A comic strip via AI about archaeology

This article by Robert Gonsalves details his experiment trying to develop and generate the artwork for a comic strip. It’s very cool, so I thought what the hell… I’d give it a shot. I have an account with OpenAI, so let’s generate some magic! Concept, Scene, & Dialogue First step: let’s get a title. In […]

The Resurrection of Flinders Petrie

The following is an extended excerpt from my book-in-progress, “An Enchantment of Digital Archaeology: Raising the Dead with Agent Based Models, Archaeogaming, and Artificial Intelligence”, which is under contract with Berghahn Books, New York, and is to see the light of day in the summer of 2020. I welcome your thoughts. The final form of […]

Romans Must Die – chapter draft

[a draft for the VALUE Project volume. Expect changes.] Romans Must die Shawn Graham Carleton University Archaeologists have been simulating past societies via computation for decades (cf Wurzer et al 2015; Costopoulos and Lake 2010 for recent overviews). It is nothing new for us to perform a kind of practical necromancy to raise the dead […]

The Original Big Data

I’m speaking tomorrow at Carleton U’s Data Day. I’m the only historian/humanist/archaeologist/whatever on the ticket. I can’t even stay for the full event, because I teach (my #hist3907b students are showing off their term projects!). Last year, I felt the speakers at the event were dismissive towards the humanities. https://twitter.com/mcburton/status/459336099962167296 So when I was asked […]

#hist3812a video games and simulations for historians, batting around some syllabus ideas

I’ve been batting around ideas for my video games class, trying to flesh them out some more. I put together a twine-based exploration of some of my ideas in this regard a few weeks ago; you can play it here. Anyway, what follows below is just me thinking out loud. The course runs for 12 […]

Desert Island Archaeologies

You’ve been castaway on an uncharted desert isle… but friendly dolphins deposit a steamer trunk full of books on the shore to keep you occupied, the exact ten you’d pick. Thus the premise of Lorna Richardson’s new public archaeology project: Desert Island Archaeologies. Turns out, I was the first castaway. You can read my ten […]

Interview by Ben Meredith, for his article on procedurally generated archaeology sims

I was interviewed by Ben Meredith on procedurally generated game worlds and their affinities with archaeology, for Kill Screen Magazine. The piece was published this morning. It’s a good read, and an interesting take on one of the more interesting recent developments in gaming. I asked Ben if I could post the unedited communication we […]

Some Assembly Required: teaching through/with/about/by/because of, the Digital Humanities (slides & notes)

I’m giving a keynote address to the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education conference, at Carleton on Thursday (10.30, River Building). I’ve never done a keynote before, so I’ll confess to being a bit nervous. ‘Provoke!’ I’ve been told. ‘Inspire! Challenge!’ Well, here goes…. These are the slides and the more-or-less complete speaker’s notes. I […]

Why I Play Games

(originally posted at #HIST3812, my course blog for this term’s History3812: Gaming and Simulations for Historians, at Carleton University). I play because I enjoy video games, obviously, but I also get something else out of it.  Games are a ‘lively art’; they are an expressive art, and the artistry lies in encoding rules (descriptions) about […]