There is considerable and largely untapped potential in individual-scale research in the discipline of archaeology. Innovative methods described in this article were developed to identify the work of individual prehistoric flintknappers. Theoretically, the approach was informed by previous researchers' discussions of technological style and utilizes an individual- or nano-scale focus for that concept. New analytical methods were then used to investigate individual flintknappers' participation in the community organization of the prehistoric eastern Tonto Basin, Arizona. Specifically, small triangular stone projectile points (n = 149) collected from Roosevelt phase (A.D. 1275–1325) sites were analyzed to inform an assessment of the spatial distribution of individuals' handiwork in late prehistoric multi-site settlements. This research illustrates how improved individual-scale techniques may provide new insight on topics of considerable interest to archaeologists. For the Tonto Basin case, this project offers a new perspective on the integration of immigrants into local systems and the strength of community ties across natural barriers such as the Salt River during the Roosevelt phase.

Since hosting its first archaeology fair in 2001, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has organized 23 more fairs and informed thousands of people through this popular outreach activity. The AIA fair model brings together independent archaeological organizations representing a rich array of archaeological subfields to present their programs and resources to a local community in an interactive and engaging manner. The goals of AIA archaeology fairs are to promote a greater public understanding of archaeology, raise awareness of local archaeological resources, and bring together proximate archaeological groups with a shared outreach goal. In this article, the authors discuss how the AIA fair model was developed through feedback cycles that include evaluation, data analysis, reflection, and trial and error; how it evolved; and how it is spreading to other groups around the world. To date, 26 AIA local societies have hosted fairs, and the popularity of this program as an outreach event is increasing among other archaeological groups across the United States, as well as in Belize, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Iran, and Myanmar. This growth in popularity and implementation presents us with unique opportunities to collect and reflect upon data essential to conducting archaeological outreach around the globe.

Preservationists and archaeologists often assess cemeteries for their research value as cultural resources of communities. Cemeteries hold significant interpretive and educational value because they serve communities as outdoor museums (Meyers 1996). The Cemetery Resource Protection Training (CRPT) workshop, developed by the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), engages the public by providing an archaeological perspective and hands-on experiences for local communities to aid them in addressing the real-world problem of neglected historic cemeteries. After completing over 36 workshops in 28 different communities, the CRPT workshop template has proven to be a highly transferable means to provide education and outreach to underserved communities and sites, as directed in FPAN’s mission. This paper considers cemeteries as participatory museums using Nina Simon’s (2010) co-creation framework. Following a brief summary of cemetery training programs and a review of the larger cemetery crisis in Florida, the rationale for creation of the CRPT program and building blocks of the workshop are provided for other public archaeologists to adapt for training cemetery stewards. Finally, the creation of training opportunities for nonprofessionals as an advance in public archaeology practice is discussed.

Chronic diseases and preexisting conditions shape daily life for many archaeologists both in and out of the field. Chronic issues, however, can be overlooked in safety planning, which more often focuses on emergency situations because they are considered mundane, or they are imperceptible to project directors and crews until a serious problem arises. This article focuses on asthma, diabetes, and depression as common medical conditions that impact otherwise healthy archaeologists during fieldwork, with the goal of raising awareness of these conditions in particular, and the need to be more attentive to chronic diseases in general. Archaeological fieldwork presents novel situations that put those with chronic diseases and preexisting conditions at risk: environmental hazards, remoteness from medical and social resources and networks, lack of group awareness, and varying cultural norms. As a result, if chronic diseases are not attended to properly in the field, they can lead to life-threatening situations. Managing the risk presented by these conditions requires a group culture where team members are aware of issues, as appropriate, and collaborate to mitigate them during fieldwork. Descriptions of how chronic diseases affect archaeologists in the field are followed by “best practice” recommendations for self-management and for group leaders.

Archaeologists have a responsibility to use their research to engage people and provide opportunities for the public to interact with cultural heritage and interpret it on their own terms. This can be done through hypermedia and deep mapping as approaches to public archaeology. In twenty-first-century archaeology, scholars can rely on vastly improved technologies to aid them in these efforts toward public engagement, including digital photography, geographic information systems, and three-dimensional models. These technologies, even when collected for analysis or documentation, can be valuable tools for educating and involving the public with archaeological methods and how these methods help archaeologists learn about the past. Ultimately, academic storytelling can benefit from making archaeological results and methods accessible and engaging for stakeholders and the general public. ArcGIS StoryMaps is an effective tool for integrating digital datasets into an accessible framework that is suitable for interactive public engagement. This article describes the benefits of using ArcGIS StoryMaps for hypermedia and deep mapping–based public engagement using the story of copper production in Iron Age Faynan, Jordan, as a case study.

The methodical recording and representation of spatial data are central to archaeological fieldwork and research. Until recently, centimeter-level precise geolocation equipment was the exclusive domain of researchers who could afford setups costing tens of thousands of dollars. However, high-quality measurements are being made more accessible by rapidly evolving technologies. These new tools, when used together with mobile technology for efficiently recording field data, open up the possibility of capturing the precise location of every find during an archaeological surface survey. An important step in reaching the desired outcome—centimeter-level recording for all—is experimentation with a variety of emerging low-cost setups. Accordingly, we tested the Reach and Reach RS, differential global navigation satellite systems (dGNSS) equipment produced by the company Emlid, during a surface survey in Armenia in June 2018. Our field application demonstrates that the use of dGNSS is already possible and that the described advances in precision enable improved recording and representation of spatial data.

Swede Hollow Park, in St. Paul, Minnesota, was originally inhabited by immigrants to St. Paul. Despite an engaged surrounding neighborhood, the park and its history are not widely known. The park was recently the site of a public archaeology project, providing an opportunity to explicitly examine who participated and why, as a means of assessing the success of public education. The project team used surveys and informal interviews as assessment tools for analyzing the demographics and motivations of the participating public. Understanding demographics and motivations is an understudied aspect of public archaeology and yet is crucially important in influencing how archaeologists interact with the public, frame their research questions, and create learning objectives. This information has the potential to help create more inclusive public archaeology projects (for example, drawing in more recent immigrant communities as well as descendants) and to indicate where more work needs to be done to accommodate diversity (in our case, understanding the homeless as stakeholders). It also can help clarify whether archaeologists can, or should, prioritize site, method, or narrative when engaging with the public, or whether the public should choose.

Bioarchaeologists often are faced with the challenge of managing field excavations and lab analyses of skeletal remains at the same time—along with student and staff training and curation of osteological remains—and cannot be in two places at once. This article presents strategies for the recovery of human remains useful for large projects where multiple burials must be recovered simultaneously, remains are poorly preserved, and complex burial practices such as seated body positions and commingled remains are present. The excavation and curation strategies are presented in the context of the seated burial practice in the Maya region, a funerary tradition that requires detailed documentation of the burial as well as the body in order to understand its meaning. Classic period (AD 250-900) seated burials do not fit a single biological profile; in fact, the taphonomic profile of one seated individual at Actuncan, Belize, suggests a closer relationship to body processing and/or context than to status. Tropical and semitropical environmental conditions also require modified curation procedures, which present ethical challenges as well as physical ones.

Archaeologists often overlook museum collections for research purposes due to concerns about the representativeness of the artifacts in the collection. Such concerns can be addressed by comparing non-scientifically produced collections to collections of known standing, such as those from more modern projects, using the same exploratory data analysis and basic statistical methods that archaeologists use to compare sets of artifacts in other situations. As a case study, this article compares spindle whorls recovered during the 2007 excavations at the Aztec site of Calixtlahuaca with two museum collections of whorls attributed to the site. A variety of metric and non-metric traits were recorded for each item in the three collections and were compared using Kolmogrov-Smirnov, Chi-square, and Fisher's exact tests. Both museum collections show a bias toward more elaborately decorated pieces, but with varying side effects on other attributes of analytical interest.

This research employs machine learning (Mask Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks [Mask R-CNN]) and cluster analysis (Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise [DBSCAN]) to identify more than 20,000 relict charcoal hearths (RCHs) organized in large “fields” within and around State Game Lands (SGLs) in Pennsylvania. This research has two important threads that we hope will advance the archaeological study of landscapes. The first is the significant historical impact of charcoal production, a poorly understood industry of the late eighteenth to early twentieth century, on the historic and present landscape of the United States. Although this research focuses on charcoal production in Pennsylvania, it has broad application for both identifying and contextualizing historical charcoal production throughout the world and for better understanding modern charcoal production. The second thread is the use of open data, open source, and open access tools to conduct this analysis, as well as the open publication of the resultant data. Not only does this research demonstrate the significance of open access tools and data but the open publication of our code as well as our data allow others to replicate our work, to tweak our code and protocols for their own work, and reuse our results.

The ease of digital data capture and the proliferation of concepts such as the “data deluge” suggest that modern researchers are drowning in datasets. Yet citations of archaeological datasets are few and far between, pointing to low rates of data reuse. This article explores the difficulties that surround data reuse in large-scale regional research, including the cost and coordination necessary to extract useful data from digitized PDF reports. The amount of correction and enhancement matches the effort needed to undertake a small field survey project and can only be circumvented with a thoughtful application of computer-assisted text analysis. Missing data in excavation report PDFs are not only intractable but also insidious due to their concealed nature, leading to poor outcomes in terms of (re)use. Consequently, the degree of data reuse in archaeology has been overestimated.

Human skeletal remains constitute remarkably informative finds, both biologically and socioculturally. Their recovery, preservation, conservation, storage, and analysis are complex issues that need to be addressed within any given biocultural context. Given the country's geography and the long history of human occupation, Greek field archaeology is intense and ongoing, with both rescue and systematic excavations. Human burials are thus frequently encountered in excavations throughout Greece, resulting in the accumulation of osteological material. Some of the common challenges of bioarchaeological research in Greece consist of insufficient time, funding, and documentation in the field; unmet conservation needs and lack of storage space; as well as the long time-gap between excavation and analysis. Here, we give a brief overview of excavation, curation, and bioarchaeological practice within a Greek archaeological framework. We focus on the newly launched Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project on a vast necropolis from the wider Athens region in order to present our methodological approach. Finally, we consider the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in managing large-scale bioarchaeological projects and serving long-term heritage preservation goals.

Spatial and shape data represented by 3D digital models have become a central component of our archaeological datasets. Immersive visual and audio interaction with these models offers an intuitive way to use these data. The mixing of the virtual with the real world suits archaeological work particularly well, and the technologies of augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) enable this type of interaction. Much past work on these technologies has involved public engagement, but they also hold the potential for valuable deployment directly in archaeological practice and research, especially the seamless integration offered by MR. This review examines the range of experiments archaeologists are currently undertaking with AR and MR, and it looks to the future applications of these technologies.

Archaeological documentation is in the midst of a technological shift as recording systems transition from paper-based forms to digital formats. Digital systems effectively replicate the information recorded on paper forms, while also offering recording advantages for archaeologists in the field. In addition to such logistical contributions to archaeological workflows, digital technology also has tremendous potential to transform the ways that archaeology is done by shifting how we see our sites, and how we document them through diverse data types. With the goal of exploring this potential, we developed a tablet-based relational database, using FileMaker, which provides the ability to simultaneously record specific characteristics of artifacts and features according to two cultural perspectives—modern archaeological understandings and also those of the Classic Maya. In this article, we describe the database and discuss the results of a pilot field season using the database to record excavations at the site of Say Kah, Belize. Our experiences yield several broader reflections on the impact of using digital recording systems both for practical advantage and for productive shifts in perception.

The information potential of human skeletal remains—as for any excavated material—is impacted by the conditions of archaeological burial, and the environments and actions experienced during subsequent excavation, laboratory processing, study, and storage. A conservation approach emphasizes the mitigation of threats to material stability and integrity, which for excavated collections are often most critical at the point of archaeological exposure and recovery. Conservation techniques involving application of modern synthetic materials for stabilizing skeletal remains in the field are discussed, using case examples primarily from terrestrial archaeological projects in Mesoamerica. The potential effects of the use of various conservation materials on results of biomolecular instrumental analysis are included.

In large arid floodplains, like that of southern Iraq, the rise of the water table associated with irrigation can result in surface salt concentrations over the remains of subsurface architecture. These traces are visible only from the air but are sometimes captured by commercially available submeter pixel imagery. This article describes the methods used and some of the results of a project using QuickBird, WorldView-1, and WorldView-2 imagery to investigate settlement systems in southern Mesopotamia dating between the fourth and first millennia B.C. Following a discussion of methods used to better predict which images of which sites will produce the desired results, a brief exploration of key anthropological questions that these data allow us now to ask will be presented.

Public education in archaeology today is at a crossroads. Over the last 30 years, it has grown exponentially and is now widely recognized as one of the most effective ways to preserve the past for the future. However, it remains a loose conglomeration of approaches lacking coherence and consistency. There is little discussion of the best practices to use in specific situations and little assessment of effectiveness. One result is that practitioners often reinvent the wheel; another is that we are not reaching the diverse audiences we need to engage to assure archaeology’s future. As a profession, we are losing ground to the continued encroachment of looting and vandalism—the very activities education seeks to forestall. We can either keep doing what we are doing and hope for the best, or we can begin to systematize our efforts. This article introduces a special issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice dedicated to systematizing public education in archaeology by contextualizing and assessing contemporary practices. The article provides a framework for thinking about the issues and proposes solutions, while discussing the contributions of the issue’s authors. Its purpose is to initiate discussion, not to provide the final word on the problem.

Teaching and public engagement with the results and implications of bioarchaeological research have increasingly attracted more varied and social media-savvy audiences. Since 2010, the social media platform Instagram has also flourished, with millions of users forming untold numbers of communities of practice. Here, I seek to address the intersection of bioarchaeology and the virtual “stage” that social media represents. How is the discipline of bioarchaeology and the act of being a bioarchaeologist represented on Instagram? How do practicing bioarchaeologists (and enthusiastic supporters of the field) communicate about their own and others’ research, fieldwork, laboratory work, et cetera? With ever-greater amounts of scientific communication and public outreach conducted over social media (e.g., Gura 2013; Kling and McKim 2000; Wheat et al. 2013), it is worth investigating how the living who study the dead interact with each other, form community, and engage online audiences that increasingly contain descendants of the dead being studied. The review below is short; hence, the nature and depth of inquiry is restricted. Nevertheless, enough data are available to allow broader speculation and to suggest that there is space for more concerted future research.

Stone anchors comprise a significant portion of observable underwater cultural heritage in the Mediterranean and provide evidence for trade networks as early as the Bronze Age. Full documentation of these anchors, however, often requires their removal from their underwater environment, especially to calculate mass. We offer a methodology for using photogrammetry to record stone anchors still in situ and calculate their approximate mass. We compare measurements derived using measuring tapes with those derived using two different software programs for photogrammetric analysis, PhotoModeler Scanner (Eos Systems, Inc.) and PhotoScan Pro (Agisoft). First, we analyze stone anchors that had previously been removed from the underwater environment to establish a reference methodology. Next, we implement this methodology in an underwater survey off the southern coastline of Cyprus. Linear measurements for both programs correlate closely with those attained via measuring tape. The resulting estimates of volume of anchors in situ and on land are slightly greater using the photogrammetric methodology than the reference volumes obtained using a water displacement methodology. Overall, as an analytical tool, this methodology generates detailed surface information in minimal time underwater and preserves data for future analysis without necessitating the removal of the anchor from its underwater environment.

Brown University is home to several seldom-used study collections of broken and unprovenienced ancient Egyptian objects. In a new exhibition focused on the research process and the people who make it happen, these items feature as keys to the behind-the-scenes world of archaeological study. In this article, we demonstrate how educators can mobilize fragmentary artifacts as new tools for handson education. Each section of the exhibition focuses on an active research project that employs a modern investigative technology (e.g., XRF Analysis) and introduces visitors to researchers at all levels of study. This not only humanizes the archaeological process but also invites the viewer to participate actively in the interpretation of museum research. Two hands-on elements further cultivate an environment of accessibility to archaeology: an iPad interface updated regularly based on visitor feedback, which welcomes visitors to explore the exhibition’s objects and research technologies in greater depth; and a preexisting experiential learning program, CultureLab, where visitors can handle objects from the collection and be researchers themselves. Visitor feedback suggests that openly presenting the realities of archaeological research and subsequently encouraging visitors to assume the role of researcher is a highly effective model for visitors and educators alike.