Preserving memories: How a new approach to archaeology became a model for interdisciplinary research at USF

By Dakota Galvin, College of Arts and Sciences

Twenty years ago, long before digital technologies reshaped the study of human activity, Professor Davide Tanasi recognized that his field was on the verge of a transformation — one that would redefine how archaeologists ask questions and interpret the past.

“I became convinced that archaeology was about to become a digital and analytical science,” Tanasi said. “If I did not move with it, I would spend the rest of my career reading data that other people had produced.”

That realization reshaped his career and eventually led to the creation of the Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx) at the University of South Florida, where he applies 3D digital techniques and visualization for the documentation, analysis, interpretation and online dissemination of global cultural heritage sites and historical and archaeological collections, emphasizing those that are endangered, inaccessible or underrepresented. 

A new kind of archaeological science

When hired at USF, Tanasi’s task was clear: put the university at the forefront of digital scholarship and build a national center of excellence in the field. IDEx is what that mandate became. Since its founding in 2022, the work has spanned around the world — from documenting Roman villas in Sicily and Calabria, to excavating a domestic complex in Malta, to preserving endangered heritage across Florida. 

But the institute’s identity is rooted in something deeper than geographic reach. Tanasi doesn’t describe himself as a “digital archaeologist,” even though he helped define the field at USF. He calls himself an archaeological scientist, and the distinction matters.

"The tools are not the subject,” Tanasi said. “Applying computer science and chemistry to ancient material culture is.” 

Digital exploration, in his view, is not about adopting new technologies for their own sake. It’s about transforming what questions archaeologists can ask.

“These tools let us answer old questions that had been unanswerable and formulate new questions that nobody thought to ask.”

That philosophy shaped IDEx from the beginning. What began as a digital‑forward archaeological laboratory has become an interdisciplinary institute whose methods now support forensic anthropology, environmental research, museum conservation and community heritage projects — not because the tools changed, but because the questions did.

IDEx’s most impactful work often emerges through collaboration. Over the past year, the institute has partnered with several units across USF, includingthe Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science (IFAAS) on forensic anthropology, the Living Heritage Institute on the Black Cemetery Network and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment (IASCE) on palaeobotanical research in Malta. None of these projects could have been accomplished by either entity alone.

Just as importantly, Tanasi noted, they weren’t mandated from above; they happened because people found each other, and in one case because graduate student Aiden Eyoward took the initiative to make it happen.
 
“He did not wait for me to arrange anything. He went and built the collaboration between IDEx and the Florida Institute for Forensic Anthropology and Applied Science (IFAAS) himself,” Tanasi said.

Eylward’s background in biological and forensic anthropology shapes the way he approaches digital work at IDEx.

“I’ve always been interested in the physical evidence we use to understand people and their experiences,” Eylward said.

Through 3D digitization — structured light scanning, laser scanning, photogrammetry and drone-based visualization — he focuses on documenting subtle changes in physical materials, whether weathering on bone or the surface of an archaeological object.

“I’m asking a similar question in both cases,” Eylward said, “which is how do we capture enough information that someone can meaningfully study this material later?”

Preserving memory before it disappears

The stakes of this work transcend archaeology, reaching into questions of memory, access and what is lost when heritage goes unrecorded. Since its founding, IDEx has done work on the Amache Japanese American internment camp, at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center and on historic Black cemeteries in Pasco and Polk counties. These sites share one reality: their histories were disappearing.

“Places and objects were disappearing while nobody was recording them,” Tanasi said. “Endangered heritage is lost outright. Inaccessible heritage loses its relevance, which is a slower kind of loss but ends in the same place.”

Left: IDEx equipment set up at the Amache Japanese American internment camp in 2022. Right: An IDEx staff member scanning the American M-4A3E8 Sherman Tank at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in 2023. Photos courtesy of IDEx.

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That commitment to preserving memory is something IDEx alumni Stephan Hassam — now an Assistant Professor at Randolph‑Macon College — witnessed early in his career, in a moment that showed him how powerful access to heritage can be. During a project in Alessandria della Rocca (Sicily), he and his colleagues used virtual reality to share their scans of the town’s central church with members of Tampa’s Sicilian community, giving people a chance to step back into a place many had not seen since childhood.

“One elderly woman in particular came out of the experience with tears in her eyes and explained that she had not been to that church since she was a little girl, and was able to remember the feeling of being there by experiencing it on the headset,” Hassam said. “She thanked us profusely, and I knew then that the work we were doing was impactful and mattered.”

For Tanasi, that emotional weight is familiar. While he has handled thousands of artifacts, one object in particular stays with him from the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center: a striped prison uniform from a concentration camp with the number still on it.

“Scanning it felt different from scanning a Roman amphora, and it took me a while to work out why,” Tanasi said. “With an amphora, you are recovering information. With the uniform, you are handling something that was made to erase a person and replace them with a number – and the number is still there.” 

Project manager Sarah Hassam sees that same responsibility in every project the institute undertakes.

“I learned after some time doing project work that — on top of the research and data products — our projects have the outcome of conserving and caring for human memory,” Hassam said. “Preservation is essentially at the core of every project we do.”

Training the next generation 

Fifty-seven students have so far matriculated through IDEx, from undergraduate to graduate-level interns – mostly from the Departments of History and Anthropology , but also students from the College of Design, Art and Architecture. The internship is deliberately open. 

“If you enroll, you are in,” Tanasi said. “You can’t tell in advance who will be good at this. Some of the best people we have had arrived knowing nothing.”

The core research team, however, is more selective.

“What I look for at that stage is not talent, which is common,” Tanasi said. “It is commitment, which is not.”

All students leave with the ability to operate the equipment, process and analyze the data, manage digital collections, work with an outside partner and evaluate what an AI system tells them. None of this, Tanasi points out, is specific to archaeology alone, which is the entire point.

"Our interns come from History, Anthropology, and Design, Art and Architecture, and they all leave with the same toolkit," Tanasi said. "When our work expanded into forensic anthropology, the methods carried over directly. That is the proof: we use the past to train people for the jobs of the present."

As for what these students do after graduation, their paths stretch across both academia and industry. Some continue in archaeology, while others take the same technical training into environmental consulting, or cultural heritage work.

Stephan Hassam’s career shows just how far that training can carry a student, shaping not only the work he does but the scholarly identity he built from it. He credits IDEx with shaping the kind of scholar he became and the academic niche he occupies today.

Left: Tanasi with Hassam at Hassam’s graduation ceremony in 2023. Right: Hassam at Malta during the 2026 field season as IDEx’s Research Associate. (Photos courtesy of Stephan Hassam)

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“I credit all of my success to the work that I did at IDEx,” he said. “My profile as a junior scholar is what IDEx made it, an expert in an intersection between technology and cultural heritage that is becoming a stock standard part of the practice. More and more departments need someone who can keep up to date with the times, and I am one of them.” 

The summer of 2026: Three projects, two countries, one team

The 2026 field season marked a turning point for the Institute. Throughout the summer, IDEx ran three international projects — in Sicily, Malta and Calabria — and for the first time, graduate students led the field work.

“In the first season, I was the one holding the instruments,” Tanasi said. “This summer, none of them were just assisting — they were responsible for things. That is the real measure of where we are. Not that we can do more, but that more people can do it.”
That shift was visible across all three sites. At Tellaro, students moved from cautious beginners to confident excavators, uncovering a new mosaic, a staircase to an upper floor and evidence of nearly 1,800 years of continuous occupation. 

Project manager Aiden Eylward moved between excavation and geospatial documentation, creating daily orthophotographs and 3D records as the site changed. His training in biological and forensic anthropology shaped the way he approached the work. 

“There’s always an awareness that you may only get one opportunity to document something in its current state,” he said. “Once a layer is excavated, that exact context is gone — so the record you create becomes the only way someone can understand it later.” 
At Rabat, they joined a pilot collaboration with paleobotanists, testing whether an urban Roman house could produce a continuous environmental record tied to secure stratigraphy. And at Casignana, invited by Italian heritage authorities, they documented one of the Mediterranean’s largest villas — 5,000 square meters — in a single week.

The leadership was clearest in the day‑to‑day challenges of fieldwork. Across Tellaro, Rabat and Casignana, the hardest problems weren’t academic — they were logistical. Each site required different instruments, all of which had to be shipped, insured and hauled through customs. And the Mediterranean heat in June strained both people and equipment, limiting how many hours a day the team could work.

“You solve it by planning around the conditions instead of fighting them,” Tanasi said. Much of that planning fell to Sarah Hassam, who handled scheduling and equipment logistics across the three sites while excavating alongside the team.

My colleague told me I'm good at estimating how long tasks will take," she said. "It's very useful when your fieldwork usually involves objects and places you've never seen before."

 When devices overheated or a component didn’t arrive, it was the students who rearranged the day, decided what could be recorded in the cooler hours and worked around equipment that wasn’t cooperating.

“That is a skill I cannot teach in a classroom,” he said. “And it is worth as much to an employer as anything technical. A person who can keep a project moving when the conditions are against them is useful anywhere.”

Looking ahead: The future of preserving the past

Just as he anticipated the shift in the field of archaeology over a decade ago, Tanasi continues to look ahead — toward new questions, new collaborations and new ways to preserve memory before it disappears.

For him, the work of IDEx is only beginning.

In five years, he hopes to see the institute recognized among the leading institutions in the country for digital archaeological science — not only for its fieldwork, but for the interdisciplinary model it has built at USF.

“I want IDEx to work as a bridge between the College of Arts and Sciences and the rest of the university,” Tanasi said.
“There is no reason to stop at the College line. As research partner IDEx can help design a project, contribute to the grant proposal, train the students who carry out the work and deliver results in a form people can actually use. I would welcome that conversation with anyone at USF."

If you want to support the Institute for Digital Exploration’s future in the field, visit USF Foundation.