The second DiKopA Workshop
Last week, I went to the second DiKopA workshop in Darmstadt (I already teased). The theme? “Digital Competencies in Archaeological Disciplines.” Does that sound a bit unusual? Yes, but also: very relevant. For two days, the workshop brought together researchers, teachers, students, and technology experts to discuss archaeology and what we need to do to make it better.
From pen and paper to pixels and platforms
The workshop started with a keynote speech that felt like a report on the latest developments in digital fieldwork. Professor Janoscha Kreppner explained how expectations of documentation are changing, encouraging us to think about what it means to be “born digital”. This set the tone for the rest of the game.
After that, there were presentations about different things, like digitising old photos at the Winckelmann Library and rethinking the value of hand-drawn documents (spoiler: hand-drawn documents are still useful). We saw the CoinFindsViewer in action – a tool that maps ancient coin finds – and a glimpse into Darmstadt’s ongoing architectural research.
The reality of the classroom and what professionals expect
What I noticed most was the difference between what we teach and what we use. Marion Bolder-Boos and Max Landowski presented survey results from archaeology students across Germany. These revealed a gap: most want more hands-on digital training, but most courses are not adapting quickly enough.
This led into a panel discussion that was honest about the problems. People from academia, libraries, heritage offices, and the private sector all agreed that students today need more than just books. They need to be able to repeat experiments, have workflows that last, and know how to handle data ethics. Basically, everything we were never taught.
What does “digital competence” even mean?
On the second day, Kai-Christian Bruhn asked this question directly. It’s one thing to say we need digital literacy. It’s another matter to define what that looks like across different organisations, career paths and research agendas.
Later talks offered practical answers, such as teaching with real-world projects, organising events where people can play and learn coding and gaming, and even setting up a student association (shoutout to DASV e.V.) to support learning at the grassroots level.
None of it felt like a magic solution, but together, it showed us a range of possible outcomes.
Data, Code, and the Archaeologist’s New Toolkit
The final session zeroed in on reproducibility. Dirk Seidensticker and Maria Shinoto explained why version control, modular data design and long-term access are important for transparent research. These things might not be exciting, but they are essential.
Sophie C. Schmidt also showed how she writes her research in RMarkdown. This includes everything from analysing data to writing the first version of a paper. It was like seeing someone’s intellectual life laid out in neat, commented code.
Takeaways (and Thoughts on the Train Ride Home)
As someone who works with both traditional methods and digital tools, this workshop was really useful. We’re at a turning point. We don’t need to decide whether to go digital, we need to figure out how. And that’s messy. But it’s also exciting.
There are lots of reasons to be hopeful: clever tools, interested students, and fun ways to teach. But there’s work to do. We need better structures, clearer definitions, and more room to experiment.
One final thought? The best conversations didn’t happen on stage. They happened while we were having coffee, in the corridors, on the train on the way back. This made me realise how important workshops like this are. They bring us together. They remind us that we’re not coding into the void.
