As I progress through this course, I find myself increasingly interested in digital archeology. Even though I found Module 2 slightly more challenging, I still felt that I was making steady progress throughout each week. I experienced a few ups and downs in Module 2, but in my opinion finished with more wins than losses.
Week 6 performing the digital excavation changed the way I research. This was week very interesting as it framed researching through websites in a unique perspective. I did not realize how helpful the plugin Hypothesis.is is and how utilizing made my research that much more efficient. I consider this to be a win, and I plan to use this tool again in the future as it kept me more engaged than taking standard notes. This form of research helped me improve my organization and piece together my thoughts when reflecting. I now approach these articles and PDFs with a more confident mindset that I will come away with a better understanding of their content.
Week 7 the politics of data was a challenge. I found this week very interesting as there was a lot of information to ingest. I specifically enjoyed “Promoting data quality and reuse in archaeology through collaborative identifier practices” by Eric C Kansa as it discussed how contextual integrity is important and how poor data management can lead to information loss or misinterpretations. While going through my own notes I found I had a wealth of dark data from notes that I had forgot about or just left have way.
Week 8, though it was technically reading week I spent time researching and learning more about my research topic. I hadn’t planned really to complete any coursework over this time but found myself reading about LiDAR and other articles related to my topic. I used the techniques from Module 1 and my improved digital excavation to gain quite a bit of valuable insight to my topic. With the use of Hypothesis.is I was able to analyze research articles that I had saved to read over but always got lost midway through as I would break off into different streams of thought. The tool helped me save those thoughts where I had them and allowed to keep moving forwarded and come back to them.
Week 9 was one of my favourite weeks so far in this course. I found it super engaging and the use of 3D modelling reminded me of my research project. I really enjoyed researching my model and finding out more context regarding it. The biggest challenge I faced while researching my model on sketchfab was diagnosing if it was a genuine model of an object or something created for media purposes like a videogame. My topic involves the Mayan culture and was difficult to distinguish if it was a genuine object. I was able to overcome this by finding a model that was scanned in the British museum and a footprint that could be traced to the actual object. I found it very interesting that through research I was able to assign context to the object by reading about it in Maya: The Yaxchilán Lintels by The British Museum.
Though Module 2 came with its fair share of wins, it did not come without losses. My biggest failure to note doesn’t fully correspond with the module but to the course as whole. I was unaware that I had not been using my vault correctly and none of my work has been uploading to my Mixa site. I am not sure where I went wrong and want to apologize for the inconvenience. I do plan to rectify this issue over the next week diagnosing where I went wrong in with the vault. Once I have it all sorted, I will be reuploading my notes and reflections.
This course has helped me in ways outside of digital archelogy from researching to structuring my thoughts. I look forward to what Module 3 has in store!
Citations:
E.C. Kansa, &#x26; S.W. Kansa, Promoting data quality and reuse in archaeology through collaborative identifier practices, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119 (43) e2109313118, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109313118">https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109313118</a> (2022).
The British Museum. “Maya: The Yaxchilán Lintels.” Smarthistory, 1 March 2017. Accessed 9 November 2025. <a href="https://smarthistory.org/maya-the-yaxchilan-lintels/">https://smarthistory.org/maya-the-yaxchilan-lintels/</a>

Introduction

Week 1 Reflection

Week 2 Reflection

LiDAR and Archaeology

Lidar detection

How we recreated a lost African city with laser technology

index note

Module 1 Consolidation Reflection

Module 2 Consolidation Reflection

Atomic Note

Literature Note

Process Note

Weekly Journal

00 Introduction

01 Weekly Journal

LiDAR Research

02 Atomic Notes

03 Literature Notes

04 Consolidation

05 Templates