ARKDIS in the UK

ARKDIS project is touring this week in the UK visiting colleagues and sites in Manchester, York and Birmingham areas. The trip started from the Manchester Museum where were kindly hosted by Bryan Sitch and Campbell Price with a tour to the Archaeology and Egyptian galleries spiced with very insightful reflections on the process of creating the current exhibitions and work for increasing both digital and non-digital engagement with the collections using a broad range of different approaches. The fundamental questions were and still are how to communicate with the public, how make the interactions 'natural' and engage the visitors beyond superficial admiration of objects.

Public access to results of federally funded research - an American perspective on a transnational issue

What do researchers, activists and politicians mean when  advocating for "open access" or "public access" to research data and publications? Which are the information policy arguments behind the advocacy and which implications follow higher demands on openness and access to research results and data?

Friday 14th of March Clifford Lynch (ph.D, adj. prof.) held a seminar at UC Berkeley School of Information on public access of results of federally funded research. Archaeology, being one of the areas receiving substantial funding from federal government and furthermore often being conducted by, or within a context of, government departments is directly affected by the policy development on "openness".

In his talk Lynch pointed to several of the complexities in and due to the current policy development, such as the lack of sufficiently developed storage solutions and data management plans - a lot of actors wants openness and access, but not as many wants to set up sufficient management systems. Moreover as is clear within archaeology, the information policy and related practices are international challenges circumscribed by national policy and administrative constraints.

Further reading by Clifford Lynch on the challenges in the curation of scholarly data.

Call for Papers: Digital Heritage 2014: Digital Communities in Action

The call for papers for Digital Heritage 2014 is now open. We would like to invite proposals for 20 minute papers and we welcome submissions from researchers in any field. This year the conference theme will be Digital Communities in Action and so we are particularly keen to encourage presentations which relate to the role of diverse communities in Digital Heritage research.

Our keynote talk will be delivered by Prof. Catherine Clark (Southampton) and will be entitled You are here: medieval heritage and the modern city.

The conference will be held on the 12^th July 2014 in the Berrick Saul building at the University of York.  For more information visit our conference website (http://www.york.ac.uk/digital-heritage/events/cdh2014/).

The Centre for Digital Heritage is an international multi-institutional research centre focussed on innovative inter-disciplinary research in the field of Digital Heritage. The centre includes Aarhus University, Leiden University, Uppsala University and The University of York. For more information on the CDH visit our website (http://www.york.ac.uk/digital-heritage)

Please send abstracts of 200 words to cdh@york.ac.uk before Monday 14^th April.

Stay up to date with conference information at http://www.york.ac.uk/digital-heritage/events/cdh2014/.

Kicking the Centre for Digital Heritage off

Daniel and Isto participated in the kick-off workshop of the Centre for Digital Heritage (CDH) in Departments of ALM and Archaeology and Ancient History are partners in this international centre with a seat in York, known among other things of its archaeology department and the Archaeology Data Service, the UK archaeological data archive.

York last week. ARKDIS project and the

The centre is an international collaboration between the universities of York, Uppsala, Århus and Leiden in the field of digital heritage. The centre organises conferences, workshops, summer schools and various networking opportunities and collaborative activities for the participating institutions. The centre is inter-disciplinary with members from a broad variety of scholarly and scientific disciplines. The director of the centre is prof. Julian Richards and coordinator Gareth Beale, both from the University of York.

The first day of the meeting consisted of a long range of presentations of digital heritage research at the participating institutions and shorter lightning talks about individual research projects. We presented ARKDIS project and the Uppsala GIS Lab, and more specific projects about GIS in Östergötland and archaeological archiving. After very two intensive days of work it was quite apparent that the collaboration is very promising.

A list of current CDH activities can be found at the centre website at http://www.york.ac.uk/digital-heritage/. Forthcoming activities include a digital heritage conference in York on July 12, 2014, a programme of summer schools and another conference next year in Århus.

Do you remember the essay in the landscape?

"Essay in the landscape", Åsa grave field, Sörmland

Within archaeology there are several forms of information due to, for example technical development and administrative standards. The same goes for the information about archaeological information.

As of today we have several examples of cultural heritage site information disseminated through for example apps and audio guides. While we enjoy the new possibilities the old forms of information about historical sites or events receive less attention. Signs decay or are, as the sign in the picture, since long fenced in beyond reach.

With the current awareness of how information and narratives about historical events and sites also are a constituent part of cultural heritage, the boundary between cultural heritage and cultural heritage information has become less definite. In relation to the "essay in the landscape"-style signs from previous times we arrive at a new question: when do an information sign about a heritage site turn into a part of the heritage site?

Open lecture: Antonia Davidovic Making Knowledge. The anthropology of archaeological knowledge production

Archaeological Information in the Digital Society (ARKDIS) research project presents an open lecture by Professor Dr. Antonia Davidovic (Environmental Anthropology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel, Germany) titled Making Knowledge. The anthropology of archaeological knowledge production on Tuesday 21 Januari, 2014 at 10.15-12.00 in Room 6/0031, English Park Campus, Uppsala University. Thunbergsvägen 3H, 75126 Uppsala.

The Ostlänken archaeological investigations in GIS

One of the major archaeological projects in terms of rescue excavation in Sweden the coming years will be the Ostlänken project, a new railroad connecting the south of Stockholm (Järna) with Linköping through a double track railroad. Since this will pass through areas that are rich in archaeological remains, there will be much archaeological excavations carried out before the railroad is constructed. There are, however, also several sites that has been excavated previously, and identifying these and collecting the results of these is part of an archaeological investigation (Swe: utredning). Since this is such a large project with a lot of previous excavations, the County Boards (Länsstyrelse) in Östergötland and Södermanland, togheter with Trafikverket, has decided to start this work with a thorough examination of previous archaeological activities. The project is funded by Trafikverket and carried out at the department of archaeology, Uppsala University, with Daniel Löwenborg from the ARKDIS project as coordinator.

The "corridor" of Ostlänken and registered archaeological sites that previously seen some excavations.

The aim of the project is to create a GIS dataset with all previous excavations (back to 1965) so that they can be used as a starting point for further excavations and planning. Where available, we collect digital data and harmonise this (data structure and coordinate systems). Where there is no digital data we use plans that we georeference and digitise. The great challenge here is to use old excavations with old or local coordinate systems, which can be very time consuming to fix. It is really fascinating to see excavations from the 1970’s and 80’s “come to life” as they are brought into the system so that they can be seen in their correct location and compared to modern landscape and other excavations. This is a huge benefit compared to having to rely on reports with plans and maps that might be very difficult to relate to a modern map.

The burial ground Kvillinge 68:1, excavated in 1975. More info about this site at the Swedish National Heritage Board here. 

When the project is finished the data will be made available openly for further use and research through the Swedish National Data Service, where data previously collected likewise already is available, and this data forms part of the SND participation in the EU project ARIADNE. Having access to standardised detailed GIS data from excavations has great potential for research, especially if it will be possible to include data from new excavations in a searchable database that will bring together the data produced from all excavations. This will allow future archaeologists to analyse a digital archaeological puzzle at a landscape scale, using the information from a large number of excavations to better understand the development of settlements and society within the area.

The archaeologists working on the GIS project, Emelie Svenman, Amanda Norgren, Sebastian Lihaugen and Anders Bornfalk-Back.