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