R4Rchaeologists

Overview

In Humanities, the exponential increase in digital documentation requires us to question its management, its use, its availability to the scientific community and its sustainability. In archaeology, these issues are even more crucial because they relate to non-reproducible primary data. In order to effectively retrieve, store, manage, prepare for analysis, and communicate the information and the scientific range of such amount of data, modern archaeologists should be able to deal with concepts and tools related to new technologies. 

Such digital competencies are not present in a standard archaeology background, though they are fundamental in order to effectively interact with ICT experts. 

It is conducted through R, programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics R. The large amount of data that are produced through archaeological work show a wide degree of heterogeneity, complexity, and interconnection, making the use of algorithmic methods unavoidable. R is one of the main programming languages of Data Science, and includes a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques, including linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, spatial statistics, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, and others. 

Aim

The R4Rchaeologists programme from University of Pisa will enable participants to conduct statistical analysis and visualization of Archaeological data. It is built around a new paradigm, which takes into consideration archaeologists as both producers and users of digital archaeological data. Attendees will learn the concepts and methods of univariate and multivariate analysis, spatial analysis and data visualization through an integrated use of R ecosystem software packages, statistical and practical principles.