Hey all,

To give you a little taste of the range of digital archaeologies practiced around the world today, there are a number of sites you could explore beyond blogs, all wielding some iteration of a "Digital Archaeology." Commercial companies/academic centers come to mind off the top of my head. One of the slicker company sites that master a full range of digital imaging technologies is Digital Archaeology, (that's www.digital hyphen archaeology with an .eu suffix, and originator of the image i grabbed!), run out of Poland. They've been around a few years, but their web presence in English has become quite slick. With a strong emphasis on marine archaeology, they offer up some nice digital archaeology eye candy for you to explore. Likewise there is the Digital Archaeology page of L!nk 3D in Germany (that's www.digital hyphen archaeology with a .com suffix). They've been around quite awhile longer but you have to "dig" their site to get at nice content. I should also throw in a few other service providers who have pretty impressive abilities and websites, Including the Center for Digital Archaeology in California, and the Institute of Digital Archaeology (those of the Palmyra Arch), in the UK and US. Ethan Watrall has previously directed a more scholarly learning, training and mentoring focused Institute on Digital Archaeology Method and Practice out of Michigan State University. And of course there are very slick places like CyArk, that talk about Digital Archaeology, or used to, but really have become something so much more.

And as I mentioned in class, there is an entirely separate concept of a Digital Archaeology as archaeology of lost languages and sites of the internet. That's what Digital Archaeology (that's www.digital hyphen archaeology with an .org suffix... really someone should have bought up all those domains, way back when!), run by historian Jim Boulton is all about. We won't really get into this digital-archaeology-as-internet-based-metadata-metaphor, but if you are interested, you can read a couple of blog introductions to the topic here and here. And, of course, where the two concepts overlap, the reading is quite interesting, as in Matt Law and Colleen Morgan's article, here.

Lastly, there is Archaeological Analytics, which is more about promoting and highlighting the digital archaeological efforts of archaeologists to increase the profile of archaeology in social media.

Greetings!

Welcome to our course blog for Winter 2021 on digital archaeology and digital heritage. There are a number of challenges to something like this course... not the least is playing with digital applications, well, remotely, to learn hands on. Sigh, such is the world we are in right now, so we will try to make do with what we have (lemons - lemonade?).

 

But it is also challenging to exploring a digital archaeology and heritage because the subject matter could be, well, anything in the early 21st century to do with archaeological practice, theory, knowledge mobilization, public engagement, and alternative archaeologies! In a sense, then, we get to define what Digital Archaeology means to us as we work our way through this course.

That is not to say there are no examples out there to follow. In fact, "Digital Archaeology" as a concept on the web has been used in very different ways, ranging from "excavating " and re-discovering lost or abandoned web pages and content, to photographic analysis, to various kinds of data mining, to oral history projects, to, yup, archaeology. In fact, when I Google the phrase "Digital Archaeology" (DA) I get more about digital archaeology of the internet or in computers, than I do in doing archaeology digitally, which is surprising, since Google tends to tailor searches based on user preferences.

But I think that DA is more than just a clever term for web based exploration, exhibition, and data mining. For us in archaeology, it is a not well explored dimension of practice that changes practice as it is being employed in practice. From making data accessible, to how it is presented, to engaging with wider audiences, to others using that data, to all the issues of loss, distortion, and mis-representation, I think there are implications to archaeology becoming digital that are worth considering, especially since we are actually trying to go in this direction at Western and at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. So that is what I'm hoping we get to explore and become a little wiser about in this course.

There are, of course, people who blog about digital archaeology (the way we are going to talk about it) and a digital heritage. Many come or go as people move on to new interests, so there are plenty of dated pages to "excavate" out. But a few current ones worth exploring are offered below:

Jeremy Huggett is perhaps one of the most reflexive of people pondering just what a digital archaeology means or not today. And his Blog is well worth exploring and thinking in the vein I hope we explore here in this class. As such, rather than endlessly mining his posts for fodder for our blog, here it is for all of us to follow...:  Introspective Digital Archaeology

Shawn Graham tends to overlap a Digital Archaeology and a Digital Humanities, but that is likely a function of where he works (History dept at Carleton). His blog page is worth reviewing, cuz many ideas he raises we will be talking about, and he is quite good at keeping up to date. He is also the lead inspiration for a useful for the Open Digital Archaeology Textbook, which a lot of folks have contributed to, and thematically covers a lot of the ground we'll be going over in this course. So do check out both his blog and the ODAT: Electric Archaeology; The Open Digital Archaeology Textbook

Other folks working in Canada include Katherine Cook is at the Université du Montréal in the Archaeology Dept. She pursues a wide and eclectic range digital archaeology research interests, usually within the fold of a digital archaeology practice and reflexivity. Her blog has run dormant, but there is plenty on her website to explore, so check it out! Also talke a look at what Peter Dawson, at Calgary, and Neha Gupta, at UBC, Okanagan, are doing.

Colleen Morgan is at the University of York in the UK and thinks a lot about a wide range of digital archaeology and heritage, and art, topics, especially in the context of social media shaping archaeology and heritage. Hers blog page is a good read and worth thinking about cuz she, too, explores many themes we'll be talking about in class. Colleen Morgan

Bill Turkel is a History Prof here at Western, and very much all about Digital history and humanities. His blog is a very helpful exploration of how things like databases, web sites, etc. work, and is written for people who are not computer scientists. Worth checking out Bill Turkel

Well, that's enough for the moment... you can find much more! Please start cruising the internet and add pages you think are worth looking at in posts. That’s a good way, too, for you to start planning what you might like to post about, which you should consider start doing as of now. I've left up a few posts from the last times this course was taught as a bit of an example, but anything from links that inspire... or anger... you, to cutting edge technologies, to cool toys being announced, to online exhibits, etc., are all fair game to talk about, though try keeping within the confines of the course itself… the challenge of a Digital Archaeology, as is the challenge of the digital age, is being overwhelmed with information and not really knowing what to do with it.

 

 Here is a Post I did for the class the first time it was taught. Issues related to 3D printing are... complicated.  So here is a primer on the kinds of notions we'll be exploring in class, in this case related to 3D printing. Of course, note that I wrote this some 6 (yikes) years ago, so i am sure the issues are even more complicated, and thinking much more sophisticated now, almost as though tit would be good to blog away at what has changed since.... hmmmm!

 

There are a lot of sides to 3D printing archaeology...

Ever since Sustainable Archaeology obtained a 3D printer, I have been struggling with very conflicting thoughts on this capacity we have. On the one hand, I'm dazzled by the technology and think it pretty darn cool to print out objects to size or scaled... or even reassembled. On the other hand, the ability to print a 3D model - to "adjust" or improve on the original artifact - feels a bit like a line being crossed, raising for me a host of questions about the limits of dissemination, who should be getting a say on what can and can't get printed, the obvious "let's make some money from these" sentiments that people seem too quickly to rush towards, etc. On the other hand, I find we are asked all the time by Descendant groups asking for prints of artifacts so they can have a copy, it can be displayed in a Council office, they have a copy of an object repatriated and reburied, or a desire to have a printed copy of an important object in a ceremony. So I appreciate that this is a complex topic.

One recurring strand of these musings has been an uncertainty I have over the increasing tendency for Museums and cultural institutions to widely make 3D models of objects in their holdings accessible online. Clearly part of the impulse to provide wide access and appreciation of the heritage, and at least in some cases embracing the principles of Open Access, I was intrigued by a post I stumbled across recently that talked about how the British Museum has decided to allow people to download and print 3D models of select artifacts from its holdings.

As the post notes, other Museums are also following suit. Of course, the Smithsonian is all about digitizing millions of its holdings, and you can print a bust of Abraham Lincoln... or Barak Obama, to your heart's content! This is part of a broader trend of Museums to digitize art and collections, and make them accessible and even inviting people to be creative in repurposing the images. Generally, the sentiment, reflected in comments such as by Nina Simon, is that this is a good thing, creating access where there was none before. And there are plenty of examples of why printing is good for heritage science.

The British Museum is providing access to these models through Sketchfab, Which is an upload and share site for all kinds of 3D models... you can come across artifacts, sites and other heritage features available as 3D models, some done very well, some less so. More notable is Threeding, a web page that purports among other things, to preserve the past by allowing you access to high resolution 3D models of various types of heritage objects, including a few Egyptian objects. Apparently Threeding is Now partnering with Artec Group to expand its offerings of heritage objects.

So here's the thing. The British Museum, Smithsonian, and others scan objects that are clearly a "global" cultural heritage, mostly of other nations and peoples, making that accessible to be consumed and repurposed by anyone anywhere. Indeed, the objects the British Museum has put up so far are all not of English heritage, and speaks to the legacy of the global harvesting of heritage objects over that last few centuries by the British colonial empire. Over at Threeding, a perhaps more insidious feature is charging a fee for 3D models (Roman gravestones for 15-25 dollars a pop... Aztec figure free!). My radar starts going off when I see these trends, as I wonder what the implications are for things like appropriation and Intellectual Property (IP). Certainly the broader implications of how 3D printing can really mess with IP and copyright is a very hot topic for discussion, from Slate Magazine and Zdnet, and even the Financial Times sees in 3D printing the emergence of the next Napster challenge to copyright laws (see also 3Dprint). Of course, this makes makes me wonder if IP lawyers aren't chomping at the prospect for the "business" this will generate?!

But what of 3D printing cultural heritage? Well the idea is that the "good" of preservation is at least one strand driving concerns to ensure digitization, and even printing, for archaeology - and for museums - continues, but the ethics are complicated. And the logics behind copyrighting 3D prints a dog's breakfast of contradictory thought, as seen here, and here. But, as Threeding makes clear, making money is going to drive justification for providing access too. This all plays into a broader question of the intellectual property of archaeological objects... cuz now Indigenous images, forms of ceramic decoration, structures, and, really, anything physical that is archaeology, and also someone's or everyone's heritage, can be continually re-purposed, not just as images but as objects too.

So of course I have no answers here, just musings! And I will no doubt be musing about these ideas in class, and picking your brains for your thoughts, too. And hey, kicking around these ideas will also help shape what I say writing on this topic, thus requiring me to need to cite you all to ensure I don't misappropriate our collective brainstorming! So let me know what you think!

It's all Greek, to Digital Archaeology

 

 Hi all,

Came across this promotional post about digital applications in Greek archaeology. includes a little of everything, all done very well! They don't unfortunately, actually provide any digital fly through links, despite the promise, but here is one for you to get a sense of that, too:

That, of course, is the real challenge, you'll find, in executing effective digital archaeology and digital heritage applications and research. What I see in reading through this post, is the money, inter-disciplinary co-ordination, and, of course, economic agendas (e.g., tourism), fuelling such efforts. Greece has long been a leader in digital applications in archaeology (as well as many places in Europe), and scholarship often goes hand in hand with promoting and celebrating Mediterranean heritage as something to see and experience. That is pretty plainly evident in the overview here!

Automatic Interpretation and Documentation of Ceramics

The ArchaAIDE Project is run by a consortium of institutions and professionals (Universities of Pisa, Barcelona, York and Cologne, Italian National Research Council, School of Computer Science at the University of Tel Aviv and IT and archaeology professionals) and it is funded by the European Union. 

The goal of ArchAIDE is to create "new system for the automatic recognition of archaeological pottery", which is usually the most common artifact found in archaeological sites. Pottery analysis yield a great amount of socio-economic information, but the interpretation of ceramics requires high skills, experience and time. 

In order to streamline the process and make knowledge accessible wherever, the ArchAIDE project will develop an app for smartphones and tablets. The app will allow archaeologists to take pictures of potsherds and, connceting to a database, it will recognize the sherd and retrieve information about the specific ceramic type. In addition, recognized sherds will be stored and shared. The app will also enable archaeologists to generate an electronic document about the artifact, reducing the amount of paperwork.

Such an app might revolutionize fieldwork, but is it possible to replace skilled scholars with an app? Does a streamlined interpretation and classification process have only advantages or do we still need to be reflexive when we are studying artifacts? Could this app reduce the interpretation of material culture to a mere "labelling" process?

Just who is "Fringe" and who is "Mainstream"?

We're going to be talking a lot about what some characterize as fringe theories of the past, present, and how that shapes the world around us as we look at "alternative" archaeology sites.

As always seems to be the case for me (thanks Google!), as you send me the links for the various web sites you want to review, my social media feeds start to fill up with "sites/posts I might like" which I really would rather not. There sure seems to be a lot of places on the web to explore how the past is understood in the present that isn't at all familiar to me... making the "fringe" seem, well, more abundant than the word might otherwise imply.

Well there may actually be something to this sense of pervasiveness, after all. Jason Colavito tends to explore such things as a debunker of fringe theories and whose site shares a lot in terms of format and intent, if counter messaging, with the fantastical heritage devotees' web sites we are looking at in class. In a recent blog, he reports on a fascinating survey out of Chapman University, in California. As I don't think anyone chose his site as a site for their review, I'm going to assume I'm safe in talking about his post here!

Jason is talking about the results from a portion of the 4^th annual American Fears Survey, carried out and very recently released by Sociologists and Political Scientists at Chapman. This survey looked at a lot of different aspects of the fears Americans are willing to acknowledge in 2017. And perhaps it'll come as no surprise given the age we are living in, but the results and trends generally are worrisome and, well, frightening.... basically, people are more frightened by more things about and in the world these days. You can view a brief video describing the main results of their findings from 2017 here.

Jason's blog dug down into the survey and focused on the section that explores Paranormal America and paranormal beliefs. As he points out, based on the survey results from the last 3 years, belief in various paranormal theories, from advanced ancient civilizations like Atlantis (55%, up over 15% in a year), to the presence of aliens in the ancient past (35% up 15% in two years), to Bigfoot (16% up 8% in two years... sorry Jeff!), belief in fringe or fantastical theories has risen markedly in a short period of time. In fact, perhaps the most surprising result for me from the Chapman survey was the researchers' comment in this section noting "...we find that only a fourth of Americans (25.3%) do not hold any of these seven [paranormal] beliefs."

As Jason notes: "People write to me all the time to ask why I bother to talk about “crazy” topics like aliens and Atlantis. I am flabbergasted to report now that it is because more Americans now believe in Atlantis than do not." Yikes! For us, this realization has to be a sobering counter to our disciplinary warm and fuzzy notions that archaeology advances a collective, and presumably better, understanding of the past.

Why there might be such a rise in people willing to acknowledge holding such beliefs, and the implications that has for classifying just what are "fantastical" archaeological theories and what are "mainstream," is a conundrum, and no doubt a theme we'll keep returning to in the weeks ahead!