ARKDIS på Humanistportalens stafettblogg

Denna vecka bloggar forskare från ARKDIS på Humanistportalens stafettblogg. Humanistportalens syfte är att synliggöra och tillgängliggöra aktuell forskning inom svensk humaniora. Humanistportalen stöds av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond och har tre huvudsakliga verksamhetsområden: stafettbloggen, publicering av artiklar, och pedagogiskt material med humaniorafokus för undervisning i gymnasieskolor.

CfP: Archaeological Information in the Digital Society

Call for presentations: Archaeological Information in the Digital Society

Archaeological Information in the Digital Society is a part of the series of annual Digital Heritage conferences hosted by the Centre for Digital Heritage. The first conference was held in 2014 in York and the second in Århus in 2015. In 2016, the third conference is organised by the Archaeological Information in the Digital Society (ARKDIS) research project in collaboration with the Department of ALM (Archives, Library & information, Museum & Cultural heritage studies), Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden. We are inviting submissions from all fields and topics of digital heritage. This year, without restricting the scope and field of presentations, we are especially encouraging researchers and practitioners to propose presentations relating to the production, use and management of archaeological information and how digitisation influences these processes. We are also encouraging researchers to submit presentations relating to other heritage disciplines discussing how digitisation affects information in these contexts. Presentations can represent any field of study in sciences, technology, social sciences or humanities beyond conventional disciplines of cultural and digital heritage, or can be based on an inter- or transdisciplinary approach.

Presentations can be traditional talks (oral paper presentations) but it is also possible to present posters or technical demonstrations as a part of a special session organised in exhibition format. Also other forms of presentations including but not restricted to panel discussions and tutorials can be proposed. Mark clearly in your submission the preferred format of your presentation, oral presentation or other, and in case for other, specify the type e.g. poster, technical demonstration in the abstract.

Abstracts describing the presentations should be no longer than 200 words including a title. Please submit your abstract no later than February 28, 2016 using Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=arkdis2016 Questions regarding the submissions can be sent to Isto Huvila (firstname.lastname@abm.uu.se).

More information about the conference: arkdis-project.blogspot.se/conference

CfP: CAA-SE conference in Umeå

ARKDIS-project is sponsoring the 2015 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Sweden (CAA-SE) conference in Umeå on 9-11 November 2015. The call for abstracts is out now with a deadline on October 12.

Information Policy for (Digital) Information in Archaeology: current state and suggestions for development

New ARKDIS article in Internet Archaeology

The introduction of digital data capturing and management technologies has transformed information practices in archaeology. Digital documentation and digital infrastructures are integrated in archaeologists' daily work now more than ever. International and national institutions and projects have contributed to the development of digital archiving and curation practices. Because knowledge production in archaeology depends heavily on documentation and information dissemination, and on retrieval of past documentation, the question of how information is managed is profoundly intertwined with the possibilities for knowledge production. Regulations at different levels articulate demands and expectations from the emerging digital information practices, but how are these different regulations coordinated, and do they support archaeological knowledge production?

In this article we look into the state of information policy - the sum of principles guiding decisions about information - in archaeology and related areas. The aim of the article is to shed light on how information policy directs practice in archaeology, and to show that analysis of such policies is therefore vital. Information policy in legislation and guidelines in Swedish archaeology serves as a case study, and examples from development-led archaeology and the museum sector illustrate how information policies have varied roles across different heritage sectors. There are historical and local trajectories in the policy documents specific to Sweden, but the discussion shows that the emergence of Swedish policies have many parallels with processes in other countries. The article provides recommendations for information policy development for archaeology and related areas.

The subtle difference

Final slide from the presentation of Gareth Beale
summarises it all.

Isto participated in the the second annual conference of the Centre for Digital Heritage collaboration in Århus, titled Digital Heritage 3D on 3D knowledge production and representation. The two day event was closed a bit earlier today and there is a good reason to congratulate the colleagues at Århus University for excellent work for putting together a small enough (to let everyone talk to each other) high quality meeting.

A number of important points were made during the presentations from a good number of people around Europe. Some common themes to mention was that it is apparent that now when there is a broad array of relatively inexpensive 3D technologies available, the focus of interest is shifting to questions like 3D workflows, infrastructures and (social) everyday life of sharing and working with data. Gareth Beale (York) summarised the infrastructural aspect of this issue in his slide that asks (for a good reason) where we are at the moment regarding the infrastructures and their use.

Isto's paper "The subtle difference between knowledge and 3D knowledge" discussed the differences of knowledge and 3D knowledge with a specific focus on the contextual and technological frames of knowledge production using 3D technologies. When people are doing "3D" it is important to be explicit what is actually being done, what tools, techniques and algorithms are used and in which kind of a context the 'thing' is being produced and consumed. Depending on these factors and the frame of doing 3D in terms of its purposes all have implications to the outcome.

Practical authorship in archaeological information work

Isto was participating in the annual Organisational learning, knowledge and capabilities (OLKC) 2015 conference hosted by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, and presented a paper based on the material collected as a part of the ARKDIS project titled AUTHORSHIP, PRACTICAL AUTHORSHIP AND DOCUMENTARY BOUNDARY OBJECTS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFORMATION WORK that discusses the  making of the social landscape of archaeological work and how different types of authored artefacts like reports and archaeological data are a part of that process of making. Slides and a pre-version of the paper can be found at http://istohuvila.se/node/436

An interesting curiosity was that a part of the sessions of the conference were held in an underground lecture theatre that happened to incorporate elements of a earlier structures found on the site. I am just waiting for an archaeology conference to be organised in the same room.

ARKDIS at CAA 2015

Nicolò Dell'Unto closes his keynote.

Isto, Nicolò and Daniel from the ARKDIS project are participating in the Computer Applications and Quantitattive Methods (CAA) 2015 conference in Siena, Italy. There is a whole lot of interesting things going on from archaeological information management to 3D and predictive modelling (to mention a few themes) at the conference. You can find more information about the programme and presentations on the web at the caaconference.org or e.g. on Twitter by searching for hashtags #caa2015 and #caasiena.

Activities involving ARKDIS researchers include

• Keynote by Nicolò dell'Unto “The Use of 3D Models for Intra-Site Investigation in Archaeology”
• Session: Towards a Theory of Practice in Applied Digital Field Methods by James Stuart Taylor and Nicolò Dell’Unto
• Papers
• GIACOMO LANDESCHI, NICOLÒ DELL' UNTO, DANIELE FERDANI: A vector-based pipeline for assessing visibility: a 3D GIS perspective
• NICOLÒ DELL' UNTO: Using different eyes: the case of the medieval Cathedral of Dalby ISTO HUVILA, DANIEL LÖWENBORG, LISA BÖRJESSON, BODIL PETERSSON, NICOLÒ DELL’UNTO, PER STENBORG: What is archaeological information? 
• Poster: Isto Huvila: Chatting #fieldnotes : rethinking notetaking workflows in field archaeology

Upcoming: ARKDIS at the Information Access Seminar, UC Berkeley School of Information

"...RELEVANT, USABLE, AND ACCESSIBLE TO ALL...". ON DOCUMENTATION IDEALS FOR EXTRA-ACADEMIC RESEARCH, THE CASE OF DEVELOPMENT-LED ARCHAEOLOGY

Information Access Seminar

Friday, April 10, 2015, 3:10 pm - 5:00 pm

107 South Hall, UC Berkeley

In several disciplines, such as medicine and engineering, significant parts of the knowledge production take place outside academic research. Another such discipline is archaeology. Most archaeological surveys are conducted as development-led archaeology prior to land development. The documentation of such surveys is surrounded by legislation and guidelines. In this seminar we will take a closer look at the documentation ideals in those regulations. Additionally we will discuss how those ideals are interpreted by authorities in archaeology, notably academic archaeologists, museum professionals, and government professionals. From a distance, and with some humor, these ideals and interpretations may be likened to an administrative meltdown and they present an enigmatic challenge for the professionals who try to do the actual documentation. The seminar will focus on the case of archaeology, but the discussion will also be extended to the general circumstances for documentation and communication of extra-academic research today.

Bio: 

Lisa Börjesson, M.A., is a second-year doctoral student from Uppsala University in Sweden. During Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 she is a visiting student researcher at School of Information. Her research is a part of the research project Archaeological Information in the Digital Society (ARKDIS).

ARKDIS in the Netherlands

Visiting the Keys to Rome exhibition
at the Allard Pearson Museum.

For about a month ago, ARKDIS project was visiting colleagues in the Netherlands during a five day study trip to Amsterdam, Leiden and the Hague. The trip gave us a good idea of some of the current state-of-the-art in Dutch archaeology, archaeological presentation and information management.

At Allard Pearson Museum of the University of Amsterdam we were hosted by Dr. Wim Hupperetz who took us around at the museum and introduced us to their work on ArchaeoHotspots, a room where archaeologists and volunteers actually do archaeological research and work with finds in the museum, and where the public can come, watch and discuss.

At DANS, the Data archive and networking services, the Dutch data archive that preserves digital archaeological research data in the Hague, Hella Hollander and her colleagues presented their work and current state of the affairs in the archaeological information management in the Netherlands. In comparison to many other countries, including Sweden, the clear mandate of an organisation with a similarly clear focus on archaeological research for both preserving and making available digital archaeological data is an apparent advantage in the Netherlands.

At Europeana in the Hague, Joris Pekel hosted us and gave us a good overview of their work and highlighted the new strategy to focus on quality and partnership-based content production instead of attempting to incorporate as large quantities of content as possible.

We visited also the Faculty of Archaeology (yes, a faculty not a department) in Leiden and discussed with Dr. Hans Kamermans on education and research and the Vrije universiteit Amsterdam where Dr. Philip Verhagen and his colleagues presented their research and we had an opportunity to give a glimpse of the on-going work in ARKDIS. As a final stop, we visited the e-humanities unit of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences where Prof. Sally Wyatt hosted us and told about the e-humanities work in the country. We had also an opportunity to participate their weekly seminar, this time with a guest preseentation of Joseph Tennis from the University of Washington iSchool.

In addition to the common programme, all of us had an opportunity for additional visits to museums and

CfP: Digital Future of Archaeology at NTAG 2015

Submissions are invited for presentations at the Nordic TAG (NTAG) 2015 session on the The Digital Future of Archaeology. Paper abstracts should be of maximum 200 words with additionally author contact details. Please send your paper to bodil.petersson@lnu.se. Send your abstract (or inform the organisers on an incoming proposal) by January 30, 2015. NTAG conference is organised this year in Copenhagen on April 16-18, 2015.

Description of the session
In recent years, the sway of digital technologies and the influence ‘the digital’ has had upon almost every aspect of archaeology has become a fact. This is true for documentation as well as for analysis, research and presentation. As in the rest of society, digitization has become the fact of the matter very often celebrated as both part of and important for any "future" perspectives. But what is "future" from the perspective of digitization? Is it access, overview, analysis, new perspectives, new modes of presenting archaeology, or what? When thinking of interpreting archaeology, what impact does digitization have on the understanding of archaeology as a knowledge domain? How is digitization in itself affecting the knowledge base of archaeology? More - of what? More - of the same? More - of new stuff? The aim of this session is to critically elucidate how digitization affects archaeology as a knowledge domain within which the subject is filtered through digital systems often not built by, but rather adapted or appropriated by archaeologists for their purposes. We welcome papers on the present-day practice, future perspectives and historic views on the subject of archaeology and its adaptation to new digital contexts.

The session is organised by ARKDIS researchers Bodil Petersson (Linnaeus University) & Isto Huvila (Åbo Akademi University and Uppsala University). 

The full call for proposals and more information about the Nordic TAG (NTAG) conference on the NTAG conference web site.

New book: Perspectives to Archaeological Information in the Digital Society

Our new edited volume "Perspectives to Archaeological Information in the Digital Society" that explores the challenges of archaeological information work and research in the contemporary digital society is out both in print and as an open access edition online. The blurb in the back cover explains that "[t]he aim of this small book is to briefly discuss some of the premises for studying the implications and opportunities of the digitalisation of information and information work in the domain of archaeology and material cultural heritage."

The book is available as an open access PDF in DiVA-portal in http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-240334. Printed copies can be ordered by sending email to publikationer@abm.uu.se. Write "Perspectives to Archaeological Information in the Digital Society" in subject line. Printed copies cost 100 SEK (incl. 6% VAT) plus postage.



The volume contains following texts:

• Introduction / Isto Huvila
• Recuperating GIS data from excavations: On the use, or lack of use, of digital archaeological information/ Daniel Löwenborg
• Archaeologists and their information sources / Isto Huvila
• 3D Models and Archaeological Investigation / Nicoló Dell’Unto
• Dances with Petroglyphs : On Digital Agendas, Digital Tools and Heritage Communication / Bodil Petersson
• The Digital Time-Travels project in retrospect / Per Stenborg
• Epilogue / Isto Huvila