00:00.10 Paul Vermont um I don't have a ah yeah I don't have a waveform interesting. Okay so it's just on my side. No problem. 00:04.17 archpodnet Ah, a waveform I have a waveform for you on my side. So I think we'll call it good. Yeah, it's really small but you sound good to me so I wouldn't worry about changing your volumes. But it's ah it's there. So I think we'll call it good. 00:18.82 Paul Let me just yeah I don't have anything. It's just flatlined but let me just check quick to make sure that um you know last time when I did finally get my mic working the ah the volumes were all screwed up. So let me just see if it thinks it's recording. 00:28.19 archpodnet A. 00:34.40 Paul Like it's supposed to be. 00:37.67 archpodnet Rachel can delete this first 38 seconds of audio she won't know that till she gets here though. She super frustrated but as she walks in the door and glares at me. Um, now I probably won't do that. It's it's always nice when she can get surprised. Ah. 00:45.67 Paul Ah, or you could tell her beforehand. 00:55.93 archpodnet All right here we go. We're recording arche attack and here we go. We're going right now. So okay, yeah, all right here we go welcome to the show over one Paul. How's it going on welcome welcome to your first episode of the arch architect podcast. Oh wait. That's not. It's just first one in a while. Ah. 01:12.30 Paul Yeah, well no, we did record though. Oh that wasn't just arche attack. Yes, it's been forever since we've done a yeah, just an arche attack. Um Wow. Thank you Good to be back. 01:16.14 archpodnet Ah, that's right? No yeah I know I know it's great. Yeah, we we just basically took a took a pause I mentioned this? Ah I think I mentioned this a little bit on the. And the last episode that you guys heard which would have been a crossover with the archaeology show which is because the topic seemed to fit so Paul did that interview with me as you guys heard and we ah cross posted that on tas and and then kind of called it. Good. But this is our first like you said real episode since I don't know november. Something like that early december whatever it was yeah so um. 01:50.20 Paul Something like that. yeah yeah I mean that was out in the field for a couple months and I've been back for a couple months now but geez we just have not been able to coordinate my Mondays for some reason are ah are just oddly busy. 01:58.31 archpodnet Now. 02:04.35 archpodnet Yeah, and we actually in fact I don't even know if you can make this one but we have an interview next week. It's in my morning. It's in your calendar. Awesome. So so the next episode you guys hear will be an interview and that'll be good. So we're looking forward to that all right? well something we have. 02:11.79 Paul Um, it's in my calendar. 02:24.50 archpodnet Touched on in the past it always comes up when you're talking about big data and datasets and and all kinds of different things is data curation and paul why don't you introduce this because you brought my attention to this latest advances in archaeological practice. Issue February 2024 which is linked in the show notes by the way. So if you want to go take a look at that. It's completely open access so you can go look at any of the articles download them. Do whatever you want to do and and take a look but Paul why don't you give us a little bit of an introduction to the topic. 02:54.84 Paul Yeah, so yeah, this issue of ah aap is a thematic issue and it's around data curation and you know there were a couple articles in it that I thought really stood out though. The whole thing if you're into this and you probably should be if you're collecting data um is worth a look. 03:11.12 archpodnet Ah. 03:12.57 Paul And it just struck me based off of the timing because I had been working. You know we're gearing up for another so field season of lockosh and and part of that is writing and Nsf grants and part of that is is having a digital asset plan. What's the actual word digital. 03:29.48 archpodnet There you go. 03:32.59 Paul Management plan there. We go Dmp Um, and you know so it's what we do with our data how it gets out how it gets stored is all been a consideration we actually because we didn't have last season. We've taken the opportunity to to really think through things in advance. 03:49.60 archpodnet And. 03:52.40 Paul Last week in fact I was down in Philadelphia because our field director and our ceramsis both flew in from italy so the the project director got the entire team together or most of the entire team so that we could actually hash out some of these details in advance and I'd already started working on this with um. With the field director about how we're going to get our data uploaded to a cloud repository as we collect it in the field and how we're going to save that you know we've got internet process blah blah blah there's just it's been bouncing around in my head and then this article came out at a very opune time. Um. 04:25.14 archpodnet Um. 04:30.31 Paul And I just want to talk about it with yo and then I Also um ah you know I'm doing some since I came back I've been doing some local work I was doing some scps with a guy that I work with every now and then here and um and we'd been contacted by a vendor selling a database solution. And 1 of the questions that he asked the ah that the that the salesperson asked was like what happens to your data and my colleagues said that in his opinion and this isn't that he's destroying data or destroying artifacts or anything. But if there isn't a system in place for handling with that. He thinks that. 04:51.58 archpodnet Um. 05:04.66 archpodnet Um, yeah. 05:09.50 Paul Have to basically consider if it's not in the report. It's lost and I thought wow that's a bit of a wakeup call. Ah but I also don't know what the answer would be if you don't actually have the systems for that. So there I go off on a 5 minuteute tangent of ah of why this struck me but. 05:13.68 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 05:27.27 Paul You know it's it's it's a topicve like you said we've touched on before and it's a topic that comes up periodically and I think it's a topic that we as archeologists who are trying to do a good job with the data that we collect um, have to revisit periodically and we're probably going to have to do this forever and ever and ever. And if we haven't started doing it I think right now is a really good time to start. 05:48.26 archpodnet Yeah, it's just definitely a good time to start I mean it's 2024 and we're practically you know we're Approaching. We just crossed the first Quarter. So I mean now is definitely the time if you're not considering your your data plans and things like that and and again everybody knows. Listening to this podcast unless you're a brand new listener which hey thanks for finding the show. This isn't a brand new show. This is episode 213 Even though we haven't had an episode really in a while but you know it's It's odd timing for this as well because like I said everybody knows I've worked with and and consult with ah wildnode. And which is an application you used on some of my projects and and they just this spring started incorporating ah gis basically an actual mapping within the program. So. Not only are you. 06:28.30 Paul Um, yep. 06:36.60 Paul Are. 06:40.52 archpodnet You know, collecting more and more digital data more born digital data with the application. But now they're throwing in you know, mapping and shapefiles and this ezri integration and all these kind of stuff you know writing with the software and and everybody's doing that you know what I mean everybody's doing more and more digital. Born digital data collection and even if it's not born digital. It gets converted to digital at some point because that's just how things get stored and handed off I mean even the archaic Nevada Blm expects things on a Cd at the very least still so you know that's data data. That's not searchable anywhere by the way. 07:00.40 Paul New look. 07:11.42 Paul Yeah, yeah, that's a problem. Yeah. 07:15.98 archpodnet And I know and I think we'll talk about that Probably on this show I definitely took some notes around you know data formats and things like that. But yeah, it's ah it's crazy that projects are still out there and exist where people are like oh hey, maybe we should think about what we're going to do with all this data when it's all said and done I mean it should be. 07:30.77 Paul Even. 07:33.97 archpodnet It's almost more important than the actual project itself because if you don't have a place to store the data you may as well. Not even have done the project right? because who's going to find out about it who cares right? Where's the data. Yeah. 07:46.17 Paul And that's really um, that's where we've been fortunate in the misfortune of not being able to go to lagosh last season is that it gave us this space to actually sit down and do this properly and so the first thing that we attacked was we? um, we have a cloud storage and it's organized by season. 07:53.18 archpodnet Ah. 08:02.67 Paul And as we're looking at it. We thought you know what that is just not the way that we need to make our data but data accessible to ourselves and this is not for broader accessibility. This is just for managing our own file-based data in the field and when we get back home and. 08:03.23 archpodnet Um, ah. 08:17.19 archpodnet Um, yeah. 08:21.40 Paul So We we totally inverted it and we split things out into kind of mapping data and photographs and um the field records and administrative you know records like like permits and such and then within those down into the trenches down into the. Each season because a trench might be open for multiple seasons. Um, you know it was but it gave us the opportunity to totally rethink how we're just basically organizing and and fundamentally I think that that's the ah, that's the biggest problem and not Problem. Biggest hat. 08:41.24 archpodnet Sure. 08:56.43 Paul Thing to tackle biggest issue that you have to deal with with your data is how do you organize it so that you know you can find it again right? I mean how many times have you worked with somebody that's like ah I don't know where it is and so they do a search on their computer to find something. Oh no, it was on the other computer. It. 09:03.40 archpodnet And. 09:12.59 archpodnet Yeah, like what what drive is it on is it on the s drive or the Y drive it. That's yeah, yeah, it's and you know what it's crazy about that is that's that's a huge problem if you can't even find your own data and understand where to find it right because. 09:15.72 Paul Yeah, yeah, ah yeah. 09:28.44 Paul Reasons? yep. 09:32.33 archpodnet It might be so it might be obvious or or logical in the beginning when you're thinking about a project like the logage project to say okay well this is all season. 1 ne's data maybe we're not completely done with this. Let's make a season two data file now and let's let's figure out what we're going to do with that and and that just kind of you know without thinking. 09:41.63 Paul Um. 09:48.73 archpodnet 10 years into the future and what does that look like are we really going to look at files and try to find something from season 1 by knowing it was in season 1 you just can't really yeah, you just can't really think that far ahead unless you're really actively thinking about it and now that you guys are you're going to be you know obviously way better off going into the future. 09:56.83 Paul That's the problem. 10:06.74 archpodnet Coming up with ah a good plan like this but you know it's um, it's such a big deal and like you said not even be able to find your own Stuff. You know on different projects. Let alone somebody else coming into your dataset trying to find something because that should always be the goal. Is somebody else eventually coming into the dataset and doing further research and including you know these data in you know, other metadata studies and and things like that and it's just not something that is probably done that often in archeology because of the lack of availability and searchability of. 10:43.11 Paul Um. 10:43.20 archpodnet You know everybody else's datasets and that's one of the first things I pulled out of this. Um this issue and in fact I linked or at least I dropped the citation of the first article in this issue which was actually a really good just overview. So if you're wondering. Maybe which article to read and and the titles aren't grabbing you read the first one. It's it's short. It's like 4 pages and it it really is a good summary of everything else and if you want to know more you can read the other articles but 1 of the biggest problems they mentioned you know, right? off the bat is not only different ways to store your data different. Different methods and different ways to organize it, but just a different sources of data that are out there all stored in different ways by the way so you know you've got university repositories government crm you've got you know? Blm um, which is included in government for a service you know all these different places where these data are stored and. 11:24.11 Paul Um, oh yeah. 11:34.96 archpodnet Did a lot of work in California for some you know some of it for some private I wouldn't say private but like crm firms that are now like 1 person you know as like as somebody starts to retire and and maybe they just want to keep doing some work but they no longer work for a firm and this one guy he used to have a huge company back in like the 90 s and he had a lot. I mean they had many many employees lots of projects. Lots of things they did but over time there the company just kind of dwindled people went off out of the places I think it ended up getting actually sold to somebody and he just kept doing stuff but his office which was one end of his house. Had probably 15 file cabinets worth of archaeological site data and it dating back probably 35 forty years and that's the only location for that data and I don't know what's going to happen when he dies if he's not dead already to be honest with you. Um, it's and that's not unique in California. 12:24.90 Paul Um, no. 12:25.97 archpodnet There are lots of people in California that have many file cabinets full of archeological site data and that's literally the only place that exists except for maybe the report that is you know in some office somewhere at ah at a you know distribution center. So yeah. 12:39.94 Paul Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because that's the ah, the third thing that was that I've been directly exposed to with ah with old data is that I volunteer I need to again I haven't been there a while at the institute for American Indian studies in Washington Connecticut and. 12:52.79 archpodnet Um, yeah. 12:57.19 Paul And they've got a great storage system. They're very conscientious. They've got excellent people that are working there and volunteering there. Um, but they also have tons of artifacts and records from excavations that took place in Connecticut in the 70 s and eighty s. And so I've helped them. You know when I go there with some of the organization of that and I don't take any credit for it other than you know, just pushing buttons and opening boxes and writing down what's in them. But um, but that's work that needs to be done and it was never done and you know it's in excellent storage. Um, really. 13:21.31 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, yeah. E. 13:33.23 Paul Surprisingly advanced storage considering that it's a small museum but you know I can only imagine having seen what's there How many hundreds thousands maybe places across the country are in a similar state where you know they have just for whatever reason. 13:46.90 archpodnet Yeah. 13:52.30 Paul Acquired Been donated given sponsored you know old projects and now have a big mess of data to deal with. 13:59.70 archpodnet Um, yeah, then it to me. The biggest problem is we just we just simply don't have a standardized data format that you know for for all of your data. Ah, standardized format to put everything in and organize everything by and some organizations are are trying to do that like open context and ah Dina to some extent. Um, you know they're they yeah tdar tr for sure you know they have. 14:20.90 Paul Isn't. 14:26.56 Paul Tdar. 14:30.93 archpodnet Specific formats but just the fact that those 3 exist and they're completely different I mean I know they talk to each other but this is archeological data. It's it's kind of the same no matter where you're at right? It doesn't matter if you're storing data from logoss or storing data from a historic mining site in Nevada you've got the same elements to the data across the board and you need to come up with. 14:35.65 Paul Um, yeah. 14:50.74 archpodnet You know, consistent terminology and things like that and I understand there's a huge challenge to that. But it's um, it's crazy you you might get these collections in and you know who knows where they came From. They could have been donated like you said or something like that and there's no way to take the data and just. Even put it into an accessible format that that other people would just inherently understand because that's how it's all done because there isn't a way that that's how it's all done. So anyway, let's talk about some other. Yeah. 15:08.28 Paul Even. 15:15.80 Paul Well why don't we take that thought why don't you take that thought and come back after the break because I have a little bit of experience with that and and want your comments.