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Megalithic Portal
Iraq 'bleeding antiquities' as instability continues | | As the US prepares to withdraw its last combat troops from Iraq, international cultural experts are warning that the country is "bleeding antiquities" and that artefacts representing the world's cradle of civilisation are still in peril. | | 01 Sep 2010 |
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ADS
June 2010: Post Medieval Fieldwork 2008 summaries released. | |
The Archaeology Data Service and The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology are pleased to announce the release of the 2008 fieldwork summaries. The on-line version of Post-Medieval Fieldwork in Britain and Northern Ireland (PMFBNI) is a new venture for the Post-Medieval Archaeology journal, featuring a searchable digital database for these annually submitted excavation summaries. Fieldwork summaries for 2008 have now been added to this on-line searchable database. These data consist of 567 individual entries, many of which have associated images and links to grey literature in our online library of unpublished fieldwork reports.
| | 01 Sep 2010 |
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The Map Room
Fata Morgana: A Map Minus Everything Except Labels | | Damon Zucconi's Fata Morgana strips Google Maps of all the imagery -- no coastlines, bodies of water, or roads -- leaving only the labels behind. Zoom out and all you see is country names; zoom in close enough and you see street names, highway markers and exits, subway stops, and... | | 20 Aug 2010 |
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Open Objects
What would you change about your workplace? A survey for museum technologists | This week I launched a survey designed to help me understand and communicate the challenges faced by other museum technologists.
It's research for a chapter in a forthcoming book on museums on the web and social media in the first instance, but I'd left the terms and conditions fairly open as I wanted to be able to share and/or re-use the data in future - I wasn't sure if this would put people off, but I figured it was better to be upfront than to end up with great data I couldn't share.
Someone wrote to me to ask what the questions were - they didn't feel qualified to take it themselves but couldn't see all the questions without starting the survey. I figure it'll also help with the bounce rate if I share them, so here you go:
1. As a museum technologist, what are the three most frustrating things about your job? For this survey, I'm defining 'museum technologist' as someone who has expertise and/or significant experience in the museum sector and with the application or development of new technologies. 2. List any solutions for each of the problems you listed above 3. Any comments on this survey or on the issues raised? 4. What's your main job role? (if you don't mind it potentially being quoted) 5. Please enter your institution name and/or type (e.g. art gallery, history museum, local authority museum, science centre). (if you don't mind it potentially being quoted) It's pretty simple - 'what are the three most frustrating things about your job' is the main question, the rest are aimed at providing just enough additional information to provide pointers to the effects of different factors. I didn't want to ask people for so much information that they'd be identifiable as I felt that might make people hold back. I thought about saying 'things other than lack of resources/time/money' as they're pretty much a given and they're not unique to the museum sector, but I figured they're also too important too ignore.
For further context, when I posted it to the MCG and MCN lists I said: I'm particularly interested in opportunities and problems that arise when (new) technologies meet (old) museums. ... Your answers will help build a body of evidence that could help make a case for improvements in the way museums understand the issues and expertise around using technology to engage audiences, or at least help us understand what the solutions might be. And at the very least you get to vent a bit!  | | 20 Aug 2010 |
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Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK
Making archaeology work in open source | |
Once in a while, Oxford Archaeology get called upon to do some really big archaeological projects, like road schemes and airport expansion, that cover huge areas, go on for years, and generate loads of data. We love these, because it’s not very often that you get to look at whole landscapes- how multiple prehistoric villages [...] | | 04 Aug 2010 |
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Past Thinking
Imaging the Antikythera Mechanism | | The Antikythera Mechanism is thought to be a 2nd/1st century BC mechanical device for calculating astronomical positions (and thus a very advanced navigational device of its time). It was made somewhere in the Greek-speaking world. Tom Malzbender, one of the inventors of Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM), recently gave a Google Tech Talk entitled “Imaging the [...] | | 21 Jul 2010 |
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Archaetech
Mind the GAP | Just a quick post to announce some good news: Google have just announced the first recipients of their Digital Humanities Research Awards and the Google Ancient Places (GAP) project is one of only 12 projects funded worldwide. The project is in conjunction with Elton Barker at the Open University and Eric Kansa at UC Berkeley [...] | | 19 Jul 2010 |
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Wessex Archaeology: Events
Pilgrims and Pageants - Free event at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum |  Pilgrims and Pageants
Saturday 17th July 2010, 10.00 am – 4.00 pm This summer join Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum as we celebrate the Museums 150th anniversary during the annual Festival of British Archaeology. Inspired by our summer exhibition, Made in 1860, this free event has something for all ages and is a wonderful opportunity for visitors to explore Salisbury’s medieval past. Families will have a chance to try out lots of hand on activities such as creating a fantastic costume, mask, puppet and banner, and taking part in our medieval pageant at 3pm. There will also be a chance to have a go in our ‘mock’ medieval archaeological dig and make your very own souvenir pilgrim badge to take home. There will be some very special guests joining us for the day including Channel 4’s Time Team archaeologist, Phil Harding. Phil, who works for Wessex Archaeology, will be talking about his experiences on the programme including his recent chance to finally excavate within his home city at Salisbury Cathedral. Plus meet the knights from the British Plate Armour Society who will be here all day doing battle in the museum’s garden. Watch them perform their foot tournaments, try on some armour, handle some medieval weapons and have a go at archery in ‘shoot the knight’. Throughout the day there will also be the opportunity to go ‘Behind the Scenes’ of the museum and explore the Medieval City with a guided tour led by Margaret Smith, a Blue Badge Guide (booking required). The city tour also runs on Friday 16 July at 2.00pm, booking required. Once again Wessex Archaeology, The Wiltshire Conservation Service and Salisbury Cathedral will be joining us to help create a wonderful day of activities. There is also a chance to bring along those unknown artefacts for Katie Hinds, the Wiltshire Finds Liaison Officer, who will help to identify your own archaeological discoveries. To find out more please phone 01722 332151 and direct your enquiry to Jane Ellis-Schön, Collections Manager, or email her at archaeology@salisburymuseum.org.uk 
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Professional GIS / GPS Developers Google Group
New stable version of gvSIG Desktop available: gvSIG 1.9 |
A new stable version of gvSIG Desktop has been released: gvSIG Desktop
1.9.
It's available on the Downloads section of the gvSIG website:
[link].
This new version has many new features which are listed next.
| | 12 Nov 2009 |
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Online Archaeology Blog
OPEN ARCHIVE - a new web based system for accessing our past | | The wealth of information gathered by local archaeological groups and societies on excavations, surveys and documentary research is one of the important sources of data for the study of archaeology in the UK. Currently, this archive of British archaeology is stored locally, within libraries and local history centres as well as with the originating group [...] | | 16 Sep 2009 |
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Roman Archaeology
Roman "Silver" pig to be sold at auction | 
I wonder if Lindsey Davis is going to bid on this "pig" to commemorate her first best selling Marcus Didius Falco mystery, "The Silver Pigs"?
"A 2000 year old lead ingot mined by the Romans shortly after they conquered Britain is expected to fetch up to £12,000 when it goes under the hammer this month.
The 154lb ingot, known as a 'pig', was mined by Romans in North Yorkshire, and would have been due to be made into piping of waterproof lining for roofs. Silver could also be extracted from it.
The Romans, who ran well organised mining operations in Britain and also produced silver and gold after invading the country in AD43.
Dating from AD81, the 11 stone pig bears a raised inscription on the top reading 'Imperatore Caesare Domitiano Augusto Consule Septimum’ - a reference to the Emperor Domitians seventh consulate.
Measuring 58.5cm by 10.5cm by 13.5cm, it has the word 'Brig' on the side - showing it came from the territory of the British Brigantes tribe, who had fallen under Roman rule.
The pig was discovered accidentally in 1731 in peat on Hawshaw Moor, which was famous in antiquity for its lead mines." | | 15 Apr 2007 |
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Blog - Brian Flood
Arc2Earth Publisher Released | We launched Arc2Earth Publisher today. Head on up to the support site and download the Trial version. We are also running a limited time 30% discount on Publisher or Enterprise, so get it while it’s hot. Arc2Earth is a single program that comes in 4 different versions: Standard, Professional, Publisher and Enterprise. When you buy one of these versions, your serial number will unlock different functionality in Arc2Earth. Each higher version contains all the functionality of the previous version. For instance, if you have Publisher, it also includes everything that’s available in Standard and Professional. Please look at the feature grid here to see the differences between each version. The new support site has an Arc2Earth blog that will serve as tips and tricks central. From now on, I’ll keep the Arc2Earth talk on this blog to a minimum and steer it back to its original mission of general GIS talk. There are lots of bells and whistles in the product and we’ll be writing a bunch about them in the coming days but for now, I figured I’d show off one of the cooler Enterprise features. A2E Scheduler is a standalone program that runs publishing jobs at any time interval you want. Each job is independently executed and can have different schedules (e.g. hourly, daily at 1am, weekly on Mondays etc.). It runs outside of ArcMap and can be setup to start automatically in the background. 
Here’s a sample that pulls live radar data from NOAA’s nowCOAST ArcIMS server. It runs hourly and uses the option automatically set the http expire headers which guarantees the user will always see the latest data. Below is the Microsoft VE viewer, check back over time and you’ll notice the radar images change. Virtual Earth viewer 
cheers Listening To: Rachmaninov - Hough/Dallas SO/Litton - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor  | | 11 Apr 2007 |
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