors that may have once been tolerated in professional spaces have now come into question. Other acts are increasingly prosecuted for being illegal. How do we improve? During this session, trainers from Austin’s SAFE Institute will explore gray areas such as personal space, touch, compliments, and flirting or dating in the places we work. We’ll also look at how to intervene when it looks like a colleague is crossing boundaries and how to handle a disclosure conversation with empathy. This will not be a VHS tape on how not to sexually harass people but rather a nuanced conversation about how to create safe and respectful environments for all.
Parasitology and Archaeology: A Workshop in Parasite Recovery and Identification
2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.; maximum 20 persons; $30 for Annual Meeting attendeesInstructors: Karl Reinhard and Dong Hoon Shin
The workshop will feature two types of demonstrations: microscopes and models. At microscopes, parasite eggs will be shown from Korean mummies, Southwestern coprolites, and historic privies from New England. Tapeworm, roundworm, and flatworm eggs will be viewed. Teaching models of these classes of parasites will be associated with the microscopes to show participants the morphology and size of the adult parasites. Models of pathology, and specimens of modern parasites, will be on display as well. Modern specimens and exhibits will be on loan from the Manter Laboratory of Parasitology, University of Nebraska State Museum. These displays will be organized in distinct sections. First, Dr. Dong Hoon Shins’s display of parasites from South Korean mummies will be complemented with examples of adult fluke slides. Second, the Andean parasites will be on display including tapeworms and lice. The participants can then turn to tapeworms with a model of proglottid anatomy, which they can compare with microscope slides. Third, from the southwestern USA and northwestern Mexico, slides of human pinworm and various other parasites will be visible. Finally, mawworm and whipworm eggs from New England shaft features will round out the practical demonstration. There will be slides representing egg decomposition to address taphonomy. The small posters will present the diversity of parasites found at archaeological sites. The health threats of parasitism will also be addressed in the posters. Field and lab methods will be addressed, focusing on shaft features and the best stratigraphic strategies to locate parasite deposits.
Saturday, April 25
Using tDAR for Research
Sponsored by the Center for Digital Antiquity
9:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m.; maximum 25 persons; free for SAA members; preregistration required; walk-ins welcome on a seat-available basisInstructors: Leigh Anne Ellison and Rachel Fernandez
In the past 20 years, archaeology fieldwork, lab processing, and analysis have changed dramatically, driven primarily by developments in technology, computing, and the internet. tDAR is one of the tools that can help you integrate and successfully analyze your data in this changing environment. We view the files archived in tDAR as DATA—and our aim is to encourage the use of these digital collections (datasets, reports, GIS data, images, etc.) to further your research. This hands-on workshop will provide an overview as well as specific examples of the ways you can use tDAR to enhance your research.
The workshop will cover a number of important topics including
- improving the usability of the files you upload (formats, documentation, organizing your collections, licenses)
- good metadata lowers the barrier for use by others (explaining dataset codes, field collection methods, etc.)
- literature review of a geographic area
- finding data in tDAR
- sharing your “value-added” improvements (creating ontologies and coding sheets and making them public)
- ethics of sharing and data openness
- confidentiality and security
Participants must bring a laptop and an archaeological dataset or document file (such as a report, dissertation, etc.) to upload to tDAR as part of the workshop.
Teaching Integrity in Empirical Archaeology
Sponsored by the Open Science in Archaeology Interest Group
12:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.; maximum 25 persons; free for Annual Meeting attendees; preregistration required; walk-ins welcome on a seat-available basis
Instructors: Ben Marwick and Li-Ying Wang
This workshop is designed for educators who are interested in integrating principles of transparency and reproducibility into teaching archaeology. We will introduce participants to protocols for conducting and documenting empirical research that ensures the reproducibility of all computational results, and then present a range of pedagogical strategies and curricular resources for teaching these methods to students in a variety of educational settings. The objective is to help instructors develop plans for teaching reproducible research practices that will be feasible and effective in their particular contexts, so that they are fully prepared to implement the methods presented at the workshops when they return to their home institutions.
Participants will also be introduced to opportunities to collaborate with the SAA Open Science in Archaeology Interest Group in the development and dissemination of curricular resources for practicing and teaching transparent research methods. The ultimate goal is to foster the development of a community of educators committed to the idea that transparency and reproducibility should be integrated into all levels of research training for students in archaeology.