University of Pisa Summer - Winter Schools & Foundation Course

Winter School R 4 aRchaeologists

In the Humanities, the exponential increase in digital documentation requires us to question its management, use, availability to the scientific community, and 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 an 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 to interacting with ICT experts effectively.

The “R 4 aRchaeologists” Winter School aims for a fruitful combination of archaeology and statistics through the teaching of Data analysis, Data mining, and Data visualization techniques. It is conducted through R, a programming language and free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. The large amount of data that is produced through archaeological work shows 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: linear and nonlinear modelling, statistical tests, spatial statistics, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, and others.

Bibliography:

• David R. Carlson, Quantitative methods in archaeology using R, Cambridge University Press (June 26, 2017)
• Nakoinz O. & Knitter D., Modelling Human Behaviour in Landscapes, Springer (2016)

The Winter School will be activated with at least 10 students. The maximum number of participants is set to 40 students.

The Winter School will last 60 hours, from 12 to 23 January 2026, and it will take place on campus in Pisa, at the Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, in Via Trieste, 40.

The program will be activated also in distance learning mode (TEAMS platform).

Aim

The Winter School “R 4 aRcheologists” 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 visualisation through an integrated use of R ecosystem software packages, statistical and practical principles. A key component of the Winter School will focus on using effective prompting strategies encouraging a critical and informed use of Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot.