Little Minions
in Archaeology

About us

Since 2018 the Little Minions are part of the CAA. Our aim is to give small helpers in daily scientific research a strong voice. In our daily work, small self-made scripts, home-grown small applications and little devices significantly help us to get work done. These little helpers often reduce our workload or optimize our workflows, although they are not often presented. Instead we generally focus on presenting the results of our research and happily use our small tools during our research. Therefore the minions focus on these small helpers and we invite researchers to share their tools so that we all may benefit on the CAA conferences. The sessions aim at short presentations (~7 minutes) of small software or hardware solutions, focusing on field work / excavation technology and the associated evaluation. The fields of application are not further restricted. Each presentation should explain the innovative character and mode of operation of the digital tool. The only restriction is, that there are open source or open access tools or the building instructions are freely available. Proprietary products cannot be presented.

One of the main parts of any Minion Session is our ad hoc “Stand-up-Science”! We always invite you to participate and demonstrate spontaneously what you have on your USB stick or laptop.

On the following pages you will find our past and upcoming events, minion documents and a list, where we collect all our minions! You like to share yours, too? Contact us!

Florian Thiery, Ronald Visser, Moritz Mennenga and Birgit Danthine