mash up « Electric Archaeology: Digital Media for Learning and Research

Visualisation in Archaeology

August 21, 2009 Shawn Leave a comment

An interesting project hosted by Southampton in the UK and English Heritage – see the full website here. They’re hosting what looks to be a fascinating wee conference in October:

Visualisation In Context:
An Interplay of Practice and Theory
22 – 23 October 2009
Hosted by the University of Southampton

The 2009 VIA Workshop is designed to probe the intersections between theory (which might traditionally be represented in terms of critique – linear and written) and practice (which might increasingly be expressed in terms of production – non-linear and visual) within the field of archaeology as well as other disciplines from the humanities and the sciences.

Check out the VIA showcase:

Online Research Showcase

Centred on the visualisation of data in both archaeology and the wider fields of the social sciences, arts, and science and technology studies. Like the bibliography, these summaries aim to link practitioners across disciplines, highlight innovative visual projects, and offer a platform for future planning and discussion of best practices around archaeological visual method and theory.

		Archaeology and Community Museology: Ancient Egyptian Daily Life Scenes in Museums
		Gemma Tully University of Southampton

		Choreographic Morphologies: Interdisciplinary Crossovers in the Use of Digital Visualisation Methods in Dance and Archaeology
		Helen Bailey, Stuart Dunn, James Hewison, Martin Turner King’s College London University of Bedfordshire University of Manchester

		Fractured Media: Challenging the Dimensions of Archaeology’s Typical Visual Modes of Engagement
		Sara Perry University of Southampton

		Framing Machu Picchu: Science, Photography and the Making of Patrimony
		Amy Cox University of Florida

		Imag(in)ing the Other at Dura-Europos
		Jennifer Baird Birkbeck College, University of London

		Institutionalising Images: Early Visualisation Networks in Aegean Archaeology
		Deborah Harlan University of Sheffield

		Interactive Panoramas and 3D Modelling Based on Panoramas
		Karol Kwiatek, Martin Woolner, Simon Standing, Jes Martens University of Plymouth, Institute of Creative and Cultural Industries University of Oslo, Norway, Museum of Cultural History

		OKAPI Island in Second Life
		Ruth Tringham, Noah Wittman, Colleen Morgan University of California, Berkeley

		Pervasive Gaming, Education, and Cultural Heritage: Emplaced Interpretive Games at the Presidio of San Francisco
		Ruth Tringham, Colleen Morgan University of California, Berkeley The Presidio Archaeology Lab

		Reflexive Representations: The Partibility of Archaeology
		Andrew Cochrane, Ian Russell Cardiff University University College Dublin

		Representing Prehistory: The Biographies of the Robenhausen Lake Dwelling Collections at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (2008-2009)
		Katherine Cooper University of Cambridge

		SahulTime: Rethinking Archaeological Representation in the Digital Age
		Matthew Coller Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

		Scandalous Artefacts
		Alessandro Zambelli Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London

		Strategies of Visualisation in German Archaeology, 19th-20th C
		Stefanie Klamm Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Humboldt University, Berlin

		The Archaeological Eye: Visualisation and the Disciplinary Foundations of British Archaeology
		Sara Perry University of Southampton

		The Gateway to Sarup
		Niels H. Andersen, Maria Isenbecker, Camilla Bjarnø, Jan Solheim Moesgård Museum, DenmarkSamsøgades Skole, Denmark Supported by the Danish Ministry of Culture and the Danish Ministry of Education

		The Remediated Places Project
		Ruth Tringham, Michael Ashley, Steve Mills, Eric Blind, Jason Quinlan, Colleen Morgan University of California, Berkeley

Categories: archaeology, data management, digital history, environments, immersive learning, making, mash up, media literacy, simulation, teaching, theory, virtual learning environments, virtual worlds

Historical Maps, GIS, and Second Life

August 13, 2009 Shawn 3 comments

I’ve just come across a presentation (in three parts) given by David Rumsey, over a year ago. Worth a view!

“A talk given by David Rumsey at the March 6, 2008 launch of his historical map library and exhibition in the virtual world of Second Life. The talk was delivered at the Rumsey Map Islands in Second Life. All of the maps in the talk can also be seen and downloaded from Rumsey’s free online map library at www.davidrumsey.com“

Part I

Part II

Part III

Categories: GIS, data management, environments, history, making, mash up, second life, simulation, virtual worlds

PMOG is now the Nethernet

March 2, 2009 Shawn 1 comment

Pm0g – the passive multiplayer online game – has gone in for some rebranding, calling itself ‘The Nethernet’.

I rather like the term, ‘nethernet’, as it implies a game played in some sort of metaspace outside (above/below/beside) the regular ol’ internet.

However, in the transition, Nethernet has lost some of the old steampunk aesthetic and charm that Pmog had – whereas before there were scrolls popping up inside your browser, and neo-victorian characters assaulting/assisting you, now there is the same-old same-old web2.0-ish vibe. No doubt the game runs better and is more secure this way, but I rather liked the old charm.

For old time’s sake, here are my missions made back in the Pmog 0.4 era (and rejigged to run under the new regime):

Awww, Sir, how can I find out anything about THAT…

created by doctorg 9 days ago

“How in the world can I find sources on the motivations of ancient Olympic athletes?? Maybe if you told me what to read, then I could answer the question.” read the email. The prof looked away from his computer, groaning inwardly. And no doubt, just parrot back to me a webpage, he thought. Why do students expect to be spoon-fed everything? “Follow me. First, let us search ‘ancient olympics’ properly. Where would you go first, O student at the University of Manitoba with its excellent library resources?’

Ruins on a Distant Planet

created by doctorg 9 days ago

New long range telescopes have identified a distant, inhabitable planet. There appears to have once been intelligent life…

Who Killed William Robinson?

created by doctorg 11 months ago

Between 1867 and 1868, a tiny community at the north end of Salt Spring Island, populated by about 25 families, was the scene of three brutal and seemingly unconnected murders. But were they really unconnected? All of the victims were members of the island’s Black community and all of the murders were blamed on Aboriginal people. Two of the murders were officially unsolved. In the case of William Robinson, an all-White jury found an Aboriginal man, Tshuanahusset, guilty of killing the Black settler and sentenced him to death. Was Tshuanahusset guilty? Why was he convicted? If Tshuanahusset did not kill William Robinson, who did? (Great Canadian Mysteries, by John Lutz and Ruth Sandwell)

Categories: arg, games, mash up

Archaeology: Let’s Build Something New

February 26, 2009 Shawn 3 comments

Colleen throws down the gauntlet:

We must interfere in the public’s understanding in the past. Change it. Surprise, enlighten, destroy when necessary and rebuild a better, stronger, more curious and more passionate interest in what we do. This is my charge to myself and to other archaeologists and to anyone who wants to join us.

What are you doing to Participate?

Good question. What am I doing? At the very least, I hope that what I write in this blog rises to that challenge. Rob MacDougall, in his tribute to Digital History Hacks, writes

…one meta-idea which Bill [read his work now! - SG] taught me is that the loftiest questions about what we do are not separate from the nuts and bolts of how we do it. As above, so below: lofty philosophical issues are practical technical questions and vice versa. Change the tools available to the humanities and you have the opportunity to rethink what the humanities are.

That’s what I aspire to do. I try to find the leading edge of what’s happening in new media, tech, games, society at large, and I try to wonder, intelligently, about how these things intersect with archaeology. Sometimes, it’s archaeology at the edge, sometimes not. Bill is passionate about getting historians to do their own coding. Archaeologists should do the same. Moreover, Bill’s pushing the historians and the humanities people more generally to get into making the digital devices themselves:

In my new research program, I’m exploring ways to build historical interpretations into physical devices and environments. This work is backward looking, in the sense that it engages with the histories of measurement, materials science and machine tools. It is also very present-minded, since I am approaching the project as a form of critical technical practice, building on new developments in ubiquitous / pervasive computing and desktop fabrication. To support this work, I have put together a modest Lab for Humanistic Fabrication with an associated Fabrication Wiki.

Read the wiki. Let’s build something!

At the very least, why not let’s try an open-source approach and make the most excellent Iphone Archaeology App ever? (Link thanks to Colleen)

Categories: archaeology, digital history, humanities, making, mash up

Tweeting Archaeology

February 11, 2009 Shawn Leave a comment

I don’t tweet.

However, like much else on the web, once the idea is out there, people have taken it and run with it. A round-up article from Wired discusses some of the interesting ways people have hacked the service, from a washing machine that tweets when its cycle is over, to house plants that tweet begging to be watered, to a fellow who can turn on his lights from his cell phone by tweeting his house.

An excavation/site/monument that tweeted if visited/disturbed after visiting hours? Hmm.

I also quite liked a related story where Vik Singh of Yahoo! created a mashup that searches tweets for breaking news:

TweetNews takes Yahoo’s news results and compares them to emerging topics on Twitter, in effect using what’s most popular on Twitter as an index for determining the importance of news stories.

In other words, TweetNews uses Twitter to rank stories that are so new they may not have enough inbound links for algorithm-based ranking systems to prioritize them.

The result is a search engine mashup that tracks breaking news stories ranked by Twitter search results, offering faster updates, better relevance and more in-depth coverage than either source by itself.

In a blog post explaining the ideas behind TweetNews, Singh outlines the frustration many felt when searching for news on the Mumbai attacks: “Twitter messages were providing incredible focus on the important subtopics that had yet to become popular in the traditional media… what I found most interesting… was that news articles did exist on these topics, but just weren’t valued highly enough yet.”

So, here’s the TweetNews on Archaeology; and for those who have trouble with dipthongs, the TweetNews on Archeology . We have archaeological blog aggregators… should we be aggregating tweets too? Do you tweet? Why, and how can you extend it to something bigger/better?

The original post describing how the service works – and the source code!! – is here. Vingh concludes:

There’s something very interesting here … Twitter as a ranking signal for search freshness may prove to be very useful if constructed properly. Definitely deserves more exploration – hence this service, which took < 100 lines of code to represent all the search logic thanks to Yahoo! BOSS, Twitter’s API, and the BOSS Mashup Framework.

Results of my TweetNews search this morning:

1 Related Tweets: ChristineFarmer
@NevadaSlim thanks No, I have a PhD in Ancient History and Archaeology.

Categories: environments, making, mash up, tools

Horizon 2009 Report

February 5, 2009 Shawn 2 comments

If you’re not familiar with the Horizon Reports from NMC, then you should take a moment to page through it. The Horizon Reports

describe the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.

The report includes numerous links and examples of emerging projects that really push the boundaries. Two items that caught my eye – my thinking being these would be immediately applicable to archaeology – were the sections on ‘mobiles’ and ‘geo-coded everything’. Some examples already in the pipeline:

Mobile MaaP
http://maap.columbia.edu/m/index.html
Columbia University’s Mapping the African American Past (MAAP) website now includes a mobile version designed to be viewed using the iPhone or iPod Touch. The tool includes text and audio information about historically significant locations in New York City and is designed as a tool for mobile learning.

One could imagine using this kind of application to pre-load all sorts of archaeological landscape information, historic sites, and so on – an augmented reality.

TinyEye Music, Snap-Tell

TinEye Music (http:// www.ideeinc.com/products/tineyemobile/) and Snap-Tell (http://snaptell.com/) use the camera to record a photograph of a CD, video, or book, then identify the artist or author and display that along with reviews of the piece and information on where to buy it

When I was in the business of identifying Roman brick stamp types, I had a reverse-lookup dictionary on my lap and an equipoise lamp, trying to read the letters, trying to figure out what the **** I was looking at. These two apps could serve as models for us, to tie our catalogues of stamps, forms, fabrics and so on, to our phones. Snap! ‘Vernice Nera ware’… Snap! ‘CIL XV.1 861a’

On the Geocoding front:

Collage (http://tapulous.com/collage/), a photo application for the iPhone, lets the viewer upload geotagged photos, browse photos taken nearby, and see photos as they are taken all over the world. Mobile Fotos (http://xk72.com/mobilefotos/) is another iPhone application that automatically geotags photos taken on the device before uploading them to Flickr.

Obvious usefulness when you have the right device! But if you don’t:

The Photo Finder by ATP Electronics and the Nikon GP-1 are examples; they capture GPS data and synchronize it to a camera’s data card to geotag the photos automatically. Another approach is to use a specialized device like the GPS Trackstick (http://www.gpstrackstick.com) that can be carried in a pocket or glove box. It records the path it travels, and the data can be uploaded to create custom maps of walking or driving routes, hiking trails, or points of interest. Geotagging of media of all kinds is increasingly easy to do (or is automatic), and as a result, the amount and variety of geotagged information available online is growing by the day.

And something I’d never heard of, but looks promising:

Virtual geocaching — the practice of placing media (images, video, audio, text, or any kind of digital files) in an online “drop box” and tagging it with a specific geographic location — is emerging as a way to “annotate” real-world places for travelers or tourists; enhance scavenger hunts, alternate reality games, and other forms of urban outdoor recreation; and augment social events such as concerts and other performances. Drop.io Location (http://drop.io/dropiolocation) is one such service. Mobile users can detect the location of nearby drops and retrieve any files they have permission to access.

Some other items:

Geocoding with Google Spreadsheets (and Gadgets)
http://otherfancystuff.blogspot.com/2008/11/geocoding-with-google-spreadsheets-and.html
(Pamela Fox, …And Other Fancy Stuff, 27 November 2008.) This blog post includes step- by-step instructions for embedding a gadget, created by the author, that plots addresses from a Google spreadsheet on a map, providing latitude and longitude data that can be used in other mashups.

The Mapas Project
http://whp.uoregon.edu/mapas/AGN/Guelaxe/fullview.shtml
The fledgling Mapas Project at the University of Oregon is dedicated to the study of Colonial Mexican pictorial manuscripts. Geolocation is being used to link real-world locations to those represented on the maps.

This next one I’ve written about before, but it’s worth keeping your eye on as it develops:

Mediascape
http://www.mscapers.com/
Mediascape is a tool for creating interactive stories that unfold as the viewer moves through physical space and time. By tapping into the GPS on a viewer’s mobile device and incorporating multimedia as well as interactive controls, every mediascape offers a unique experience for each viewer.

I find it very interesting that so many of these emerging approaches focus on merging historical data with geographical data. Public History and Public Archaeology: the next big things!

Next Exit History
http://nextexithistory.org/
Next Exit History is a project by the University of West Florida and the University of South Florida designed to provide geotagged information (podcasts and other media) to assist tourists in finding and learning about historical sites in Florida that are near major interstate highways but often overlooked by visitors.

How Your Location-Aware iPhone will Change Your Life
http://lifehacker.com/395171/how-your-location+aware-iphone-will-change-your-life
(Adam Pash, Lifehacker, 5 June 2008.) The iPhone’s location-aware features enhance a host of applications from social networking tools to geotagging photos taken by the phone to nearby restaurant recommendations.

Delicious: Geo-Everything
http://delicious.com/tag/hz09+geolocation
(Tagged by Horizon Advisory Board and friends, 2008.) Follow this link to find resources tagged for this topic and this edition of the Horizon Report, including the ones listed here. To add to this list, simply tag resources with “hz09” and “geolocation” when you save them to Delicious.

And to close, I’ll admit a degree of ignorance about the semantic side of weblife, but that section should also be of interest -

Tools for making connections between concepts or people are also entering the market. Calais (http://www.opencalais.com) is a toolkit of applications to make it easier to integrate semantic functionality in blogs, websites, and other web content; for instance, Calais’ Tagaroo is a plugin for WordPress that suggests tags and Flickr images related to a post as the author composes it. Zemanta (http://www.zemanta.com) is a similar tool, also for bloggers. SemanticProxy, another Calais tool, automatically generates semantic metadata tags for a given website that are readable by semantic-aware applications, without the content creator’s needing to do it by hand. Calais includes an open API, so developers can create custom semantic-aware applications.

…

WorldMapper

WorldMapper (http://www.worldmapper.org/) produces maps that change visually based on the data they represent; a world map showing total population enlarges more populous countries (China, India) and shrinks those that have a smaller fraction of the world’s population.

Cultural Heritage

The Fundación Marcelino Botín in Santander, Spain is seeking to create a research portal to cultural heritage information about the Cantabria region, using semantic-aware applications to draw connections and combine data from a wide variety of sources, including bibliographies, prehistoric excavations, industrial heritage, and others.

SemantiFind
http://www.semantifind.com
SemantiFind is a web browser plug in that works with Google’s search bar. When a user types a word into the search bar, a drop down menu prompts the user to select the exact sense of the word that is desired, in order to improve the relevance of the results that Google displays. The results are based on user labels on the pages being searched.

Delicious: Semantic-Aware Applications
http://delicious.com/tag/hz09+semanticweb
(Tagged by Horizon Advisory Board and friends, 2008.) Follow this link to find resources tagged for this topic and this edition of the Horizon Report, including the ones listed here. To add to this list, simply tag resources with “hz09” and “semanticweb” when you save them to Delicious.

The entire report is fascinating; hope this snapshot of its contents shoots you off in new directions!

Categories: archaeology, arg, bibliography, data management, digital history, environments, games, history, humanities, immersive learning, literacy, mash up, media literacy, review, tools

Google Maps & Cultural Heritage

January 27, 2009 Shawn Leave a comment

From Cameron Chapman at Mashable comes a list of the 100+ best tools and mashups; below are the ones I’ve selected that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

Cassini – An overlay of 18th century maps over Google Maps that lets you adjust the transparency of either layer. (I’ve got copies of the IGM maps of Central Italy from the early 20th century that were used by Ward-Perkins and the rest of the BSR team during the South Etruria survey – I’d love to get those done similar to this application, but I expect I’d run afoul of one or several intellectual property issues…)

BibleMap.org – An interactive map of locations from the Bible.

World Heritage Google Map – A Google Map of UNESCO World Heritage Sites worldwide that includes photos.

PlaceOpedia – A map of Wikipedia articles linked to their locations.

World’s Creepiest Places – Just as the name implies, this map shows information about the world’ creepiest places.

The Kremer Collection – Use a Google Maps interface to browse a large collection of paintings.

zkimmer – An online publication viewer for newspapers and magazines that uses the Google Maps UI.

Google Maps Recent Edits – A constantly updating map that shows the most recent edits to Google Maps.

We Tell Stories – A map of the stories of six different authors that lets you follow the trail of their stories around the world

Map Builder – A quick and easy Google Maps mashup builder.

MapMyPage – A simple tool to put Google Maps on your website.

Map My Life – An easy to use mashup that will map your life and show a timeline using an XML file you provide.

The Google Maps Image Cutter – A free application for cutting any image into tiles for use with the Google Maps interface.

Automatic Tile Cutter – Another app for cutting any image into tiles to use with Google Maps.

GMapCreator – A tool to make creating thematic Google Maps easier.

Geo Twitter – GeoCode your tweets and plot them on an embeddable map.

Mapmsg.com – An app that lets you put a message (smoke signals, crop circles, etc.) into a map and then email it to anyone.

Dual Maps – Free mapping tools to combine different Google Maps views as well as Microsoft Virtual Earth maps.

maps-for-free.com – Get relief layers for Google Maps free for creating your own mashups.

HeatMapAPI – Use this API to create your own heat maps to overlay Google Maps.

PdMarker – An app to help you easily customize Google Maps marker behavior

The original list lives here

Categories: GIS, archaeology, data management, environments, history, making, mash up, tools

Resistance is Futile: Facebook & Study Groups app

January 24, 2008 Shawn Leave a comment

Like the Borg said, ‘Resistance is Futile’.

So far, I have not succumbed to Facebook. I’m on Linked In, I write this blog, I’m supposed to be contributing to the Ancient Bloggers’ Group Blog, I manage two other blogs for other projects, I keep the RWU website going, I’m building a virtual excavation in Second Life, I’m writing two works of Interactive Fiction (as an experiment to teach historical literacy), I’m trying to figure out how the scenario builder in Caesar IV works so I can create a Forum Novum scenario, I have at least four articles on the backburner, plus sundry agent-based models… oh yes, I teach from time to time too…

But it looks like I’ll have to join Facebook, if only to evaluate what looks like the most useful application of it so far, at least as far as teaching/learning is concerned: ‘Study Groups‘. From Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog:

“Many academic Facebook applications are merely search boxes or other non-social search and information services transposed to Facebook (e.g., JSTOR Search or the countless library search widgets). Study Groups, on the other hand, gets it right by emphasizing the networking and collaboration possible within Facebook.”

From Jane Hart’s Blog:

“Study Groups is a Facebook app. It’s a social project management tool aimed at students to help them to easily collaborate online and in person. It lets them:

* Easily log in and set up a group using their existing Facebook ID
* Discuss assignments in a discussion board
* Share files and notes
* Assign tasks and responsibilities
* Schedule meetings
* Stay up-to-date on the latest group activity”

Having once caused one university’s entire Moodle system to crash during an upgrade (it wasn’t entirely my fault, there was some custom coding in the back end that I didn’t know about!), it is easy to imagine something easy and straight-forward like this (no coding, no installing, no ftp’ing, no worrying about which version of MySql and Php are on the server) evolving quite quickly to become an effective management system for rounding up and sorting out your distance ed, online, or real-world classes.

On a similar note, there is now a WordPress plug-in to achieve the same thing. Look at what Scholarpress is up to:

“ScholarPress is a developing hub for educational WordPress plugins – bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy. At our launch we have two plugins that work independently, but can be combined together.

Courseware
Courseware enables you to manage a class with a WordPress blog, including a schedule, bibliography, assignments, and other course information.

WPBook
WPBook works with the Facebook Development platform to create a Facebook Application (addable by users within the site) using a WordPress blog.

It’s possible to use these together, as Jeremy has done for his History 120 class. Check it out.”

All of this reminds me of a post that Eric Kansa put up the other day, when we were talking about integrating archaeological data into Second Life:

“I think the most interesting things will happen between and among such systems that work together as an ecosystem exchanging data. The capability to draw upon a diverse array of powerful web services (delivering XML-encoded data, or similar formats like JSON) from data providers such as Nabonidus, Open Context, Freebase, GoogleDocs, the Portable Antiquities Scheme and others.”

I think this is what we’re starting to observe, a developing ecosystem where multiple services are fused together, seamlessly, in a way where their use is no longer reserved for the geeks amongst us.

Resistance is futile!

Categories: archaeology, data management, environments, making, mash up

“Making Dead History Come Alive Through Mobile Game Play”

December 14, 2007 Shawn Leave a comment

In an earlier post, I mused on the possibilities for enhancing the experience at an archaeological site by mashing-up the physical and the virtual, and in a subsquent post I presented a lesson plan for doing that in a group setting. A related post concerns the use of Mediascapes to play games at the Tower of London. Seems I’m not the only one thinking along these lines – a paper presented at the Computer/Human Interaction Conference 2007 by researchers at the University of Bari explicitly details an augmented-reality game at a Roman site in Italy (full paper):

“Abstract: This work in progress presents a design approach to digitally enhancing an existing paper-based game to support young students learning history at an archaeological site, by making use of recent advantages provided by mobile technology. It requires minimal investments and changes to the existing site exhibition because it runs on the visitors’ own cellular phones. It is expected that game-play will trigger a desire to learn more about ancient history and to make archaeological visits more effective and exciting. “

Interestingly, they propose to use memory-cards with cellphones, rather than to try and transmit and download information on the fly. Their game (‘Gais’ day in Egnathia’; Egnathia is a Roman city in Apulia) started life as a paper-based game played on the site. With the addition of the cellphones and the memory cards, the designers of the game hope to be able to collect data on the actual game-play data which will assist them in improving the learning experience.

Categories: archaeology, data management, game theory, games, mash up, serious games, teaching

Omeka & Archaeological Survey Project Websites: a good fit?

November 27, 2007 Shawn 4 comments

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Omeka toolkit might have useful archaeological applications. The Omeka people themselves picked up on that thought, and there’s some interesting discussion on their blog on how smaller institutions (‘Beyond the Museum‘) might use Omeka.

“[...]we have always intended Omeka to be used not only for history museum exhibitions, but also by enthusiast collectors, scholars, libraries, and community groups in many fields—really anyone interested in collecting and displaying digital objects in rich visual and interpretive environments. One good example of Omeka’s flexibility is the community site braddockheritage.org, which was developed in concert with CHNM by local volunteers in the Braddock district of Fairfax County, VA.”

I’m reminded again how timely the emergence of this tool is by Bill Caraher’s discussion on the state of archaeological survey project websites:

“[...]survey project websites are a mixed bag[...] It seems to me that since many survey projects tend to be less stable institutional entities with life spans between a few years and a decade and make little investment in semipermanent, physical infrastructure (e.g. dig houses, site guards, fences, et c.), this often translates to instability on the web[...]The preceding links to survey projects show how most (but not all!) have broken links, pictures that fail to appear, or offer little more than static data (nice photos, some maps… in fact, much of this doesn’t count as data at all; of course, some surveys, like the the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project, have archived their data officially in places like the Arts and Humanities Data Service ).

If Omeka can live up to its promise, I could imagine a free-ish hosting service (much like how WordPress hosts this blog) with Omeka installed on it, and survey archaeologists uploading their information to it from wherever they are in the world. I haven’t yet played with Omeka, but if all the various mapping services out there can be mashed in there too, then we can perhaps mitigate the factors that Bill discusses.

Categories: archaeology, data management, making, mash up, tools

Older Entries

Electric Archaeology: Digital Media for Learning and Research

Archive

Visualisation in Archaeology

Historical Maps, GIS, and Second Life

PMOG is now the Nethernet

Awww, Sir, how can I find out anything about THAT…

Ruins on a Distant Planet

Who Killed William Robinson?

Archaeology: Let’s Build Something New

Tweeting Archaeology

Horizon 2009 Report

Google Maps & Cultural Heritage

Resistance is Futile: Facebook & Study Groups app

“Making Dead History Come Alive Through Mobile Game Play”

Omeka & Archaeological Survey Project Websites: a good fit?

Chiron Photo Pool

The Escapist

EDUCAUSE Review

Serious Games Tumblr

Zotero Library: Clio Web

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