The Use of R Shiny and Other Open-Source Interactive Platforms in Increasing Engagement with Archaeological Research Results

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Advances in the last decade of open-source computation have improved the capability of archaeologists to store, analyze, and visualize ever-increasing amounts of data. Developments in the R and Python programming languages specifically have made once-proprietary radiocarbon calibration, stratigraphic analysis, and statistical modeling available to a wider variety of practitioners with different needs and specializations. In line with other sciences, recent publications by archaeologists have stressed the ability of these open source platforms to foster the sharing of data and code used for analyses needed for transparent and reproducible research. Nevertheless, less attention has been paid to how these same platforms may also facilitate a broader dissemination of interactive archaeological visualizations and tools in research and teaching. This paper will present three vignettes of the use of the R-based Shiny platform to generate an interactive a) regression model selection of archaeological data, b) full-featured SQL-based database use-able in the field, and c) visualization of spatial data using shape files. As opposed to concerns of putting these data back into a 'black box', each of these vignettes will be used to argue that this and analogous platforms encourage more creative engagement with research results beyond original intent than have been hitherto possible.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33128