00:02.16 archpodnet Welcome back to the architect podcast episode one ninety two segment 2 marco just before we went to break there. You were talking about photography and taking way more pictures than anybody else takes justice ah out of a fear of missing data. Which makes a lot of sense but it does bring up to me another aspect of digital archaeology that a lot of people don't have a very good grasp on so I'm kind of curious what you do? How do you manage your data. What what do you do with all those all those photographs you take and with all the other different kinds of digital data. That you generate the the photogrammetric models the magnetograms. Whatever else. 00:43.20 Marco Wolf And very good question because that's always the main issue and during excavation and for example, ah in ur I started now to have like an ah external ssd hard drive with me. 00:55.15 archpodnet Is. 00:59.69 Marco Wolf With two terabytes and fun about connections. So I can work in as ah, yeah, as fast as possible with the data and can upload all my data onto that hard drive and having all the information on one drive and not. Having the issue of loading it onto my computer uploading it on a backup drive and then not always being sure is everything on the backup or have I forgot something because at some point and the the hard drive on my laptop at least for the moment um is limited. 01:27.27 archpodnet The. 01:38.14 Marco Wolf Um, and has lot of stuff in it. So I cannot put all the information of a project on there. So I'm always trying to make I'm always looking on ways for organizing data. What I try to do is and for example for the photogrammetry. 01:38.48 archpodnet Um. 01:57.77 Marco Wolf Um, I start for the fraud gramity. It's always best to use Raw data which is then transverse into a tiff or d and g which I use with my workflow There's different workflows and everyone has. There't no opinion about it. But for me I I personally like to use d and g images for photogrammetry and after I did that I tried to. Ah yeah I delete jpex I do not take for photogrammetry because I don't need that so I just. 02:36.10 archpodnet Easy. 02:36.73 Marco Wolf Over those I take that I take them when taking them to check if the model does work if I have not time to fully render it and when I know ah okay, it works I delete the jpex to get more space from the point of view how to manage and it's always. Ah. And how in order them and always making sure that only the data I need is in the same file ah corresponding conning um of of um, obvious ways is to compress the data of course. To make it more manageable and what I also do is to rename their different data files with a bridge and stuff and to make always sure when I find like a single find that is kind of lost I'm always knowing ah Kate originally belongs there. So. 03:26.39 archpodnet E. And do you have a rigid naming scheme or file structure that you use for saving all your various kinds of data. 03:34.00 Marco Wolf But Richard. 03:41.66 Marco Wolf And depending on the project. Um the the way the project wants me to to digitize the data the way how they use the date system year month ah day or stuff like that and. Yeah, where I am but normally it's always like I put the date first. The place where I am and I always for each picture when I'm working when for example in ur each individual picture got an own number I've had a list axl. Sheet where each photography was listed when was taken what was to what was seen in the image and what was the original file name when it was transferred from the sd card and what is its name now. 04:28.95 archpodnet Who Wow, that's pretty extensive. 04:35.56 Marco Wolf And to always be sure that when something comes up or when I'm searching for something I always have a list of seeing where is it when did I take it and the the Xl sheet is ah then just the possibility to to upload. 04:43.34 archpodnet Is it. 04:52.49 Marco Wolf Csv data up to a database if that is needed and I so have my own data system where I can upload all those datash sheets. Um. 05:03.00 archpodnet Um, and then how do you transfer all this data and the ah and the excel sheet made it metadata to ah to the dig director whoever needs to to assemble it. 05:16.48 Marco Wolf That depends on how the Dicator Rector wants it to have in in in ua for example I just gave him the axl sheet. Um, so he has the information just in axle and he can use it how he needs it? um. 05:18.25 archpodnet M. 05:33.74 Marco Wolf Some cases we were talking in advance when the database was fully set up at some excavations I optimized my list my axl sheet the way so I can upload it perfectly to this database so that they have and all the information I. 05:45.34 archpodnet Easy. 05:51.28 Marco Wolf Seem necessary for the documentation in the setup they prepared in advance. 05:55.94 archpodnet And the the photographs themselves I mean if they have the excel sheet but they don't have access to the photographs. How do you get the photographs to them. 06:05.62 Marco Wolf Um, that's as something in my workflow each day. There's a backup everything I do every report I write every image I take every model I I work on is uploaded on a backup drive which will then be brought on the same day to the feed director which then. Does it back up for himself. 06:24.48 archpodnet Oh Perfect. So then um, just you do have this very structured and approach that you that you repeat across different projects which I think is is fantastic I think that people need to do that that they you know trying to reinvent how they're going To. Store Files for every project is ah is a non-starter. It's a way of losing data. Ah how much time do you end up spending just managing your data at the end of the day when you're in the field and how much of that spills over to after the field work or do you get everything done day day by day. 06:59.59 Marco Wolf Ah, normally um, my feud went in the field after coming back from Excavation Ah, most of the day is then set up in managing the data and it always depends on how much. Um, is produced during the day you know it as Well. There are some days where it's kind of boring. There's some pottery collections brought in and maybe 1 or 2 pictures. So. There's not much to work afterwards. But. 07:22.40 archpodnet Um, she. 07:31.12 Marco Wolf In some days especially on the last week where you want to finish everything and be sure that you documented everything. There's lots of stuff coming and um I remember on my ur for example, the last example on my last day where I finished the documentation I took. 120 images excavation photographs and to document the ah ah yeah, the situation at the end of the season and all those have to be renamed put into my axle sheet and have to be described and of giving all the information. 07:51.94 archpodnet Is. This is. 08:07.42 Marco Wolf I need I Believe what's necessary So on those days it took me a long time but and normally I always finish on the very day itself as so with writing reports and stuff. Um, yeah normally I'm always on. 08:09.16 archpodnet Easy. 08:17.32 archpodnet Listen. 08:26.41 Marco Wolf They can always finish the whole documentation that needs to be done on the day on the same day and having nothing have to work afterwards except for photogrammetry, especially the small find photogrammetry sometimes takes a little. More work since ah sometimes there's issues with noise in the dense Cloud which have to be deleted and stuff like that and the nearer you get to the end of the excavation you have no time for such detailed work. So You say you keep you take the images. 08:51.98 archpodnet Moving. 09:02.40 Marco Wolf Make sure that ah you can render a model with those images but you bring them back to ah, bring them back home and then work with them back at home. But ah, the feed reports and the the images and my descriptions of small finds and the like will always be done on the same day on the. And some cases maybe shift on to the next day but then try to never be to never carry work longer than two days and normally gets even. 09:31.32 archpodnet That's good that takes a lot of discipline to do it like that. But I think that that again I think that's the appropriate way to work with one's data as much as one can I mean illness and other unexpected things always crop up in the field. But. But if you have a system like that in place that that really I think helps in the long run I'm going to switch gears here because after I left or I went up to Lagosh and and did a number of different projects there that was working out but the new one that I was working on was magnetomery listeners to the podcast would have heard me talking about that on the last episode. After u you went down to uruk to do magnetomemetry and you're much more experienced of magnetomery than I am I want our listeners to know but can you tell them a little bit what you're doing there. How much you've worked with magnetomery in the past and just give us a little overview of what you're doing when you went to uru. 10:22.55 Marco Wolf Ah, yes, and yeah, experience wise maybe in in in taken when run away I started compared to you and but I'm also just still at learning stuff and or ah for when I learned back in. 2017 my second year of studying and there was a class where they yeah showed us and pretty much every geophysical and prospection method and from magnetnatomemetry to. 10:50.50 archpodnet Is. 10:57.73 Marco Wolf Gpr um, yeah, ErRt and and stuff like that which we can use in the field. How does it work technically as much as we could understand that with us no further background of the the physics and what's other problems with that and there I met. Professor yukfasbender from the from munich who is ah who was a ah professor here at the university are still and still giving classes. Um and he is a professor for geophysics and he is in the he's working with archaeologists since. I believe the 1980 s and doing magnettrometry prospection pretty much everywhere and he kind of um and he's always in search of students especially from the archeologists that he can take in the field to teach them and to have. 11:36.90 archpodnet E. 11:55.17 Marco Wolf Ah, assistant. And yeah I was lucky enough that he brought me with him and since 2018 I am regularly with him at least once a year and then ah prospection everywhere. We went to ah Russia when that was still an option. Ah. To ah Pakistankistan Tojikistan and lots of times we were and we were in Iraq in Georgia and stuff like that and always working with total feed magnetometries and magnettimemeters and um, this year we went in the second half of. November we went to uruk um as part of a project with the german archaeological institute where we tried to add to the magnetno metometry data that yurk already put up in the years since 2001 so and he already started this project back. And the early two thousand s which then had to stop and is now ah back since 2016 and every year he tries to be now down there to add up and trying to get the whole amount prospected which is a five hundred hectare ah I don't know what's an acres and it's enormous and and now after ah I don't know now 7 years or 7 prospection campaigns were at one fert. Maybe a little bit less so it takes a lot of time and. 13:15.32 archpodnet Beast. Ah. 13:32.51 Marco Wolf Yeah, just year we came back to get more data about the ah lower city and then and of ah west of Oro since from the City itself. We know lots about the the Holy buildings at the the center of the city which were excavated since the early. Nineteen Hundreds by are here by mostly German archaeologists. Um, but we don not know anything about the structure of the kennels or the houses of the yeah normal people when you want to say it like that that built all those huge temples. 14:09.66 archpodnet M. 14:11.37 Marco Wolf And that was what we are interested in to understand the layout of the city If. There's roads that are set up in advance or is that is it a city that was yeah, kind of grew with time and the channels and that's ah if we are very interested in water waste systems of the. Ancient near East and that's what we are mostly focused right now so we wanted to get at much of this main channel that comes from the north and goes down on the the west side of the city. 14:31.73 archpodnet Um. 14:40.36 archpodnet Oh fascinating I have some follow-up questions for you. But why don't we take a little break here and and I'll ask you them on the other side.