By utilising technical install guides and step-by-step tutorials to the relevant software, the students were, over several teaching sessions, introduced to three digital methods commonly used in archaeological fieldwork (GIS, RTI and Photogrammetry). In an attempt to balance frustration with positives experiences, an emphasis was put on small and simple tasks that yielded outputs that were more tangible and easy to work with for the students while they were still learning the new methods.
Knowledge of computational methods is a basic requirement for professional archaeologists, but it is missing from the curriculum in the BA Classical Archaeology. The teacher aimed to make strategic and small additions and changes to the existing curriculum to give students more exposure to computational methods and resources, and some practical experience with a few methods that will become relevant to their fieldwork. Experience with these computational methods should also enhance their employability. Such strategic additions were made to three courses (studium generale, topic in classical archaeology, and archaeological fieldwork). This teaching case concerns the latter.
To help demonstrate the relevance of computational methods to archaeological fieldwor, it was decided to focus on easy-to-learn/hard-to-master computational techniques that can be applied in the field during excavations, and that provide direct useful outputs/products. This concerns GIS (geographical information systems), RTI (reflectance transformation imaging), and photogrammetry. Data and objects was provided for the students, including a stamped Roman brick and the head of a small statuette.
These are all computational methods that can be applied directly in archaeological fieldwork, and the basics of the approach can be taught in just a few hours with the student creating a tangible output, such as a map, an RTI-file or a 3D-model.
See screenshots of the photogrammetry software here. You can find the other tutorials and handouts under "Links and materials".
The majority of the students agreed that they had gained new computational skills that can have relevance in different professional environments. Some students enjoyed the diversity that these classes brought to their curriculum. All the students are now aware of the range of computational tools that exist and have access to resources they can draw on when the tools become relevant.
In advance of the first lesson on a given digital method, the students are told to install the software on their computers, so that the time in class can focus on teaching the new tool, instead of solving technical issues.
The series of activities is repeated for each tool/method (geographical information systems (GIS), reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) and photogrammetry).
For this class we used and older and free-of-charge software which is still the industry standard but does not work on all machines. For this reason we gave the students detailed installation instructions (see the instructions here) two weeks in advance, which were reiterated in the lecture slides each week and also emailed via Blackboard (Attention: Blackboard was AUs former LMS). The step-by-step installation instructions proved crucial to enable some of the students to successfully install the necessary software and take part in the class, and it also avoided wasting time during the class on software installation issues.
The class starts with a very short introduction of what RTI is (see the slides here) and followed by a practical tutorial that each student does independently. Lecturers then help individual students who are stuck. A step-by-step tutorial was prepared (see the tutorial here) that includes all information the students need to do the exercise completely independently. Crucially, this includes a lot of screenshots so the students can make sure that they are on the right track. This way of teaching allows students to work at their own pace, and allows those working slowest to independently complete it at home.
Example RTI:
For those students who want to takes things further, we included a slide with literature and other tutorials (see slide 8 in the linked materials), another home exercise (slide 9) and a slide with additional resources (slide 10).
Teacher: Tom Brughmans
Faculty: Arts, Aarhus University
Discipline: Classical Archaeology
Course: Fieldwork
Level of study: BA
Teaching method: Small class teaching
Number of students: 10
Duration: Short series of activities
The academic objective of this course is to obtain an overview of relevant computational methods, including their strengths and challenges. Furthermore, for the students to gain basic practical competencies in geographical information systems (GIS), reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) and photogrammetry.