The Plan

I’m moving up in the world. The plan is to join the department of faculty training and development at Grand Canyon University in Arizona as a faculty specialist – putting all my online nous to work, helping other faculty make their online classes successful. Hooray!

Also, Rob MacDougall writes:

Bill Turkel and I, along with Brock University’s Kevin Kee and some great collaborators, have been awarded a generous grant for a project entitled “History at Play: Augmented Reality Gaming and the Ubiquitous Past.” The grant comes from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) as part of their Image, Text, Sound, and Technology (ITST) initiative. Basically, we will be using games and gaming models to teach some Canadian and American history and to promote public heritage sites. I’d love to say more about the cool stuff we are planning, but I am mindful of Bill’s injunction to at least cut a demo before posing with a guitar. So this summer we’ll be cutting our demo. I’ve sometimes been reluctant to cross the streams of my history day job and my gaming hobby, but I feel like this is a project I was built to do.

I’m pleased to say that I’m one of the collaborators, and this project should be a lot of fun. Of course, consider the source: anything, after stamped bricks up the yin-yang, would be lots of fun.

Abolish the University. And while we’re at it, High School too

One of the model exams in the new history curriculum being implemented in Quebec, for the grade 8 world history class, asks:

‘Discuss the impact of imperialism in the Belgian Congo.’

This, after a year of project based learning and precious little framework to hang all these disjointed factoids on. Half these kids can’t find their own province on a map; the others think Congo refers to a fruit drink.

Similarly, in Ontario, there is pressure to graduate more students by removing all obstacles: no penalities for plagiarism, no consequences to not doing homework, or missing tests. Failure is not an option.

When this is what we teach our students – that there are no consequences to failure – then there is no point in keeping them in school. Teach ‘em to read and write, and punch buttons on a keyboard, then let them get to work.

We’d cause less damage that way.

(If they want to go to university, let them prove they deserve to be there by writing a standard entrance exam.)

Speaking of universities, and being much less flip, there’s an op-ed piece well worth reading at the New York Times:

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).[more]

It is a stimulating article. My own response to these pressures has been to reinvent myself as an online specialist, with an interest in the power of games for education – a long cry from fieldwork in Italy, but we can’t always get what we want…

I particularly liked his concluding thoughts:

For many years, I have told students, “Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” My hope is that colleges and universities will be shaken out of their complacency and will open academia to a future we cannot conceive.

How would you reinvent the university?

Using Natural Language Processing and Social Network Analysis to study ancient Babylonian society

Also seen:

Using Natural Language Processing and Social Network Analysis to study ancient Babylonian society

In Near Eastern Studies, as in other areas of Humanities, researchers often study corpora of administrative and legal texts to understand economic, administrative, and societal structure, considering the activities of individuals and their interactions with each other. This is often painstaking work, as, for example, in studying ancient Babylonian texts where scholars must first be able to read Akkadian, and then must assemble all the references to people and activities by hand. This process is formally known as prosopography, and is used by many scholars across a range of Humanities research. Now, Professor Niek Veldhuis and Dr. Laurie Pearce are working with IST–Data Services’ Patrick Schmitz to apply some more modern approaches to the problem. They are applying techniques from the fields of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) to extract the names and basic familial relationships of people mentioned in texts, and then to assemble the social network of the people based upon the activities described.

SNA & Prosopography – a match made in heaven. Watch this project!

(cf also:  S Graham, G. Ruffini 2007 ‘Network Analysis and Greco-Roman Prosopography’ in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, (ed.) Prosopography Approaches and Applications. A Handbook. Occasional Publications of the Unit for Prosopographical Research, Linacre College, Oxford.)

When on Google Earth: now in its 21st iteration

The 21st iteration of When on Google Earth has just been successfully won by Chuck Jones – again! The range of periods covered by the game has been quite catholic so far – everything from the modern day to the deepest past, demonstrating the range of interests in archaeology today.

To all of you who have hosted an iteration of the game, what kind of meta information is it generating? Who’s been visiting? How many? Who’s been linking to it?

Does this game have any impact in terms of public archaeology?

Below are my stats for the first post:
862 views total, 342 of those in 2009
4 on average per day in 2009

Hmm. My wordpress stat tools don’t really allow me to get the information I’m looking for.

A google search of “when on google earth” returns 3790 pages.

Full history of When On Google Earth:

Previous winners:

#	Host:	Victor:	Site:	Period:
1	Shawn Graham	Chuck Jones	Takht-i Jamshid / Persepolis terrace, Iran	Achaemenid period
2	Chuck Jones	PDD	Church of Saint Simeon at Qalat Siman, Syria	5th-6th c. CE
2.1	Chuck Jones	Paul Zimmerman	Qal’at al-Bahrain	16th c. CE
3	Paul Zimmerman	Heather Baker	Baraqish (Yathill), Yemen	Minaean
4	Heather Baker	Jason Ur	Mohenjo Daro,	ca. 2600-1900 BCE
5	Jason Ur	Dan Diffendale	Monte Albán, Oaxaca, Mexico	1st-5th centuries CE
6	Dan Diffendale	Claire of Geevor Mine	Segontium, Caernarfon, Wales	77ish to about 390 CE
7	Claire of Geevor Mine	Ivan Cangemi	Carn Euny	ca. 500 BCE-100 CE
8	Ivan Cangemi	Southie Sham	Monks Mound (Cahokia), IL, USA	fl. 1050-1200
9	Southie Sham	Dan Diffendale	Gergovia	fl. 1st c. BCE
10	Dan Diffendale	Dorothy King	Kastro Larissa/Argos, Greece	ca. 1100 CE
11	Dorothy King	Daniel Pett	Utica, Tunisia	8th century BCE–until 2nd Century CE
12	Daniel Pett	Neil Silberman	Caesarea Maritima, Israel	1st century CE–Present
13	Neil Silberman	Chuck Jones	Graceland, Memphis, TN, United States	1939 CE–Present
14	Chuck Jones	Aphaia	Bam Citadel, Iran	pre-6th century BC–19th century CE
15	Aphaia	Daniel Pett	Myrina, Lemnos, Greece	Classical Greek–present
16	Daniel Pett	Paul Barford	Dambulla Cave Temple, Sri Lanka	1st century BCE
17	Paul Barford	Scott McDonough	Rosetta (Rashid), Egypt	Ptolemaic, Mamluk
18	Scott McDonough	Lindsay Allen	Ani, Turkey	Medieval, 10th-14th centuries CE
19	Lindsay Allen	Heather in Vienna	South Shields, England, UK	Roman Imperial
20	Heather in Vienna	Scott McDonough	Suomenlinna/Sveaborg fortress, Helsinki, Finland	1748-present

Review: Waking the Baby Mammoth

Walking the Baby Mammoth: airs on the National Geographic Channel, Sunday, April 26 2009

Not exactly archaeological, so I’m not best placed to comment, but an interesting documentary nevertheless.  It tracks the recovery and study of a baby mammoth, found in northwestern Siberia in 2007.  As charismatic mega-fauna go, few things are more charismatic than a fuzzy baby mammoth, which the film makers instinctively know – indeed, they digitally insert her into a number of scenes. Not just where you’d expect, in recreations of the Siberian steppe from 40 000 years ago, but also into a museum and onto a college campus, where she seems to function as muse for our hero Dan Fisher.

The documentary has two narrative arcs – one, the study of the mammoth, and two, the animistic/philosophical/cultural musings and impacts of its discovery on the gentlman who discovered her, Yuri. This second strain doesn’t work for me, but hey, it does do something we don’t often see in these kinds of discoveries, the effect on the communities in which discoveries take place. Archaeologists, take note.

As for the first arc, it was interesting to see the health precautions taken whilst handling this mammoth carcass. In some locations, a pair of latex gloves seems to be the extent; in others, we get the full ET with plastic tunnels and hazmat suits.

The promotional bumf that came with the preview claims ‘[researchers] hope to compare her DNA with that of other mammoths from the ice age to trace the migrations of mammoth populations over time and help solve the mystery of her species’ disappearance’. We get about 3 minutes of this at the end of the film.

On a final note, it was entertaining to see that, in Northwest Siberia at any rate, the ice age appeared green and verdant, compared with the filming of Yuri’s current address.

Interface, NETSCI09, and MHR

Oh, if I but had the coin to go to conferences… (I’ll tattoo your logo where’er you want: corporate sponsorship?)

Two conferences appearing on the networks and archaeology mailing list this morning:

InterFace is a new type of annual event. Part conference, part workshop, part networking opportunity, it will bring together postdocs, early career academics and postgraduate researchers from the fields of Information Technology and the Humanities in order to foster cutting-edge collaboration. As well as having a focus on Digital Humanities, it will also be an important forum for Humanities contributions to Computer Science. The event will furthermore provide a permanent web presence for communication between delegates both during, and following, the conference.

Delegate numbers are limited to 80 (half representing each sector) and all participants willbe expected to present a poster or a ‘lightning talk’ (a two minute presentation) as a stimulus for discussion and networking sessions. Delegates can also expect to receive illuminating keynote talks from world-leading experts, presentations on successful interdisciplinary projects, ‘Insider’s Guides’ and workshops. The registration fee for the two day event is £30. For a full overview of the event, please visit the website.

And, on the premise that great conferences always take place in fanatastic locations, NETSCI09 this year is in Venice:

The aim of NETSCI is to bring together leading researchers, practitioners, and teachers in network science to foster interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.

They have a subsection on network science and humanities, which I’d love to attend. On a related note, a paper of mine has been accepted for publication with Digital Studies, on re-animating the brick production networks of first and second century Rome -a proxy for patronage networks- with an ABM that generates civil violence: a theory of civil strife through malfunctioning patronage.

And finally, a book of interest:

Greek and Roman Networks in the Mediterranean

How useful is the concept of “network” for historical studies and the ancient world in particular? Using theoretical models of social network analysis, this book illuminates aspects of the economic, social, religious, and political history of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

Bringing together some of the most active and prominent researchers in ancient history, this book moves beyond political institutions, ethnic, and geographical boundaries in order to observe the ancient Mediterranean through a perspective of network interaction. It employs a wide range of approaches, and to examine relationships and interactions among various social entities in the Mediterranean. Chronologically, the book extends from the early Iron Age to the late Antique world, covering the Mediterranean between Antioch in the east to Massalia (Marseilles) in the west.

This book was published as two special issues in Mediterranean Historical Review.

I’ve skimmed through the original special issues, and – I’m happy to be wrong – it seemed to me that ‘networks’ were being used more as a metaphor than an actual theory with methodological implications, as used by such people like Barabasi. (and now I’ll get some angry emails…

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: Education and Pedegogy Issue

There’s a new issue of the JVWR out, well worth a look-see:

Summary:

This edition of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is dedicated to exploring the breadth of designs, pedagogies and curricular innovations that are actually already being applied to teaching and learning in virtual worlds. We encourage participation from a broad range of academics, researchers, educators, and educational practitioners from across the disciplinary spectrum – including, but not limited to: curriculum development, educational administration, distance education, information and knowledge management, instructional technology, e-learning, communication and education, sociology, art education, and visual culture. We strongly encourage submissions that illustrate key findings with examples and case studies; experimental research; pedagogical innovations; and best practices for the integration of virtual worlds technologies into the learning experience.

Conference Announcement: Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World

I look at Roman networks, myself, but the questions being posed by this conference are of wider value to archaeologists and ancient historians more generally. I know some of the participants, and know they do interesting work, so it should be well worth the while! A networks perspective I think has much to offer us, especially when these networks can be explored using theories of evolving networks (see Barabasi’s work, listed at the bottom of this post, or trawl through some of my stuff on ‘publications’):

Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World

6-9 JULY 2009

Organisers: Dr Claire Taylor, Trinity College Dublin
Dr Kostas Vlassopoulos, University of Nottingham

This conference will examine the networks of interaction within and between different groups in the classical and early hellenistic periods. Questions for exploration include:

• What constituted a ‘community’ within the Greek world?
• What networks did people create, belong to, and destroy?
• How were different groups of people interconnected, and how did they negotiate the ‘boundaries’ between them?
• How did communities change in response to social, political, economic impulses?
• How can we use network theory to access the lives and activities of people for whom little traditional evidence survives?

PROGRAMME
Paulin Ismard (Université Paris Est Marne la Vallée; Equipe Phéacie): Networks of communities in classical and hellenistic Athens: cultural aspects.
Claire Taylor (Trinity College, Dublin): Social networks and social hierarchies: towards a model of social mobility in Athens.
Ben Gray (All Souls, Oxford): Exile communities and the citizen ideal in the later classical and hellenistic Greek world.
Kostas Vlassopoulos (University of Nottingham): Free spaces: contexts of interaction between citizens, metics and slaves in classical Athens.
Ben Akrigg (University of Toronto): The metic population in Athens.
Peter Hunt (University of Colorado, Boulder): Ethnic identity among slaves at Athens.
Barbara Kowalzig (Royal Holloway, London): Trading gods and trading networks: economies of trust in ancient Greece.
Vincent Gabrielsen (University of Copenhagen): Naval and grain networks at Athens.
Christy Constantakopoulou (Birkbeck, London): Beyond the polis: island koina and other non-polis entities in the Aegean.
Esther Eidinow (Newman College, Birmingham): Networks, narrative and negotiation: magical practices and polis religion.

If you would like to attend, or require further information, please contact Dr Claire Taylor claire.taylor [at] tcd [dot] ie,
Dr Kostas Vlassopoulos konstantinos.vlassopoulos [at] nottingham [dot] ac [dot] uk,
or see the website: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/cnagw/index.php.

Graduate student bursaries are available to cover the cost of campus accommodation: please contact Dr Claire Taylor if you wish to apply, or download the form from the website: http://www.tcd.ie/Classics/cnagw/index.php

Selected works of Barabasi relevant to a networks perspective:

• Barabási, Albert-László, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else, 2002. ISBN 0-452-28439-2
• Barabási, Albert-László and Réka Albert, “Emergence of scaling in random networks”, Science, 286:509-512, October 15, 1999
• Barabási, Albert-László and Zoltán Oltvai, “Network Biology”, Nature Reviews Genetics 5, 101-113 (2004)
• Barabási, Albert-László, Mark Newman and Duncan J. Watts, The Structure and Dynamics of Networks, 2006. ISBN 0-691-11357-2
• Réka Albert, Hawoong Jeong, and Barabási, Albert-László, “The Diameter of the WWW”, Nature, 401:130-131, 1999

Some More Agent Based Modelling Readings

From the GIS and Agent-Based Modelling Blog at Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, some notes regarding interesting new articles (I’m cribbing freely here, as I don’t have the time at the moment to read the articles myself):

The first is “Design Guidelines for Agent Based Model Visualization” by Kornhauser et. al., (2009) which discusses the importance of visualizing agent-based models. Specifically the importance of visualization in identifying, communicating and understanding the behaviour of the modelled phenomenon. In this article Kornhauser et. al. (2009) comment that many agent-based modellers create ineffective visualizations of their models. This paper provides ABM visualization design guidelines in order to improve visual design with ABM toolkits

[...]

The second article entitled ‘Tools of the Trade: A Survey of Various Agent Based Modeling Platforms‘ by Nikolai and Madey (2009), which offers advice for choosing the appropriate agent-based platform for a specific modelling endeavour. The paper references and extends our own work at CASA “Principles and Concepts of Agent-Based Modelling for Developing Geospatial Simulations.” Specifically the paper reviews a number of toolkits and characterize each based on 5 characteristics users might consider when choosing a toolkit (e.g. programming language , type of license, operating system, domain, user support), and then we categorize the characteristics into user-friendly taxonomies that aid in rapid indexing and easy reference.

The authors have also developed a web-based tool that incorporates all their findings, users input a range of characteristics, and the tool returns a list of candidate platforms that contain those characteristics (such as operating system). The tool is available at http://agent.cse.nd.edu/abmsearchengine.php. Furthermore, Nikolai and Madey (2009), have created a wiki page entitled “ABM Software Comparison,” and it is linked from the main “Agent Based Model” post on Wikipedia which anyone can alter or expand.

The third paper by Heikkila and Wang, which is in press in Environment and Planning B, entitled “Fujita and Ogawa revisited: an agent-based modeling approach” which builds on and extends the work of Masahisa Fujita and Hideaki Ogawa in 1982. The authors employ an ABM approach that seeks to replicate the individual household and firm behaviours that lead to equilibrium or nonequilibrium outcomes but more specifically addresses questions of path dependency and bounded rationality that lie well beyond the scope of the original work of Fujita and Ogawa (1982).

Map of Complexity Science

A clickable map showing all the various strands and evolution of complexity science (including ABM), by Brian Castellani: