Figure 1: Woolley’s large workforce in action

By: W.B. Hafford, University of Pennsylvania

Digital data plays an ever increasing role in archaeology. Archaeologists use computers for virtually every task, from artifact recording to site mapping, and the amount of data we gather is staggering. This is a good thing, but proper management and archiving of the data can overwhelm a dig crew. Take, for example, field photos. Sir Leonard Woolley, digging at the ancient city of Ur some 90 years ago, took 2,350 photos over twelve seasons. A modern excavation could easily take that many in one season, perhaps even one week. With digital cameras in the hands of every trench supervisor and potentially every excavator, no angle of the site need go unrecorded; but collecting and labeling every photo is tedious and not always accomplished in a way that allows future archaeologists to make sense of the system and recover every image of a specific area. Even Woolley’s comparatively small collection of photos has lost some of its identifying data or never had it attached in the first place.

In digital terms, the necessary organization involves the assignment of metadata, information that allows a particular image or document to be identified, its organizational schema to be reconstructed. Where once we put papers into various filing cabinets or stuck notes into artifact bags or on the back of photo prints, we now must tag digital files and folders (while continuing with notes and papers as well). Moreover, as anyone who has tried to compare information from two or more sites knows, it is helpful if there are similar tags on similar files from similar digs. But uniting the archaeological discipline under standardized nomenclature may not be possible. Even if we could identify unifying elements of a culture process, there are almost infinite variations of objects and adaptations across cultures. Furthermore, archaeologists have been studying these different cultures in different regions for so many years that typologies and sequences are embedded in our sub-fields — even if they could be pushed into an overarching scheme, we might well be reluctant to take the time to do so.

Perhaps by linking similar ideas with different terms through a semantic process, computers will eventually be able to connect different schemas for us (on the semantic web see w3 at this link). This is not yet completely possible, but it is slowly becoming a reality. And by linking such data we will hopefully be able to find patterns and differences, and come to understand our data in new ways.

Many governments around the world are embracing open and machine readable formats for their modern data. The Economist recently touted this as a game-changer, adding: “But no one has a clue what breakthroughs open data will allow” (May18-24, 2013 p.73 “Open data: A new goldmine”). Such is certainly true for open data concerning the ancient world, but that is what is so exciting about it — increased access and interconnections among scholarly data can only increase research potential and understanding in general.

In order to connect data, ancient or modern, it first needs to be accessible and machine readable. This is the goal of Linked Open Data (LOD). It essentially involves the metadata of metadata, organizing into still larger schemas for cross-analysis (on linking information for the study of the ancient world specifically, see the Linked Ancient World Data Initiative).

It is not solely the most modern data from excavations dug in the digital age itself that can be tied together in this machine readable way. Legacy data, that material from digs of the bygone days of archaeology, can and should be digitized, organized, and made available as well, to allow for reanalysis and comparison. In fact, this is a good place to start since it avoids some of the problems with recent excavations as far as timing is concerned. Many archaeologists are understandably reluctant to put their ideas and data out immediately in raw form since they wish to write them up after due consideration and analysis. Old excavations have already gone through the process of analysis and in most cases the original excavators have published at least some of the data. But that does not mean that more research cannot be done. Indeed, research should be ongoing.

The Ur excavations are a good example of the huge scale of work in the archaeological heyday and an excellent target for complete online publication to allow for continuing research. Twelve seasons of intensive excavations with an average of 170 workmen per year generated a tremendous amount of data (see figure 1). Even the ten published volumes on the excavations and the nine on cuneiform texts from the site could not cover everything. The archival documents that are rarely seen are key to filling in the holes, as well as key to understanding Woolley’s excavation and recording methods. By making them available and linking them to published discussions, museum online records, drawings, field photos, and studies both old and new, the Ur project will be facilitating research and furthering education.

Ur of the Chaldees: A Virtual Vision of Woolley’s Excavations, undertaken with lead funding from the Leon Levy Foundation, will combine the efforts of teams of scholars from the British Museum and the Penn Museum in digitizing legacy materials they acquired through joint excavations at Ur. As part of the increasing ancient world Linked Open Data movement, the Ur project will make all its information on the ancient city, excavated from 1922-1934, available in a sharable, machine readable format. This will allow for comparison but also organize it internally so that Woolley’s efforts can be reanalyzed in a way that applies modern understandings of the Ancient Near East to his fundamental work.

Though timing and preserving first rights to data are usually not problems with such legacy data, many other issues arise. First, it is expensive and time-consuming to digitize and organize. Plus, it lacks some of the appeal and immediacy of new excavation. More limiting, however, is the amount of recording done on the original excavation and the original team’s ability to describe their recording systems so that we can understand and reconstruct them in the digital representation. In essence, there will be two schemas in the new, digital online publication — the original, and the one that organizes the digital version. Ideally, the digital will reconstruct the old, but it must also make it usable and be able to incorporate later additions, such as publications under new numbers by modern researchers.

At the core of this project is the material stored in the British Museum and the Penn Museum, since these were the excavating institutions that together received half of the Ur finds. The other half resides in Baghdad at the Iraq National Museum and will be added as and when their inventories allow. But much of the archival documentation is stored in London and/or Philadelphia. For example, Woolley’s field catalogues, comprising more than 15,000 handwritten index cards, and his field notes, at least another 4,500 cards, are stored at the British Museum. These handwritten notes were used to guide publication, but many contain information that can fuel new research.

We now have scans of all of these documents, already increasing their ability to be seen. No longer must one travel to London and handle the originals; a scan of any card can be sent digitally. But we want to go much farther than that. We have already moved the catalogue cards into a database, transcribing the information contained there and marking which have original drawings so they can be found in a search. These will be linked to records of each object so that field catalogue entries as well as later museum records will be available through a single reference. The field notes, however, are a bit more problematic (see figure 2). They are much more extensive in their handwriting, and often contain sketch maps of locations and/or artifacts. Transcribing them is a huge task, requiring much time and money. Yet, there are many people who enjoy history and archaeology and who are willing to volunteer their assistance; thus, we are recruiting them on a virtual project in a virtual way, through UrCrowdsource.org. This site has around 2,000 documents currently uploaded in scanned form and around 650 have already been transcribed by volunteers.

Figure 2: One of the field note cards from Ur

The site uses completely open source software, Omeka with Scripto plugin. It can be viewed and searched by anyone, but those who wish to transcribe need to request a login. There are help files that note Woolley’s quirks of handwriting as well as list many of the terms that may be unfamiliar to those not involved in Near Eastern archaeology.

UrCrowdsource.org can be made better and we hope to do much more with it. For example, tagging of files needs to be streamlined for ease of file location and to ensure that every occurrence of, for example, a field number, is gathered in one search through the final website we are creating to present the Ur data online. We also hope to create a forum for volunteers to easily communicate with each other. Currently, there are discussion pages for individual files, but it can be difficult to find any particular query. By having a communication conduit, one person who solves a particular problem can post about that issue and others with similar problems can learn from it rather than having to invent their own solution. Transcription volunteers are essential to the Ur project and have already made a tremendous difference in the workload.

Some of the records being transcribed are not field notes, but letters, accounts, and reports from the field. The 1920s and 30s formed an interesting period for archaeology and for the Middle East, with the formation of many modern nations. As such, these documents are of interest to the modern historian, pointing as they do to the issues of the day. Thus, the data we are making available is not solely for archaeological discovery but for many other purposes — scholarly, educational and general interest.

Much of the data, however, will be of primary interest to the intensive archaeological researcher. It is currently difficult to perform unified research on Ur, since objects from a single tomb, for example, may well be in all three of the primary museums and some may even be housed in peripheral museums. Furthermore, many of the objects from Ur have lost their connection to their original field records over the years — museum numbers having taken precedence over field numbers or the notes that once sat in old artifact bags having long disappeared or become illegible. By reconnecting that information and placing it online, we are not just increasing access but also reestablishing as much context as possible.

As all archaeologists know, context is paramount. And as we move even further into the project, we will link all findspots to maps so that distribution can be observed for any single artifact or group of artifacts. Naturally this is limited by the level of detail with which Woolley originally recorded object location. Unfortunately, he did not record provenance for every object and we are increasingly finding that he did not assign field numbers to every object, but our efforts have already reconnected many artifacts to their field data and it is already beginning to reveal things we did not know before.

The main goal right now is not to reinvestigate, however, but rather to organize, interconnect, and make available all of the records of the excavation, starting with a test site within one year. Pictures of every available artifact and every original record will be online as will transcriptions of notes. If we cannot make publications available due to copyright, we can at least refer to them, providing a complete bibliography on Ur. Most importantly, as more sites are published in this digital way, our data can be interconnected beyond the site level through machine readable formats and stable URIs, and hopefully linked through semantic web or similar techniques to allow for extensive research that will enhance and multiply our understanding of the ancient Near East.

 Brad Hafford is Leon Levy Foundation Research Associate, Ur Digitization Project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He blogs at Travels and Travails tweets @BradHafford.

~~~

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I blogged earlier on a minor scandal of our times, and I have a few more reflections on the matter now.

In 1869 Sophia Mendham gave her husband’s collection of early books to the Law Society of Great Britain, on the understanding that it would be preserved for all time.   However the current controllers of the Law Society decided to sell it.  It went under the hammer earlier this month and was sold for around 1.2 million GBP.  Most of this must have been for one or two manuscripts, not listed in the detailed sale, where many lots sold for a miserable one or two thousand pounds.

The Law Society represents one of the wealthiest professions in Britain.  When interviewed by the Guardian, an anonymous spokesman explained why they were selling the collection:

It costs around £10,000 a year for their upkeep. If it raised a six- or seven-figure sum it would be good for the Law Society’s capital reserves.

The motive then is simple.  The current council of the Society want cash.

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, when the officials of an institution dispose of inherited treasures, received in trust from others, in return for ready cash.  The Law Society should, surely, have donated the collection to another suitable trustee on the same terms, if it did not wish to be troubled with it.  But to sell it!  To break it up, in defiance of the founders’ wish!  That is an act of vandalism.

The legal profession has often adorned the world of literature and letters.  All lawyers must be learned men, and many form part of the history of culture.  The rediscovery of the Pandects, Justinian’s Digest of Roman Law, forms part of the history of the renaissance, the rediscovery of ancient literature and the birth of the modern world. The Republic of Letters has always had a legal division, in a sense other than the one known to modern enthusiasts for copyright enforcement.

But in corrupt times institutions decay, and officials take salaries but are negligent in performing their duty, especially to society.  For instance, in the last great period of decay, the 18th century, the guardians of the Oxford Museum were zealous in collecting their salaries, yet allowed the stuffed remains of a dodo — an irreplaceable item — to rot.  Doubtless they would have said that preventing this was not their responsibility, and that nobody was ensuring that they did it or seemed to care.  Posterity has not agreed with them.

We do live in corrupt times, today.  Few officials will be meticulous, self-denying, endlessly hard working, when the motto of the times is “if it feels good, do it” and if such hard work is mocked as “anal”.  Examples of negligence abound.  At Stafford hospital armies of state officials drew their salaries and busily moved paper around, while leaving patients to lie in filth and die of thirst.  Nobody has been punished.  Nobody, it seems, was responsible.  The permissive society has become a caricature of self-centredness and contempt for others, and for posterity.

These are the thoughts, then, that rise when one looks at the case of the Mendham collection.  The statements made by the Law Society officials sound like announcements by firms of estate agents, not by learned men of standing and culture.  Nothing in them betrays any awareness of any duty beyond convenience.  They talk as if they cared for nothing except how they could turn this item, entrusted to them 150 years ago, into ready cash.  The sale betrays Mrs Mendham’s trust — for she would not have given them the books, except for a promise of perpetuity.  It brings the society into disrepute.  But little men care nothing for anything but cash and convenience.

They say that every man has his price, and those of us who must work for others to earn a pittance are ever aware of what that price is.  But the Law Society is a great and famous institution.  How much, then, does it cost to induce the current leadership of the Law Society of Great Britain to ignore a principle, renege on an undertaking, and betray a benefactor?  The answer, apparently, is about a million pounds.  How awful, that one can calculate the price of the Law Society!  I think we must recognise  that this means that the government should act to reform the society.

Of course adults know that institutions do not exist.  There are only people; you, and me, and Fred, and Bill whose wife needs that operation, and Phylllis who is trying to get promoted.  There is no Law Society; only a group of people.  We should ask, therefore, who these people are.  I have found this hard to determine.

All we can do, therefore, is to record the names of those who held office in the Law Society in 2013, when Mrs Mendham’s trust was betrayed for cash at Sothebys.  According to the Law Society website, the current office holders are:

President – Lucy Scott-Moncrieff
Vice president – Nick Fluck
Deputy vice president – Andrew Caplen
Chief executive – Des Hudson

Let us hope for better times, and that the Law Society rediscovers a sense of pride in itself and its history.  For no self-respecting institution could do such a thing.

Modernity is rarely associated with ruins. In our everyday comprehension ruins rather bring to mind ancient and enchanted monumental structures; an archaeological dream world featuring celebrities such as Machu Picchu, Pompeii and Angkor Wat. Yet never have so many ruins been produced; so many things been victimized and made redundant, so many sites been abandoned. Closed shopping malls, abandoned military sites, industrial wastelands, derelict mining towns, empty apartment houses, withering capitalist and communist monuments. A ghostly word of decaying modern debris mostly left out of academic concerns and conventional histories - and also considered too recent, too grim and repulsive to be embraced as heritage. Though the situation of neglect may be claimed to have changed, as reflected in the growing field of the archaeology of the contemporary past, in the broader popular, artistic and scholarly interest in decay and ruination, and lately even in heritage discourses, modern ruins still play a very marginal role in the political economy of both the past and the present.

This marginalization and othering of the derelict materiality of the modern was one concern grounding the Ruin Memories project, an international research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Through theoretical studies and a number of case studies in Spain, Iceland, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, USA and Russia, we have since 2010 explored how the ruins of modernity are conceived and assigned cultural value by focusing primarily on three themes: The aesthetics of waste and heritage, the materiality of memory, and the significance of things. While one ambition has been to critically scrutinize the normative categorization of modern ruins and the discourses and practices that may have led to their academic and historical marginalization, another has been to reassess the cultural and historical value of this modern debris and to explore how abandoned and ruined things may contribute to different memories, or a different archaeology, of the recent past.

The Ruin Memories project is now coming to an end and in a series of presentations the next couple of months we shall display works that either are a direct outcome of the research conducted or are closely associated with it. Each Friday at 12 PM GMT a new presentation will be launched at this site. We hope this accumulating portfolio of ruin memories, together with those already available at this site, will give you an impression of the range of research conducted and also stimulate some reactions.

Ruin Memories: A Portfolio | www.ruinmemories.org.

24 May | Alfredo González-Ruibal and "Forgotten Battles. Ruins of the Spanish Civil War".
31 May | Bjørnar Olsen and "Abandoned Childhood: Sarnes Internat".
7 June | Mats Burström and "Treasured memories: Tales of buried belongings in wartime Estonia".
14 June | Elin Andreassen, Hein Bjerk and "Managing the scars of terror".

More details available from | admin@ruinmemories.org.

The National Digital Stewardship Residency Program has reached a major milestone – the ten residents for the inaugural class have now been chosen!  It was a very competitive selection process, and these ten new residents have proven themselves highly qualified to take on current and future challenges of digital stewardship work.  They will arrive in Washington, D.C. in September to start their residencies – and we will provide updates here on The Signal as the program progresses this year and next.

See the Library’s press release below for the full list of residents and their assigned projects.  Bravo to all!

The Library of Congress, in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has selected 10 candidates for the inaugural class of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program. The nine-month program begins in September 2013.

The NDSR program offers recent master’s program graduates in specialized fields— library science, information science, museum studies, archival studies and related technology— the opportunity to gain valuable professional experience in digital preservation. Residents will attend an intensive two-week digital stewardship workshop this fall at the Library of Congress. They will then work on a specialized project at one of 10 host institutions in the Washington, D.C. area, including the Library of Congress. These projects will allow them to acquire hands-on knowledge and skills regarding collection, selection, management, long-term preservation and accessibility of digital assets.

The residents listed below were selected by an expert committee of Library of Congress and Institute of Museum and Library Services staff, with commentary from each host institution.

2013 National Digital Stewardship Residents
(Name; hometown; university; host institution; project description)

Julia Blase; Tucson, Ariz.; University of Denver; National Security Archive; to take a snapshot of all archive activities that involve the capture, preservation and publication of digital assets.

Heidi Dowding; Roseville, Mich.; Wayne State University; Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection; to identify an institutional solution for long-term digital asset management, conduct research on a variety of software systems and draft an institutional policy for the appraisal and selection of content destined for preservation.

Maureen Harlow; Clayville, N.Y.; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; National Library of Medicine; to create a collection of web content on a specific theme or topic of interest such as medicine and art or the e-patient movement.

Jaime McCurry; Seaford, N.Y.; Long Island University; Folger Shakespeare Library; to establish local routines and best practices for archiving and preserving the institution’s digital content.

Lee Nilsson; Eastpointe, Mich.; Eastern Washington University; Library of Congress, Office of Strategic Initiatives; to analyze the future risk of obsolescence to digital formats used at the Library and work with Library staff to develop an action plan to prevent the risks.

Margo Padilla; Oakland, Calif.; San Jose State University, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; to create and share a research report for access models and collection interfaces for born-digital literary materials. She will also submit recommendations for access policies for born-digital collections.

Emily Reynolds; Pleasantville, N.Y.; University of Michigan; The World Bank Group; to facilitate and coordinate the eArchives digitization project, resulting in the creation of a digitized and cataloged historical collection of key archival materials representing more than 60 years of global development work.

Molly Schwartz; Dickerson, Md.; University of Maryland; Association of Research Libraries; to strengthen and expand a new initiative on digital accessibility in research libraries by incorporating a universal design approach to library collections and services.

Erica Titkemeyer; Cary, N.C.; New York University; Smithsonian Institution Archives;  to identify the specialized digital and curatorial requirements of time-based media art and establish a benchmark of best practices to ensure that institution’s archives will stand the test of time.

Lauren Work; Rochester, N.Y.; University of Washington; Public Broadcasting Service; to  develop and apply evaluation tools, define selection criteria and outline recommended workflows needed to execute a successful analog digitization initiative for the PBS moving image collection.

For more information about the National Digital Stewardship Residency program, including information about how to be a host or partner for next year’s class, visit www.loc.gov/ndsr/. Internship opportunities in digital technology are available in the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives.

This week, I'm hanging out in Chapel Hill at the Isotope Geochemistry Lab on UNC's campus.  I'm here to process human dental enamel from Medieval Germans for strontium, to test the hypothesis that the earliest residents of modern Berlin migrated east from Cologne.

A bit of background for this project: In the early 13th century AD, two towns were built on opposite sides of the Spree River.  Called Berlin (or, sometimes, Altberlin) and Cölln, they eventually became one city in the 18th century (modern Berlin).  Although there are early historical records mentioning each 13th century city (specifically, a document from 1237 signed by one Symeon, the priest of Cölln), the information is sparse.

Here's where archaeology comes in.  From about 2007 to 2010, archaeologists Claudia Melisch and Jamie Sewell excavated a cemetery associated with Cölln called Petriplatz (St. Peter's Square).  From the 13th-18th centuries, they found over 3,700 burials, meaning this is currently the most significant osteological find in Medieval Germany.  These skeletons, particularly the ones from the earliest phases, have the potential to reveal information about who the earliest Berliners were and where they came from.

Skeletons from Petriplatz excavations. Photo, Fig. 9, Melisch & Sewell 2011.

Historians think that Medieval Berlin may have been settled by people from the west.  The general eastward movement in Medieval Germany is known to historians as Ostsiedlung (Higounet 1986), and there is also a suggestion that the similarity in name between Köln (Cologne) and Cölln means early Berlin was founded by people from Cologne.  Helpfully, the geology of Cologne and Berlin is generally pretty different; sure, there's overlap, but it is likely that people who grew up in Cologne will have a different strontium isotope signature than the people who grew up in Berlin.

So that's where I come in.  It has been extremely difficult for Claudia to get large-scale funding for this project, as funding for research is down in Europe as in the US.  I figured that I could get a bit of internal funding from UWF, though, to run a couple dozen samples for strontium isotopes.  If this pilot study reveals something interesting, perhaps we can parlay that into a bigger grant in the future.  I'd like to be doing oxygen isotope analysis in conjunction with the strontium, but I don't have the money, time, or mass spec to run light isotopes at the moment.  But since I have plenty of enamel, I hope that this analysis can be done in the near future.

I should have results pretty soon, although interpretation will take a bit longer since I'll have to do some super-fun (really!) geological research on what the expected strontium range should be.  Until then, here's a picture from the lab this week...

17 Medieval Berliners, all in a row! (Eluting strontium using teeny tiny columns into teeny tiny beakers)

References:

C. Higounet. 1986. Die deutsche Ostsiedlung im Mittelalter. Berlin: Siedler.

C.M. Melisch, & J.P. Sewell (2011). Historische Chance – eine umfangreiche, mittelalterliche bis neuzeitliche Skelettserie vom ehemaligen St. Petri-Kirchhof in Berlin-Mitte. Mitteilungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 32, 107-120. [PDF]

Behind each scholarly 3D visualisation is a thorough study of records, iconography, literary sources, artistic canons and precedents. However, this research process is seldom visible in the final outcome to either the general public or the academy. This paper suggests the use of an RDF ontology to describe 3D models, identify relationships, and connect them to their diverse related sources (photographs, GIS coordinates, academic literature, etc.). If such an ontology can be derived and applied it will optimise the documentation process, and further, allow 3D visualisations to join and enrich the growing network of linked digital resources to study the past.

About two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty good about the date our our basilica at the site of Polis. We dated the church on the basis of five or six fairly secure deposits associated with the construction or modification of the church. The pottery in these contexts is largely the locally(ish) produced fine ware, Cypriot Red Slip.

The more pottery we have, however, the more problems it creates. And here’s how it goes.

First, we have to identify the major wares present and the make an effort to distinguish the different shapes. That often means spending hours looking at sheets of rim profiles and reading fiddly descriptions of fabric. Because these pots were not made on a production line, any sherd we find does not really line up precisely with the object in our books so we have to wiggle it to fit a category (and, moreover, the potters were not sitting around discussing how to produce Cypriot Red Slip Form 9!). It’s like getting some kind of polyhedron to pass through a round or square hole in a child’s game.

Then, once we are satisfied that we have fit our sherd into the typology, we can begin attempting to date our shapes on the basis of stratified examples of these vessels elsewhere. Most scholars who contribute to the typologies we use to identify the sherds also make an effort to date the pottery. Unfortunately, the bewildering array of shapes and sub-types can devolve into equally bewildering chronological arguments. I had a bit of a “down-melt” this morning when confronted with several possible for a type ranging from 580/600-700 to early 5th to 7th century. That’s a big difference and 580/600 is not a secure date but TWO different dates separated by a slash. In terms of normal humans living in  normal time, this is meaningless. I was not born in 1972/1988. 

Finally, once we get some dates on some pots, we have to reconcile the chronologies of various vessels within the deposit with one another. This always involves dating the deposit to after the date of the more recent object. Once we have the terminus post quem (that the date after which) for the deposit, we can begin to attempt to understand how earlier material made its way into the collection of pot sherds deposited as a single event. Since most of our deposits are associated with the construction of the basilica, it is easy enough to understand the various earlier sherds as being part of the debris used to backfill a foundation trench or pack a floor. In fact, from a use standpoint the latest and earliest sherd in the deposit functioned essentially the same way. They were all residual and probably all cast aside some time earlier in either a dump or in some kind of local destruction.

The problem is, of course, the more pottery there is, the more complicated the chronological relationships are. For each deposit, we have to sort out both the very local chronology of material, but also the relationship between it and others at our site which may not have the same types (or sub-types) or pottery, but may have a similar date. As a great man once said, mo’ pottery, mo’ problems. 

From Gnomon Bibliographische Datenbank by email

In addition to the monthly updated online version
(http://www.gnomon-online.de), the Gnomon Bibliographic Database is
now also available as a full download for local installations.

The software installer and installation manuals in multiple languages
can be downloaded at
http://www.philhist.uni-augsburg.de/de/lehrstuehle/geschichte/alte/projekte/GBD/Gnomon_Download.
Both versions are free of charge.

The GBD is a joint creation of the Chairs of Ancient History of the
Universities of Eichstätt and Augsburg. Comprising over 500000
entries, it is one of the most extensive database systems for
specialized literature in the Classics, also including literature on
the subject-specific history of the Classics. The GBD contains
monograph studies, anthologies, articles in periodicals, reviews, and
encyclopedias in various languages that can be searched with a
comprehensive and multilingual thesaurus (German, English, French,
Spanish, and Italian; currently around 25000 keywords). The
possibility of linking research results to YouTube-contents and
internet resources is currently a distinct feature of the GBD.
Moreover, cooperative collaborations enable the inclusion of new
publications of, for instance, the Bavarian State Library (Munich)
and, only recently, of the Joint Library of the Hellenic & Roman
Societies (London). The GBD also cooperates with the editorial team of
Gnomon (Munich) and the Virtual Library Classical Studies, Propylaeum.

 You can find further information on the database and current projects
at <http://www.philhist.uni-augsburg.de/de/lehrstuehle/geschichte/alte/projekte/GBD>.

Newly online at the Griffith Institute

Pietro Bracci's 'lost' manuscript

I Geroglifici ed Obelischi Eggizzi, 'opera postuma inedita di Pietro Bracci', 1767

Pietro Bracci (1700-1773) was a leading Roman sculptor of his time. Among his most important works are the colossal Oceanus (or Neptune) of the Trevi Fountain and the sculptures for several funerary monuments in Rome, including the tombs of Pope Benedict XIII in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and that of Pope Benedict XIV in the Basilica of Saint Peter. He is also renowned for a group of busts and a significant number of drawings which are now dispersed among numerous museums and collections around the world, including the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, both in Montreal, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. 

However, based on historical inventories of Bracci's manuscripts, most of them now lost, Bracci had many interests, including architecture, military engineering and sundials, to mention a few. An unpublished manuscript by Bracci on Egyptian hieroglyphs, probably started in the 1750s or 1760s but left unfinished, and which was believed to be lost, was in fact purchased by Sir Alan H. Gardiner, who later presented it to the former Ashmolean Museum library, and thence transferred to the Griffith Institute archive. This work, which constitutes one of the oldest holdings of the archive, is now being prepared to finally see the light of day for the first time. To celebrate Bracci's birthday in the month of June - there is some uncertainty about the exact date (16th or 26th depending on the author), we present here scans of some individual pages of this unique "jewel", a new surviving example of a pre-Champollion attempt to read and understand the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script, which is strongly influenced by the work of Athanasius Kircher.

The Digital Classicist people edited the video of the talk I gave a week ago (they do work fast). It’s available on their blog and on my bibliography page. Enjoy

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: digital classicist, ergm, networks, tom brughmans, video

I have written a book for a popular audience, and it has been a long and interesting process. I'll probably write about it in detail when things have moved farther along. For now, I am very pleased to have signed a contract with an agent. The book is about two projects I directed near Cuernavaca, Mexico. It tells the story of the residents of these sites (Aztec provincial peoples), and also about how archaeology gets done: everything from screening dirt and identifying faunal remains to my random sampling disaster involving broken glass, beans, and peso coins, to getting excavation permits to trying to keep our kids safe and healthy in Mexico. As I started writing the book, I went to the website of Norton press, figuring that would be an ideal publisher. "We don't deal with authors, only with agents." Hmmm, that led to a big search of agents, and instructions on how to find an agent, what does an agent do, etc.

I sent off a bunch of book proposals to agents, and got a big stack of rejection letters. Some agents came right out and said "not commercial enough," and the others said something else but their reason was probably the same. That was an upsetting experience. I am used to my writing being judged for its scholarly and scientific value, not for its commercial potential. And I am used to being successful with my publishing efforts, without a lot of rejections. But fifteen rejections for one project? A humbling experience.

One agent expressed interest in the topic, but said that my writing was "clear but not vivid." She was not ready to offer a contract unless I could improve the writing. Well, "clear but not vivid" is pretty darn good for an academic, but evidently not for popular nonfiction. So I paid for a writing coach, who went over the entire manuscript and gave me excellent advice and editing. She especially liked my use of Monty Python's "Life of Brian" to make a point about provincial peoples in empires ("What have the Romans ever done for us"?). Writing in a narrative style is very different from writing in an academic style. I think I finally figured it out, and it was fun doing the revisions on the chapters. So, now evidently my writing is sufficiently vivid for an agent to offer me a contract.

There will still be a bunch of revisions to do, artwork to assemble, and then we have to find a publisher. But at least the project is moving forward, and my prose has moved beyond "clear" to "vivid."

Announcing the Perseus Catalog, release 1.0

The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce the 1.0 Release of the Perseus Catalog.
The Perseus Catalog is an attempt to provide systematic catalog access to at least one online edition of every major Greek and Latin author (both surviving and fragmentary) from antiquity to 600 CE. Still a work in progress, the catalog currently includes 3,679 individual works (2,522 Greek and 1,247 Latin), with over 11,000 links to online versions of these works (6,419 in Google Books, 5,098 to the Internet Archive, 593 to the Hathi Trust). The Perseus interface now includes links to the Perseus Catalog from the main navigation bar, and also from within the majority of texts in the Greco-Roman collection.

The metadata contained within the catalog has utilized the MODS and MADS standards developed by the Library of Congress as well as the Canonical Text Services and CTS-URN protocols developed by the Homer Multitext Project.  The Perseus catalog interface uses the open source Blacklight Project interface and Apache Solr. Stable, linkable canonical URIs have been provided for all textgroups, works, editions and translations in the Catalog for both HTML and ATOM output formats. The ATOM output format provides access to the source CTS, MODS and MADS metadata for the catalog records. Subsequent releases will make all catalog data available as RDF triples.

Other major plans for the future of the catalog include not only the addition of more authors and works as well as links to online versions but also to open up the catalog to contributions from users. Currently the catalog does not include any user contribution or social features other than standard email contact information but the goal is to soon support the creation of user accounts and the contribution of recommendations, corrections and or new metadata.

Follow the links above for comments from Editor-in-Chief Gregory Crane on the history and purpose of the catalog.

The Perseus Digital Library Team

Factum Foundation

Factum Foundation is a registered Foundation, established in 2009 and based in Spain, dedicated to the development and use of non-contact high-resolution digital recording as part of a coherent approach to the preservation, understanding and public exhibition of objects from our cultural heritage.

Advances in digital technology are dramatically and radically changing our understanding and appreciation of our shared cultural heritage. Science and technology are assisting art by providing forensically accurate information to both specialists and an interested public.
The foundation is dedicated to demonstrating that the way we understand the original object is part of a dynamic process and not a fixed state of being. When the dynamic nature of originality is successfully presented, works of art come alive - their complex biographies inform the present and influence the future.  When viewed in this way they cease to be discrete objects to be viewed in museums and become complex subjects that can reveal their past (and also reveal how they have been valued and cared for by previous generations in diverse locations). Read more

Projects

Facsimile of the Eastern End of the Throne room of Ashurnasirpal II

2010-2013

Facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun

2009-2013

I am looking for examples of DH projects in curating and/or critiquing histories of institutional knowledge at particular tertiary institutions. My own university is launching such a project and it is curious about examples in which a DH project has been designed around a critique of institutional history of knowledge. Can anyone help me to find such examples, should they exist?

[First posted in AWOL 18 July 2009. Updated 18 June 2013]

Digital Library for International Research, Middle East Research Journals Project

The Middle East Research Journals (MERJ) project, funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (2002-2006), provided digital access to five complete journals held at American Overseas Research Centers in the Middle East in the CAORC consortium. Additional materials created for this project are bibliographic records for 1,900 journals held at seven centers in the Middle East, a searchable index of three research journals, preservation microfilm for five research journals.

A searchable article-level index is available for the following titles:

• Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (Jerusalem, 1920-1948)
• Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine (London, 1931-1950)
• Sumer (Baghdad, 1945-2000)

Digital full-text is available for the following journals:

• Arkeoloji Dergisi, Izmir, 1991-1998
• Arkeoloji-sanat Tarihi Dergisi, Izmir, 1984-1996
• Bogazici University Journal-Beseri Bilimler, Istanbul, 1973-1981
• Revue archéologique syrienne, Aleppo, 1931-1938
• Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society, 1933-196

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι:
ὑμεῖς γὰρ θεαί ἐστε πάρεστέ τε ἴστέ τε πάντα,
ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν
(Iliad 2.484-486)

Tell me now, Muses, you who have Olympian abodes,
since you are goddesses and you are present for all that happens and you know everything,
while we only hear the kleos and we know nothing


Nikola: All right, but when you've learned my song, would... you sing it exactly as I do?
Sulejman: I would.
N: You wouldn't add anything... nor leave anything out?
S: I wouldn't... by Allah I would sing it just as I heard it. ...It isn't good to change or to add.
(Lord, The Singer of Tales, 27)

The notion of “innovation” is one of the most difficult ones that we grapple with when we, as members of a highly literate culture that prizes creativity and the concept of “genius,” encounter an oral tradition that explicitly claims not to prize it. Just as the South Slavic singers that Milman Parry and Albert Lord interviewed with the help of Nikola Vujnović claimed to always sing their songs the same way every time, so too the Homeric narrator claims to repeat exactly what he has heard from the Muses, because he himself “knows nothing.” In such a tradition, the poet claims that his song is the truth, and as such it must be unchanging. In reality, we as outside observers of the tradition, can demonstrate that in fact the songs do change from performance to performance and tradition, far from being fixed and static, dynamically evolves over time. But for the singers on the inside of the tradition, the song remains notionally unchanging.

What, then, is “genius” in an oral tradition? What distinguishes one poet from another? We should first acknowledge that in even asking this question we are revealing our own bias. But as Milman Parry himself put it [Parry 1932, 12-14 (= Parry 1971, 334-35)]: “One oral poet is better than another not because he has by himself found a more striking way of expressing his own thought but because he has been better able to make use of the tradition. . . . The fame of a singer comes not from quitting the tradition but from putting it to the best use.”

I have explored the history of our modern Western struggle with separating genius from innovation when it comes to Homer in a lengthy essay called “The Invention of Ossian” (available here). In this post I would like to approach the question a little differently by considering the role of performance and audience in the shaping of tradition.


I recently had the opportunity to attend a concert by Fleetwood Mac, a band that reached its peak of album sales and popularity in the mid-to-late 1970s. All the members of the band are much older now and their vocal abilities are no longer what they once were, and yet the giant arena in Houston (the Toyota Center) was sold out, and the band gave an outstanding three hour performance that thrilled the crowd. Why did we all pay so much money to attend this performance, when we could have listened to a technically superior version of all the songs on CD or mp3? There is something primal, it seems to me, in our desire to gather together as a community to hear music. Even today in 2013, in the fourth biggest city of the United States, in a giant basketball arena full of strangers, we still seek to experience music with other people. As disparate from each other as we all were, we were united through our shared love of the music for the duration of the performance. That experience, I would argue, is one that we can share however distantly with the traditional audiences of the Homeric or South Slavic epic traditions, whose members would have been united by their deep familiarity with and love of the poetry of their traditional culture. Because such poetry was experienced only in performance, I would argue that there would have been an even more important bond between the experience of performance and the connection between audience members generated by the performance.

Another aspect of the concert had me thinking about Homer. As much as we appreciate live performance today for its communal aspects, and for the interaction it creates between performer(s) and audience, there is inevitably a certain pull that we feel towards the “traditional” way of doing the song - that is the version that we know from our ipods and CDs, the version we have heard countless times. At this particular concert, as thrilled as I was to hear the legendary Stevie Nicks singing live, I was disappointed that many songs had been rearranged to better suit her now more limited vocal range. I'm sure we all would have preferred the arrangements with which we were all very familiar. Moroever, there were times during the concert when the band performed some new material. The energy in the room substantially dropped; people sat down, went to the concession stand, or the bathroom. This got me thinking: what other form of entertainment or art is like this? If your favorite tv show comes out with a new episode, or your favorite novelist comes out with a new novel, you are delighted and race to view it/read it. Yet here we all were disappointed that the band was singing a new song. I don't think this is only the case for bands like Fleetwood Mac who were popular 35 years ago. I can remember going to an R.E.M. concert when I was young and experiencing the same sensation. I can't remember what the new songs were that R.E.M. performed that night. For all I know they may have been their next number 1 hits, but in that moment of performance, I wanted what I already knew - and so did the rest of the audience.

Unlike a modern band, the traditional singers of the South Slavic or Homeric traditions did not need to sell new albums. There were of course no albums to sell or equipment on which to play them. The singers made their living performing live what audiences wanted to hear, and it seems that what they wanted to hear were the songs that they all knew and loved. It is hard for us to get our heads around the fact that the best singers would not have been the ones thrilling their audiences with a new song or a new way of telling the story. But perhaps it can help us to understand this process better if we realize that this kind of poetry was only experienced in performance, which is to say, before an audience who knows the song already and has to be pleased.

There is something about live performance that creates community and thereby reinforces tradition. “Newness” is not what is wanted or called for in that moment. And yet newness does happen. The songs at the Fleetwood Mac concert were sung a bit differently (though still, ultimately, they were “the same”) and new songs were performed. Audience interaction contributed to and shaped what transpired. The tradition was perpetuated, but was also evolving, through performance.

I'm at The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education at Bryn Mawr College for the inaugural Women's History in the Digital World Conference. Since I'm about to speak and ask historians to share their research and write history in public, I thought I should also be brave and share my draft talk notes (which I've now updated with formatted references, though Blogger is still re-formatting things slightly oddly).

Introduction: New challenges in digital history: sharing women's history on Wikipedia

[slide – title, my details]
Hi, I'm Mia. I'm actually doing a PhD on scholarly crowdsourcing, or collaboratively creating online resources, and, thinking about the impact of digitality on the practices of historians, so this paper is indirectly related to my research but isn't core to it.
I proposed this paper as a deliberate provocation: 'if we believe the subjects of our research are important, then we should ensure they are represented on freely available encyclopedic sites like Wikipedia'. Just in case you're not familiar with it, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia 'that anyone can edit.' It contains 25 million articles, over 4 million of them in English, but also in 285 other languages, and has 100,000 active contributors[1].

'Brilliant Women' at the National Portrait Gallery

The genesis of this paper was two-fold. The 2008 exhibition 'Brilliant Women: 18th Century Bluestockings' at the UK National Portrait Gallery, made the point that 'Despite the fact that 'bluestockings' made a substantial contribution to the creation and definition of national culture their intellectual participation and artistic interventions have largely been forgotten'. As a computer programmer, reinventing the wheel and other inefficient processes drive me crazy, and I began to think about how digital publishing could intervene in the cycle of remembering and forgetting that seemed to be the fate of brilliant women throughout history. How could historians use digital platforms to stop those histories being lost and to make them easy for others to find?

[Screenshot – Caitlin Moran quote from How to be a woman: 'Even the ardent feminist historian, male or female – citing Amazons and tribal matriarchies and Cleopatra – can't conceal that women have done basically f*ck-all for the last 100,000 years']
A few years later, by then a brand-new PhD student, I attended the Women's History Network conference in London in 2011 and learnt of so many interesting lives that challenged conventional mainstream historical narratives of gender. I wished that others could hear those stories too. But when I asked if any of these histories were available outside academia on sites like Wikipedia, there was a strong sense that editing Wikipedia was something that other people did. But who better to make a case for better representation of women's histories than the people in that room? Who else has the skills, knowledge and the passion? Some academic battles may have been won regarding the importance of women's histories, but representing women's histories on the sites where ordinary people start their queries is hugely important. The quote on this slide illustrates why – even if it was meant in jest, it represents a certain world view.

WikiWomen's Collaborative

[slide – logos from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWomen%27s_History_Month http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen%27s_Collaborative ]
Of course, I'm not the first, and definitely not the most qualified to make this point. I would also like to acknowledge the work of many groups and individuals, particularly within Wikipedia, that's preceded this.[2]

[slide – Scripps editathon, #tooFEW]
Things move fast in the digital world and we're at a different moment than the one when I proposed this paper. Gender issues on Wikipedia had been discussed for a number of years but there's been a recent burst of activity, including the #tooFEW ('Feminists Engage Wikipedia') editathons – 'a scheduled time where people edit Wikipedia together, whether offline, online, or a mix of both' - [3], held online and in person across four physical sites.[4] [5] I was going to be provocative and ask you to create Wikipedia entries about the histories you've invested so much in researching, but some of that is happening already. As a result, this is version 2 of this paper, but my starting question remains the same – assuming we believe that women's history is important, what's wrong with our current methods of research dissemination and dialogue?

The case of the Invisible Scholarship

[slide – outline of section]
Cumulative centuries of archival and theoretical work have been spent recovering women's histories, yet much of this inspiring scholarship might as well not exist when so few people have access to it. Sadly, it's currently the case that scholarship that isn't deliberately made public is invisible outside academia. The open access movement, with all its thorny complications, is one potential solution. Engaging in new forms of open scholarship and disseminating research on sites where the public already goes to learn about history is another.

If it's not Googleable, it doesn't exist.

[slide – screenshot of unsuccessful search for Ina von Grumbkow]
Most content searches start and end online. The content and links available to search engines inform their assumptions about the world, and they in turn shape the world view presented on the results screen. If the name of a historical figure doesn't show up in Google, how else would someone find out about them? While college students might be heavy users of Google's specialist Google Scholar search, it's unlikely that people would come across it accidentally, not least because there's a 'semantic gap' between the language used in academia and the language used in everyday speech. Writing for Wikipedia means writing in everyday language, and the site is heavily indexed by search engines – it doesn't take long for content created on Wikipedia – even on a user's talk page and not the main site – to show up in Google results. So one reason to take history on Wikipedia seriously is that it affects what search engines know about the world.

'Did you mean… hegemony?'

Search for 'Viscountess Ranelagh', Google says 'Did you mean Viscount'. No.

[slide – screenshot  of search for 'Viscountess Ranelagh and the Authorisation of Women's Knowledge in the Hartlib Circle', Google says 'Did you mean Viscount'. No.]
Scholarship and sources contained in specialist online archives and repositories are often off-limits to the Google bots that crawl the web looking for content to index. Because search engines normalise certain assumptions about the world, getting more content about women's histories in publically accessible spaces will eventually have an effect in the algorithms that determine suggestions for 'did you mean' etc. Contributions to sites like Wikipedia can eventually become contributions to the 'knowledge graphs' that determine the answers to questions we ask online.

If it's behind a paywall, it only exists for a privileged few

[Slide - Screenshot of blocked attempt to access 'Wives and daughters of early Berlin geoscientists and their work behind the scenes']
Specialist users will be able to find academic research via Google Scholar, but any independent scholars in attendance will be able to speak to the difficulties in gaining access to journal articles without membership of an institutional library. Journal articles obviously have a lot of value within academic communities, but the research they represent is only available to a privileged few.

Why does Wikipedia matter?

[slide: For some, Wikipedia is the font of all wisdom]
Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. As one commentator said, 'people turn to Wikipedia as an objective resource' but ' it's not so objective in many ways.'[6]

However, as the free online encyclopedia 'that anyone can edit', it also provides the ability to take direct action to fix the under-representation of women's history. President of the AHA, William Cronon said, 'Wikipedia provides an online home for people interested in histories long marginalized by the traditional academy'[7] – this may not be entirely true yet, but we can hope.

Wikipedia is not yet encyclopedic

[Slide – Ina screenshot]
The English version of Wikipedia has over 4 million articles but it still has some way to go to become truly encyclopedic. Martha Saxton has noted the absence of women's history content on Wikipedia and was distressed by 'its superficiality and inaccuracies when present [8]'. Just as female assistants, secretaries, collectors, illustrators, correspondents, translators, salonists, cataloguers, text book writers, popularisers, explorers, pioneers and colleagues have been left out of traditional academic histories and gradually reclaimed by historians, they are often still invisible on Wikipedia. This may be partly because not enough women edit Wikipedia – as Wikipedia User Gobonobo says, 'editors often contribute to topics they are familiar with and that concern them [...] This systemic bias has the potential to exacerbate an historical record that already gives undue emphasis to men.' [9]

The under-representation of women's history undermines Wikipedia's claim to be encyclopedic. Issues include missing entries or omissions in coverage for existing topics, entries with inaccurate content, a failure to represent a truly 'neutral point of view', and a representation of 'male' as the default gender.

Many notable women have been buried in pages titled for their husbands, brothers, tutors, etc. In 1908 Ina von Grumbkow undertook an expedition to Iceland. She later made significant contributions to the field of natural history and wrote several books but other than passing references online and a mention on her husband's Wikipedia page, her story is only available to those with access to sources like the ' Earth Sciences History' journal[10][11].

[Slide: 'Main articles: List of Fellows of the Royal Society and List of female Fellows of the Royal Society '.]
Some of the categories used in Wikipedia posit the default gender as male. For example, there's a ' List of Fellows of the Royal Society ' and ' List of female Fellows of the Royal Society'.

Wikipedia and the challenges of digital history

Writing for Wikipedia encapsulates many, but not all, of the challenges of digital history.

New forms of writing

Writing for Wikipedia calls upon historians to write engaging, intellectually accessible, succinct text that still accurately represents its subject. It not only means valuing the work and skills in writing public history, it requires the ability to write history in public.

Writing for a 'neutral point of view' – one of the key values of Wikipedia – is challenging for historians. Many may find difficult to believe that it's even possible, and it's difficult to achieve [12].

Unlike traditional historical scholarship, characterised by 'possessive individualism' [13] and honed to perfection before publication, Wikipedia entries are considered a work in progress, and anyone who spots an issue is asked to fix it themselves or flag it for others to review.

It won't advance your career

While it might have a large public impact, editing Wikipedia is work that isn't credited in academia, and it takes time that could be used for projects that would count for career advancement. More importantly from Wikipedia's point of view, you can't promote your own work on the site, so writing about your own research interests is not straightforward if not many people have published in your area of expertise.

“On the internet, nobody knows you're a professor”

In a comment with 'pointers for academics who would like to contribute to Wikipedia' on a Chronicle article, commentator 'operalala' said, '"On the internet nobody knows you're a professor." If you're used to deferential treatment at your home institution, you'll be treated like everybody else in the Wide Open Internet.'[14] Or in William Cronon's words, you must 'give up the comfort of credentialed expertise'.[15] Anyone can edit, re-shape or even delete your work.

Just like academia, Wikipedia has ways of establishing the credibility and reputation of a contributor, and just like any other community, there are etiquettes and conventions to observe. As newcomers to the community, Claire Potter warns that it's important not to think of Wikipedia as 'another realm for intellectuals to colonize and professionalize'.[16]

The opportunities and challenges of women's history as public history on Wikipedia

Opportunities

#WomenSciWP editathon at the Royal Society

Wikipedia uses red links to represent entries that could be created but don't yet exist. Women's history editathons often create lists of red-linked names as suggested topics that could be created [17] . Projects on and outside Wikipedia, and events at institutions like the Smithsonian and Royal Society and just last weekend at three THATCamps across the United States might be part of a critical mass of people learning how to edit Wikipedia to better include women's history.

Compared to the lengthy process of writing for academic publication, a new Wikipedia entry can be created in a few hours, allowing for time to structure the content and format the references as necessary to pass the first quality bar. An existing entry can be corrected in minutes. Each editathon or personal edit improves the representation of women's history, and there's something very satisfying about turning red links blue.

Ina von Grumbkow's name red-linked on her husband's Wikipedia page

Adding the brackets that turn a piece of text into a red link, suggesting the possibility of an entry to be created is a small but potentially powerful intervention. Red links can render the gaps and silences visible.

Resistance

Creating or editing entries on women's history may be relatively easy, but making sure they stay there is less so. There are countless examples of women having to fight to keep changes in as other editors revert them, argue about their choice of sources, the significance or notability of their topic. Wikipedians are zealous in preventing spammers and crackpots polluting the quality of the site, which explains some of the rapid 'nominations for deletion', but some pockets of the site are also hostile to women's history or to women themselves.

Saxton said editing Wikipedia is 'not for the faint of heart' and 'a lesson in how little women's history has penetrated mainstream culture'. There's work to be done in sharing and normalising an understanding of the historical circumstances and cultural contexts that created difficulties for women. We might know that, as Janet Abbate said, 'The laws and social conventions of a given time and place strongly shape the kinds of technical training available to women and men, the career options open to them, their opportunities for advancement and recognition' [18] but until other Wikipedians understand that, there will continue to be issues around 'notability'. Having those conversations as many times as necessary might be tiring and uncomfortable or even controversial, but it's part of the work of representing women's history on Wikipedia.

Tensions

'Reliable sources'

Wikipedians may have different definitions of 'reliable sources' than scholarly researchers. As one academic discovered:
"Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."' [19]

The same gatekeepers matter

As some academics have found, 'Wikipedia differs from primary-source research, from scholarly writing, and how it privileges existing rather than new knowledge' [20] [21] Wikipedia is not the place to redress fundamental issues with silences in the archives or in the profession overall, not least because on Wikipedia, primary research is bad and secondary sources are good [22] . This puts the onus back on to traditional academic publishing in peer-reviewed journals and books that can be cited in Wikipedia articles, though other published works such as 'credible and authoritative books' and 'reputable media sources' can also be cited.

'Notability'

'A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. [...] the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be "worthy of notice" – that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life.' [23] 'The common theme in the notability guidelines is that there must be verifiable, objective evidence that the subject has received significant attention from independent sources to support a claim of notability.' [24] This creates obvious difficulties for some women's histories.

It's also difficult to judge where 'notability' should end. When does focusing on exceptional women become counter-productive? When do we risk creating a new canon? When does it stop being remarkable that a woman became prominent in a field and start being more accepted, if still not expected? [25] At what point should writing shift from individual entries to integration into more general topics?

Conclusion

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether Wikipedia lags behind academia's acceptance and general integration of women's history into mainstream history or whether it is representative of the field's more conservative corners. Recent digital history projects are doing a good job in explaining some of the issues with key sources for Wikipedia like the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [26] , and I'd hope that this continues. As Martha Saxton said, 'integrating women's experience into broad subjects' is 'both more challenging intellectually and ultimately, more to the point of the overall project of bringing women into our acknowledged history'. [27]

But it's also clearly up to us to make a difference. If it's worth researching the life and achievements of a notable woman, it's worth making sure their contribution to history is available to the world while improving the quality of the world's biggest encyclopaedia. And it doesn't mean going it alone. It's still just Women's History Month so it's not too late to sign up and join one of the women's history projects, or to plan something with your students. [28] [29] [30]

I'd like to close with quotes from two different women. Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Sue Gardner: 'Wikipedia will only contain 'the sum of all human knowledge' if its editors are as diverse as the population itself: you can help make that happen. And I can't think of anything more important to do, than that.' [31]
 
And to quote Laura Mandell's keynote yesterday: 'Let's write and publish about each other's projects so that future historians will have those sources to write about. ... Nothing changes through thinking alone, only through massive amounts of re-iteration'. [32]

[Update: based on questions afterwards, you may want to get started with Wikipedia:How to run an edit-a-thon, or sign up and say hello at Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History. You could also join in  the Global Women Wikipedia Write-In #GWWI on April 26 (1-3pm, US EST), and they have a handy page on How to Create Wikipedia Entries that Will Stick.

And update April 30, 2013: check out 'Learning to work with Wikipedia - New Pages Patrol and how to create new Wikipedia articles that will stick' by the excellent Adrianne Wadewitz.

Update, June 9: if you're thinking of setting a class assignment involving editing Wikipedia, check out their 'For educators' and 'Assignment Design' pages for tips and contact points.  June 18: see also Nicole Beale's 'Wikipedia for Regional Museums'.]

---

References

[1] Various. ‘Wikipedia’. 2013. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.

[2] See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women%27s_History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC_30

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_run_an_edit-a-thon

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Feminists_Engage_Wikipedia

[5] Barnett, Fiona. 2013. ‘#tooFEW - Feminists Engage Wikipedia’. HASTAC. March 11. http://hastac.org/blogs/fionab/2013/03/11/toofew-feminists-engage-wikipedia.

[6] Gobry, Pascal-Emmanuel. 2011. ‘Wikipedia Is Hampered By Its Huge Gender Gap’. Business Insider. January 31. http://www.businessinsider.com/wikipedia-is-hampered-by-its-huge-gender-gap-2011-1#.

[7] Cronon, William. 2012. ‘Scholarly Authority in a Wikified World’. Perspectives on History, American Historical Association. February 7. http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2012/1202/Scholarly-Authority-in-a-Wikified-World.cfm.

[8] Saxton, Martha. 2012. ‘Wikipedia and Women’s History: A Classroom Experience’. Writing History in the Digital Age. http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/crowdsourcing/saxton-etal-2012-spring/.

[9] Gobonobo. 2013. ‘User:Gobonobo/Gender Gap Red List’. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gobonobo/Gender_Gap_red_list

[10] Various.. ‘Hans Reck’. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reck

[11] Mohr, B. A. R. 2010. Wives and daughters of early Berlin geoscientists and their work behind the scenes. Earth Sciences History 29 (2): 291–310.

[12] As commenter Operalala suggested, one challenge is recognising ‘the difference between the plurality of academia and the singularity of a Wikipedia article’. Comment http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/#comment-437781354 on Messer-Kruse, Timothy. 2012. ‘The “Undue Weight” of Truth on Wikipedia’. The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 12. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/.

[13] Rosenzweig, Roy. 2006. ‘Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past’. The Journal of American History 93 (1) (June): 117–46. https://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new-media/essays/?essayid=42

[14] Operalala on Messer-Kruse, 2012 [15] Cronon, 2012.

[16] Potter, Claire. 2013. ‘Looking for the Women on Wikipedia: Readers Respond’. The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 14. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2013/03/looking-for-the-women-on-wikipedia-readers-respond/

[17] For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gobonobo/Gender_Gap_red_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:T._Anthony/Women_in_Red https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dsp13/Redlinks/Women

[18] Janet Abbate, "Guest Editor's Introduction: Women and Gender in the History of Computing," IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 4-8, October-December, 2003

[19] Messer-Kruse, 2012.

[20] Anderson, Jill. 2013. ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll (Probably) Never Do Again’. True Stories Backward. http://girlhistorian.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/a-supposedly-fun-thing-ill-probably-never-do-again/

[21] Messer-Kruse, 2012.

[22] Various. 2013. ‘Wikipedia:No Original Research’. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

[23] Various. 2013. ‘Wikipedia:Notability (people)’. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)

[24] Various. 2013. ‘Wikipedia:Notability’. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOTE
[25] Or as Christie Aschwanden says when proposing the 'Finkbeiner test' for contemporary journalism about women in science, 'treating female scientists as special cases only perpetuates the idea that there’s something extraordinary about a woman doing science'. Aschwanden, Christie. 2013. ‘The Finkbeiner Test’. Double X Science. March 5. http://www.doublexscience.org/the-finkbeiner-test/

[26] For a recent example, see ‘An Entry of One’s Own, or Why Are There So Few Women In the Early Modern Social Network?’ 2013. Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. March 8. http://sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/post/44879380376/an-entry-of-ones-own-or-why-are-there-so-few-women-in and ‘Gender and Name Recognition’. 2013. Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. March 20. http://sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com/post/45833622936/gender-and-name-recognition

[27] Saxton, 2012

[28] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiWomen%27s_History_Month

[29] Potter, Claire. 2013. ‘Prikipedia? Or, Looking for the Women on Wikipedia’. The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 10. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2013/03/prikipedia-looking-for-the-women-on-wikipedia/
[30] For advice, see: Wikimedia Outreach. 2013. ‘Education Portal/Tips and Resources’. Wikipedia Outreach Wiki.  http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education_Portal/Tips_and_Resources
[31] A comment on Gardner, Sue. 2010. ‘Unlocking the Clubhouse: Five Ways to Encourage Women to Edit Wikipedia’. Sue Gardner’s Blog. November 14. http://suegardner.org/2010/11/14/unlocking-the-clubhouse-five-ways-to-encourage-women-to-edit-wikipedia/
[32] Mandell, Laura. 2013. "Feminist Critique vs. Feminist Production in Digital Humanities." Keynote presented at the Women’s History in the Digital World conference, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania March 22 2013

The Perseus Digital Library is pleased to announce the 1.0 Release of the Perseus Catalog.

The Perseus Catalog is an attempt to provide systematic catalog access to at least one online edition of every major Greek and Latin author (both surviving and fragmentary) from antiquity to 600 CE. Still a work in progress, the catalog currently includes 3,679 individual works (2,522 Greek and 1,247 Latin), with over 11,000 links to online versions of these works (6,419 in Google Books, 5,098 to the Internet Archive, 593 to the Hathi Trust). The Perseus interface now includes links to the Perseus Catalog from the main navigation bar, and also from within the majority of texts in the Greco-Roman collection.

The metadata contained within the catalog has utilized the MODS and MADS standards developed by the Library of Congress as well as the Canonical Text Services and CTS-URN protocols developed by the Homer Multitext Project.  The Perseus catalog interface uses the open source Blacklight Project interface and Apache Solr. Stable, linkable canonical URIs have been provided for all textgroups, works, editions and translations in the Catalog for both HTML and ATOM output formats. The ATOM output format provides access to the source CTS, MODS and MADS metadata for the catalog records. Subsequent releases will make all catalog data available as RDF triples.

Other major plans for the future of the catalog include not only the addition of more authors and works as well as links to online versions but also to open up the catalog to contributions from users. Currently the catalog does not include any user contribution or social features other than standard email contact information but the goal is to soon support the creation of user accounts and the contribution of recommendations, corrections and or new metadata.

The Perseus Catalog blog features documentation, a user guide, and contact information as well as comments from Editor-in-Chief Gregory Crane on the history and purpose of the catalog.

The Perseus Digital Library Team

On 5 June 2013, the British Library bought four lots in the Mendham Sale at Sotheby's, London. The Library's view was that the sale was regrettable, and Roly Keating (our Chief Executive) expressed his reservations as joint-signatory in a letter published in The Times on 11 May. However, once it...

In looking at the calendar, Bill and I leave Polis for Larnaka on the morning of Wednesday the 26th since I fly back to the US on the 27th. So, since I will be taking a research trip to Nicosia on Friday, that leaves us only 6 more work days. This means that we are in the danger zone. We have to be careful with our work plan so that we do not forget to get something critical finished (like an important excavation pass analyzed), nor do we want to be running around frantically next Tuesday trying to accomplish everything – the voice of experience says that this leads to disaster. This means prioritizing tasks and estimating realistically how long these tasks will take – since they almost always take longer than expected.

On the ceramic front, we are going back through the pottery I have analyzed over the last three seasons and trying to refine my ceramic identifications if possible, looking for comparanda, and choosing pieces for inclusion in a catalog for an article on the basilica. This has been a little nerve racking for me. As Brandon said to me this morning – it is a no-win situation since if your first identification is correct, you are just doing your job, but if you find you need to change your identification in some way, then you blew it. In our work on dating the construction of the basilica, we have been focusing on the context pottery that was collected during the excavation, and this are small sherds. It was only in the last day or so that I tookthe opportunity to look at the ceramics that were pulled at the time of excavation because they were more complete, or appeared especially diagnostic. After dealing with thousands of small, broken sherds, these pieces are fun to look at because they look so nice. The only drawback to looking at the ESA plate Brandon is examining in the picture was the dead mouse in the box.

RSM

Does anyone have access to this item:

Joseph Sievers, Forgotten Aspects of the reception of Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum: Its Lists of Contents, in Eve-Marie Becker, Stefan Scholz, “Kanon in Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion”, DeGruyter, 2011. p.363-386.

Somewhat annoyingly, Cambridge University Library did not appear to have the book, and it isn’t listed in COPAC either.

If your library has it, please drop me a line using the contact form. Thank you.

UPDATE: I have it – thank you all who replied.

From MIT Press

Open Access

By Peter Suber

Overview

The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

Signup to our open access newsletter and receive updates whenever the MIT Press releases books that are open access!

About the Author

Peter Suber is  Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

Reviews

“[A] very important book...a must read for all scholars and researchers who publish their own work or consult the peer-reviewed published work of others—in other words, virtually all academics.” — Rob Harle, Leonardo Reviews

For Buying Options, Start Here

Paperback | $12.95 Trade | £9.95 | ISBN: 9780262517638 | 230 pp. | 5 x 7 in | July 2012
 

Essential Info

• Open Access ePUB Version.
• Open Access Mobi Version.
• Open Access PDF Version
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• Open Access Version HTML Version
• Updates and Supplemental Content

A screenshot of Zen Tag, a naming activity — where participants just name what they see.

A few months back, during the Personal Digital Archiving 2013 conference, I was struck by how much interesting research was being done in the field of digital preservation. Everything from digital forensics to gamification, all of it thoughtful, much of it very practical and applicable. Still, I couldn’t help wishing that there was even more going on.

In NDIIPP we often interact with granting organizations and get a peak at the types of things proposers are hoping to get funded. While many useful things are proposed and get funded, I’m struck more by the types of things that I don’t see as often: proposals for practical, applied research that directly address long-time digital stewardship challenges or that build on other stellar research to establish a focused advance towards solutions. Many of the issues that need more focus are the types of things that cause organizations to wait on digital stewardship because the problems aren’t solved yet.

So I started writing down a list of things that might merit further attention from researchers and funders. I haven’t done an exhaustive search to see what’s currently being done in these areas (please point things out in the comments!) nor have I thought through all the challenges of doing these types of research (that’s for the researchers!) but I do think these merit further attention.

My inspiration for encouraging applied research is the work NDIIPP did back in 2005 with the Archive Ingest and Handling Test project. The AIHT was designed to test the interfaces specified in the architectural model for NDIIPP. The researchers ended up discovering that “even seemingly simple events such as the transfer of an archive are fraught with low-level problems, problems that are in the main related to differing institutional cultures and expectations” (from its final report (PDF)).

The observations that came out of these discoveries, rather than being irritating sidebars to the “real research,” actually provide ample practical value to future researchers engaged in similar digital preservation activities.

The GeoMAPP project took a similar approach to try and surface unexpected results by having the participants transfer their geospatial data collections back and forth between the different states, exposing each to new approaches and the challenge of  “last mile” transfer, storage and network infrastructures.

This is the kind of unexpected knowledge that can come out of applied research, the kinds of efforts that might be applied to some of the areas below:

Format Migration: What happens to any particular file when you migrate the file from one version of software to another? What happens when you migrate from one software type to another, for example, converting files from one type of word processing software to another? What changes happen to the file and the information inside and can these changes be quantified and measured? How can we quantify the changes that happen and determine if they have any import for digital preservation actions? Is it possible to do this all of this at scale and be able to manage the changes in a coherent way?

There is often talk in the digital stewardship community about format obsolescence and the need to address this issue in the future. The need to address format obsolescence has become a truism in the digital stewardship community, and while it may be a vexing problem, there is still doubt about how acute the problem might be. Still, we’ll need answers to the questions above in order to determine whether the need to address format obsolescence through migration is worth the cost of doing so.

Fixity Checking: How often do we need to check the fixity value of any particular digital file to ensure that it remains the same? Is there a risk in touching files too much? Is there an optimal amount of contact that will ensure authenticity while limiting risk and cost? Will regular fixity checking give us more accurate error rates for different types of digital storage? Are there increases in error rates based solely on fixity checking? What are the actual computing costs of checking the fixity of digital files at scale?

Bill Lefurgy described the importance of file fixity in an earlier post as “critical to ensuring that digital files are what they purport to be, principally through using checksum algorithms to verify that the exact digital structure of a file remains unchanged as it comes into and remains in preservation custody.” The NDSA is making efforts to uncover member approaches to file fixity through its regular “storage survey,” while individual members are aware of the value to regularly check the fixity of the digital materials under their purview. The Scape project is looking at this, as is the computer industry. Still, it’s the digital preservation community that is taking the lead in considering these issues, and much more work needs to be done to get some basic data on what happens when we do these types of activities.

Email Archiving: What are the main challenges of email archiving? How can preserved email be made accessible? Is it possible to “weed” irrelevant email messages from those that are archival through automated processes? How can email attachments be preserved along with the messages themselves? How much storage does an average email archive require?

Email archiving is a prime concern for archival institutions, especially those in government. Email archiving solutions are strongly weighted towards the type of email system employed by the organization, and as such, much of the research in the backup and storage of email has been ceded to the information technology industry. It’s uncertain whether the IT approach takes archival concerns into consideration, however, and there remains a shortage of research on email from the archival perspective that might inform IT industry practices. The Collaborative Electronic Records Project focused on the preservation of email, and there has been some research on the archival side into tools that make email archives accessible, such as Muse. Chris Prom’s definitive DPC Technology Watch Report on Preserving Email (PDF) suggests a wide range of potential research paths, but it’s unclear if more practical work has built on his excellent observations.

Thoughts on the above questions? Areas that you think need further research? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working my way through Richard Maguire’s recent dissertation on the Late Antique Basilicas of Cyprus. While he dedicates the  main body of his dissertation to a series of nuanced case studies, the real jewel of his dissertation is the gazetteer of Cypriot churches. As long time readers of this blog know, I’ve been piddling about with a catalogue of churches on the island (it was really just a list) for years.. Maguire’s dissertation has put an end to that project (thankfully)!

One of the most immediately useful observations in Maguire’s gazetteer is that the church on the Acropolis of Amathus has a 13 x 13 square as its core. The basilica is #6 in his gazetteer and coins have dated the building to the final quarter of the 6th century.

Its 13 x 13 m core consists of the nave and aisles and is roughly similar to the core of our church in the area of EF2 at Polis. Of course, the 13 x 13 square does not align perfectly with our church, but then again, our church is a good bit rougher than the elaborate Amathus church.

What makes this parallel more compelling is that, like the Amathus Acropolis basilica, our church has south porch with four piers. It joins with a narthex that extends beyond the southern aisle. More importantly, our church appears to date – on the basis of ceramic evidence, to no earlier than the final decades of the 6th century. So our church and the church at the Acropolis at Amathus are more or less contemporary.

At the Imouseion Project Workshop in Paris held at the beginning of June I learned about Greg Nagy’s project of an online course about the Homeric epics, the concept of Greek heroes and how the Greeks themselves dealt with it. The project has been launched in March and students can join until July 2013. See here for a general overview of its aims and content.

I just enrolled today and browsed through the first lesson. The choice of the first texts are particularly well fitting and the videos accompanying them give the necessary insights to understand their depth or to compare them with more modern experiences.

The whole course will be taught by a group of scholars including, besides Greg Nagy, also Lenny Muellner, Kevin McGrath, Alex Forte, Claudia Filos, Natasha Bershadsky, Glynnis Fawkes and Sean Signore. All are either teaching or studying at several US-universities. For each lesson, or hour, several texts are given. They are explained and discussed and the sessions ends with two sections of questions, one more about facts and the second about the texts and their meanings.

There is also a discussion section and an information blog giving the latest news about the progress of the course. Finally one can also find a link to the e-book version of Greg Nagy’s latest book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, which is based on his teaching material assembled over more than 30 years for this topic.

I am looking forward to having time for looking into hour 2!

Last Thursday, Ben Balter wrote:

Not long ago, we began rendering 3D models on GitHub. Today we're excited to announce the latest addition to the visualization family - geographic data. Any .geojson file in a GitHub repository will now be automatically rendered as an interactive, browsable map, annotated with your geodata.

Wow! GitHub, MapBox, OpenStreetMap, Leaflet, and GeoJSON are five of my favorite things on the web. I can't wait to see what happens next.

So yesterday, Brandon Olson and I, drove to Athienou. The goal of the trip was for Brandon to show Jody Gordon and some of the Athienou Archaeological Project how he uses Agisoft Photoscan. Agisoft Photoscan is a software program that allows you to create a multiview 3D reconstruction of a site or an object. It is a nifty program and Brandon and Bill have gotten good at using it. Since we needed to drop off a rental car in Larnaka, I went along with Brandon and brought the LaserScan C10 to test it out. The scanning went well, even though you could feel the difference in heat between Athienou and Polis – or at least I could. After scanning part of their current excavation, we took the scanner down into a tomb and tried it there. It was fun to watch because the green laser beam showed up really well as it worked its way around the tomb.

The Outside of the Tomb

The Inside of the Tomb (with the front cut away)

RSM

During Preservation Week 2013, I gave a webinar about personal digital archiving. Over 600 people participated and, during the post-presentation question section, 91 people submitted questions online. I had time to answer about a dozen or so. After the webinar, the hosts from the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services sent me the complete list of questions and I’m gradually responding to all of them. Questions are always good because it helps us to improve and expand our information resources.

The questions covered a variety of topics — email preservation, file naming, digital video, file migration, scanning and digital asset management —  but the most striking fact is that two-thirds of all the questions could be grouped into just two main topics: digital photos and storage.

Interest in digital photos is not surprising. Most of the questions we get at NDIIPP personal-digital-archiving presentations are related to digital photos. The webinar questions about storage were also not surprising; with the variety of available digital storage options and the uncertainty about their reliability, storage can be a perplexing topic.

I’d like to share a few of the webinar questions in this post. There’s not enough space to cover both topics today so I will just do the digital photo ones. I will post the digital storage questions in a future column.

Photographer David Riecks, of photometdata.org, helped answer the more difficult questions. Since many of the questions were variations on the same theme, I mashed some of the more representative ones together.

Which is better for preservation, JPEG or TIFF? I have heard that TIFF is better because of degrading. Do JPEGs deteriorate?

TIFF is a lossless format, though newer versions of photo-processing applications such as Photoshop have options to save TIFF files with various forms of  lossless compression. A lossless file format is especially good if you plan to return to the file to make tone or color changes, or to retouch the photo. When you finish with the file and close it, there is no data compression and no image data is lost.

TIFF files require more storage space than JPEGs because of their relatively larger data-rich sizes, so some photographic organizations use a form of lossless file compression called LZW. It does take a bit of time to pack the file and each time you open the file it may take a bit of time to expand it. But no data is thrown away and the image does not degrade over time.

If you scan a photo, it is a good practice to save the scan as a TIFF, rather than as a JPEG or PDF, because of the TIFF’s losslessness. In addition, if you want the maximum quality, you can even capture and save up to 16 bits per channel in an RGB TIFF; JPEG only allows for 8 bits per channel.

If you want to share a digital photo that is in a TIFF file format, saving or exporting a copy of it as a JPEG is a fine option. A JPEG can be viewed a web browser and it takes less bandwidth to transmit or download. Always keep the original TIFF though.

If your original digital photo file is a JPEG and you don’t intend to modify it, you can archive it as it is. There is no benefit to converting it to a TIFF if you are not going to modify it. The “lossy” aspect of JPEG becomes an issue when you modify the JPEG and save it — and consequently compress it.

JPEG compression of image data results in some loss of image information, which is why it is referred to as lossy. Compression is not inherently bad; light compression reduces a file size and the lost image information is barely visible. But the more you compress a file, the more information you lose and the worse the photo looks. Once that digital information is lost, you can never get it back.

If you take a TIFF file and save it as a high quality JPEG with a low compression setting, the JPEG may occupy a fraction of the disk space that the TIFF would have occupied. However, if you were to open the JPEG again, make tone or color changes and then re-save it, you would subject it to another round of compression; after multiple rounds of modification and re-compression you would begin to see degradation in the image file.

The amount and quality of compression applied to a JPEG file is an important factor in its quality. In Photoshop, there are two means of creating a JPEG. One uses a quality scale of 1 to 12, with 12 being the least compression or “maximum quality” and it results in the largest file size.  Quality equals size. The higher the quality, the larger the file size; the lower the quality, the greater the data loss and the smaller the file size.

The type of JPEG compression applied in a camera will be different from that used in Photoshop. Some of the newer cameras have several settings, ranging from a “Basic” JPEG to a “Superfine” JPEG. These settings probably have a rough equivalent setting to Photoshop but they are not exactly the same.

When modifying digital photos, never modify the original. Always make a copy and modify the copy. You can compress copies for upload or delete copies if you are not happy with the results. Be careful to save the copy with a different name than the original; otherwise it will overwrite and replace the original.

The JPEG 2000 format has both a lossless and a lossy means of compression. Like TIFF, JPEG 2000 can store files with more than 8 bits per channel, though it requires less storage space than a TIFF. Note that while you can substantially reduce a JPEG 2000 file size, there are fewer applications that can create and open this file format compared to a TIFF. If you are considering converting your files to JPEG 2000, do some tests first.

Here’s a tip: if you open a JPEG image in a photo-processing application, modify it and save the retouched image as a TIFF (with or without LZW compression), then this TIFF image will not be any further degraded or compressed than the original. However, if you apply curves or levels to the image, then you will more than likely introduce some loss of data, since both these ways of modifying the tonal distribution of the image do so by squishing or stretching out the original data.

Does adding metadata affect the photo file? If you add descriptive information using particular software, will any other software enable you to view that information or is it all proprietary? Are there any open-source options for adding metadata?

You can modify the metadata about the image — such as caption, description and keywords — with a number of programs. Most of these will only modify the file header information, not the image pixels. [See "An Easy Way to Add Descriptions to Digital Photos," part 1 and part 2.] Adding metadata to a photo file does not subject the image to compression, so the quality of the image will not change. Since the metadata text does take up a little bit space, the size of the image will increase slightly.

Information written to the file header of JPEG images can be read by many applications and, in newer computers, even the operating system itself. For instance in Windows Vista and Windows 7/8, the WIC (Windows Imaging Component) allows you to see this information simply by “right clicking” and viewing the image properties. With Macs, from OS 10.5 forward, the information is visible by using “Preview” and Command + I (view info).

If you add metadata to TIFF files, much is the same as with JPEGs, though not all programs will work. Other special and proprietary file formats like Photoshop files (PSD) and camera RAW files (NEF, CR2) are even more problematic in terms of image metadata and review by other programs.

Most software use the IPTC or XMP standards to store embedded photo metadata. Picasa uses the older IPTC standard. Photoshop uses XMP for storing metadata: this includes the IPTC Core, IPTC Extension, PLUS and more. Information entered with Picasa can be read by Photoshop. The reverse is not always true.

You can find a list of photometadata resources at controlledvocabulary.com.

Does frequently opening digital photos, JPEGs, degrade the quality or is that due to compression?

Moving a JPEG from one location to another will not degrade the image but if the file is corrupted in transit  (due to, say, a virus), it will likely not be openable.

It’s important to understand that while compression is used in saving the JPEG file, and the JPEG image has to be decompressed before you can view it, there is no change to the image just through the act of opening the file. Re-compressing the file changes it.

If you “Save” the opened JPEG file, rather than just close the open file  (exit without saving), you can cause the file to degrade over time with each “open/save” action. Typically the only time you would be asked to save the file is after modifying the image pixels, such as changing the tone or color, or retouching, cropping or removing red-eye.

You might consider making pixel changes to your JPEG and saving the digital photo as a (lossless) TIFF file.

You mentioned scanning at 300 dpi for the standard photograph sizes. Would you use a different dpi if you were scanning a color photograph versus a black and white photograph?

You could scan a b&w photo using the “grayscale” option rather than the RGB color option, but you’d want at least 300 dpi/ppi regardless.

 

Via the excellent AWOL I learn of a digital repository for PhD theses.  Oxford, it seems, has declined to support the British Library’s EthOs initiative, preferring to keep material produced at Oxford on an Oxford website: Oxford University Research Archive.

This afternoon I did a search of the archive (from my smart phone – the site is not well adapted for it, tho), and found rather little.  But I did find some things of interest to us:

• Chase F. Robinson, The conquest of Khūzistān: a historiogr​aphical reassessme​nt, 2004.
• Jeff Childers, Studies in the Syriac versions of St. John Chrysostom​’s homilies on the New Testament.
• Tara L. Andrews, Prolegome​na to a critical edition of the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, with a discussion of computer-a​ided methods used to edit the text, 2009.
• R. W. Burgess, Hydatius, 1989.
• Matthew Nicholls, Roman Public Libraries, 2005.
• Cyril Mango, &c, From the Bosporus to Oxford: unseen photograph​s from Prof. Harrison’s Byzantine excavations in Istanbul, 2011.

Not a great haul from one of the world’s leading classical universities; but perhaps it is early days yet.  They are clearly digitising theses, which can only be good.

By: Mitch Allen, Left Coast Press, Inc. & Mills College

Arguments over open access in scholarly publishing have crossed the radar of every scholar, publisher, or librarian not suffering from terminal senility. Open access would represent a global shift of control of scholarly publications from largely (but not exclusively) the private sector’s group of publishing houses to some as-yet-undefined group of scholarly individuals and institutions. Eric Kansa’s recent post on the ASOR blog has elevated it to the level of a social revolution and moral crusade. Eric, who has built his career around developing open access options for archaeology—his Alexandria Archive one of the most innovative initiatives around—can be forgiven his rhetorical excesses for this reason. But it does not get us to a solution for how to move forward on a sustainable publication model in archaeology any more than calls for the disbanding of global capitalism will end economic inequality in the 21^st century world.

We already live in an age of open access for archaeological publishing. Anyone looking for information has thousands of free sources to consult. There are people and organizations compiling archaeological news digests each day. ISAW’s Chuck Jones has a blog that daily adds to the listing of open access sites on the web. Each excavation project has its own website which, in addition to photos of happy but dirty students playing in the squares, contains the annual preliminary reports— documents that have previously been difficult for archaeologists to obtain— and a smattering of photos of recent important finds. Anyone wishing to publish their own archaeology book, even ones attempting to show how the pyramids were built by aliens in 10,000 BC, needs only to send a few hundred dollars to Amazon or Lulu or iUniverse to have their dream of being a published author fulfilled. More importantly, increasing amounts of fugitive archaeological data are being curated through the Alexandria Archive, The Digital Archaeological Record, and other similar programs. Professional conferences are now being taped and hosted on YouTube.  Even the commercial book sector has discovered the value of posting their books on Google Book Search or Amazon’s Search Inside the Book for potential buyers to preview a percentage its contents. I recently made the claim that we are in a golden age of archaeological publishing (Allen and Joyce 2010). I still believe that.

So the debate about open access is really a much narrower one, focused on only a few areas of scholarly dissemination—journals and books made available by professional publishers. Much of this comes from large commercial publishers like Elsevier or Springer, some from smaller presses like Left Coast or Eisenbraun’s. A substantial amount of this publishing is done by not-for-profit operations like scholarly societies, university research units, or university presses. A recent study indicated that a full 20% of journal publications came from the latter source. ASOR falls in this category with its three journals and two book series providing a significant amount of the organization’s revenue.  It is this “commercial” side of the academic dissemination system that has become the target of the open access movement, ignoring the myriad of already open access sources. Why?

Because these are the publications that count in the academic world. Refereed journal articles and books from reputable scholarly presses are what make an archaeological career. It is this sense of value that drives libraries to spend vast sums on scholarly journals and to buying most (it used to be all) books from serious publishers in a given field. Ditto the individual scholar. You are expected to have read the important stuff in your field, and these generally come from a limited number of reputable presses.  That reputation comes at a cost—at Left Coast we’ve been working for the past 8 years to build the reputation that our works are serious, scholarly, important. Oxford University Press has a 400-year head start on us and the junior scholar, faced with the problem of finding an academic job and getting tenured at it, will often go to an OUP or some other century-old publishing house like Brill or Routledge in the hopes that it will count more for their career. Ditto the journal article: scholars will strive to get their work into BASOR instead of a journal launched three years ago because the presumed academic rewards will be greater.  If this weren’t true, the entire commercial publications sector would crumble as scholars fled to the simplest, quickest publication outlet to show their latest work. The problem, then, doesn’t lie with the commercial presses but with the academic reward system. Convince the university provost and the physicist and nursing prof on the university tenure committee that the Open Journal of Near Eastern Archaeology is as important a publication venue as Levant or JCS and the entire commercial system will quickly vanish.

The tenure system is slated to reform about the same time that the demise of global capitalism occurs.

Eric correctly notes the other key issues: the cost of publication and the issue of long term sustainability. Each of these would require much more than a blog post to adequately address so I can only offer a few points here.

The current system relies on the publisher to invest its money in production, printing, publicity, distribution, warehousing, and accounting in order to disseminate scholarly publications, with the hope that the purchasers, mostly libraries, scholars, and students, will repay their efforts.  In each case, the publication has to pay for itself through these revenue  sources and hopefully generate a  “surplus” (the term of choice for not-for-profits) or “profit” (in the commercial sector) to enable the publisher to generate more material the following year. Open access doesn’t eliminate any of these costs, including the need for surplus, but shifts them from the purchaser to the producer. Who will that financier be? Grants and subsidies? Advertising? Author-pays? The university library? Not-for-profit organizations like the Alexandria Archive or ASOR? All of these options raise more issues of long-term financial sustainability and stability than the current publication system.  If the solution were simple, someone would have figured it out by now.

Then there is the 20% of scholarly work produced by scholarly organizations like ASOR. How do they replace their lost income when their income-generating publications are available for free to all? ASOR has been grappling with this question for several years now, without a solution.

Given the evils of global capitalism in publishing or elsewhere, it does have the advantage of often being a self-correcting system. Thus, small presses like Left Coast can thrive because we are closer to our audience than a behemoth multinational media corporation and will charge less for our books. Large journal publishers like Springer and Sage have acceded to the demand for open access articles by allowing their journal articles to become so… for a fee.  Organizations like JSTOR are trying to break down the firewall that surround library collections by allowing independent scholars to subscribe to their Register & Read program. College libraries have demonstrated they can band together into consortia to negotiate with publishers for better value for their subscription dollars.  Further changes of this sort will appear as the existing system adapts to the issues raised by the open access movement.

Ultimately, we’ll probably end up with a hybrid system that includes both open access and commercial publication channels. We’ll all wish that some of the commercial material were available for free and try to find ways of accessing it at the lowest cost. We’ll also bemoan the unequal quality and coverage of the archaeological information available through open access channels.

Could it ever end anywhere else?  Well, maybe after the demise of global capitalism.

Mitch Allen is the Publisher of Left Coast Press, Inc. and Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Mills College. Left Coast Press is on Facebook and tweets @LCoastPress.

Reference:

Allen, Mitchell, and Rosemary Joyce. 2010. Communicating Archaeology in the 21^St Century, in VOICES IN AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY: Society for American Archaeology 75^th Anniversary Volume, Wendy Ashmore, Barbara Mills, Dorothy Lippert, eds., Washington: Society for American Archaeology.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

The Spectator Archive is the digitised version of the UK political magazine, the Spectator. The full archive runs from 1828 to 2008, and is freely available, although there are no other means of access. http://archive.spectator.co.uk/

Michael Hillmann, professor of Persian at the University of Texas at Austin made available several of his books on academia.com.
Downloading requires registration.

Advanced Persian Reading
'Advanced Persian Reader' Prefatory Materials and Unit 1

Classics of Persian Poetry: A Primer for Students–Prefatory Materials

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 1

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 2

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.1

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.2

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 3.3

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 4

'Persian Carpets'-Chapter 5.1

'Persian Carpets-Chapter 5.2

'Persian Carpets' 6–Bibliography

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Prefatory Materials

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 1

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 2

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 3

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 4

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Chapter 5

'A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and Her Poetry'...Bibliography

'Persian Listening' (2008)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Reading and Writing' (2010)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Conversation(s)' (2014)...Prefatory Materials

'Persian Grammar and Verbs' (2012)...Prefatory Materials

'Iranian Culture: A Persianist View'–Epilogue

[First posted in AWOL 13 May 2010. Updated 17 June 2013]

Seven periodicals from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi (1933-1997)

• 0Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi Makaleler Bibliyografyası I [1933-1980]
• 01. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1933]
• 02. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1934]
• 03. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1936]
• 04. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1940]
• 05. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1949]
• 06. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1956]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 07. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1957]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 08. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1958]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 09. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1959]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 10. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1960]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 11. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1961]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 12. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1962]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 13. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1964]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 14. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1965]
• 15. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1966]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 16. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1967]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 17. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1968]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 18. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1969]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 19. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1970]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 20. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1973]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 21. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1974]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 22. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1975]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 23. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1976]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 24. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1977]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 25. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1980]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 26. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1982]  1. Cilt  /  2. Cilt
• 27. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1988]
• 28. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1989]
• 29. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1991]
• 30. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1992]
• 31. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi [1997]
  

Türk Etnografya Dergisi (1956-1997)

• 1. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1956]
• 2. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1957]
• 3. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1958]
• 4. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1961]
• 5. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1962]
• 6. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1963]
• 7+8. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1964+1965]
• 9. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1966]
• 10. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1967]
• 11. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1968]
• 12. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1969]
• 13. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1973]
• 14. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1974]
• 15. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1976]
• 16. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1977]
• 17. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1982]
• 18. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1988]
• 19. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1991]
• 20. Türk Etnografya Dergisi [1997]

Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi

• 01. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2000]
• 02. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2001]
• 03. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2003]
• 04. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2004]
• 05. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2005]
• 06. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2006]
• 07. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2007]
• 08. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2008]
• 09. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2009]
• 10. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi [2010]

Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu Yayınları

• 01. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1990]
• 02. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1991]
• 03. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1992]
• 04. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1993]
• 05. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1994]
• 06. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1995]
• 07. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1996]
• 08. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1997]
• 09. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1998]
• 10. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [1999]
• 11. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2000]
• 12. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2001]
• 13. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2002]
• 14. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2004]
• 15. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2006]
• 16. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2007]
• 17. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2008]
• 18. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2009]
• 19. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2010]
• 20. Müze Çalışmaları ve Kurtarma Kazıları Sempozyumu [2011]

Kazı Sonuçları Toplantıları

•   2. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1980]
• 03. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1981]
• 04. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1982]
• 05. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1983]
• 06. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1984]
• 07. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 08. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 09. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 10. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 11. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 12. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 13. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 14. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 15. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 16. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 17. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 18. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 19. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1997]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 20. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 21. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 22. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 23. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 24. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 25. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 26. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 27. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 28. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 29. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 30. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 31. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 32. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt
• 33. Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt  / 4. Cilt

Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantıları

• 01. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 02. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]
• 03. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]
• 04. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]
• 05. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]
• 06. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]
• 07. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]
• 08. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]
• 09. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]
• 10. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]
• 11. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]
• 12. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]
• 13. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1997]
• 14. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]
• 15. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]
• 16. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]
• 17. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]
• 18. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]
• 19. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]
• 20. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]
• 21. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]
• 22. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]
• 23. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]
• 24. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]
• 25. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]
• 26. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]
• 27. Arkeometri Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]

Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantıları

• 01. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1983]
• 02. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1984]
• 03. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1985]
• 04. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1986]
• 05. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1987]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 06. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1988]
• 07. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1989]
• 08. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1990]
• 09. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1991]
• 10. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1992]
• 11. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1993]
• 12. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1994]
• 13. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1995]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 14. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1996]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 15. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 16. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1998]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 17. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [1999]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 18. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2000]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 19. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2001]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 20. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2002]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 21. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2003]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 22. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2004]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 23. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2005]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 24. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2006]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt
• 25. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2007]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 26. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2008]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 27. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2009]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 28. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2010]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt
• 29. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı [2011]  1. Cilt  / 2. Cilt  / 3. Cilt

See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Walking through the remote Greek mountain landscape is what I typically do this time of the year. For a variety of financial and institutional reasons, however, I must put a hold on project development for this summer, while I do my best to remotely contribute to the Lidoriki Project and the revival of the Morea Project (through the Parrhasian Heritage Park). My fieldwork this summer, has been

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine

The Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine project seeks to collect and make accessible over the Web all of the previously published inscriptions (and their English translations) of Israel/Palestine from the Persian period through the Islamic conquest (ca. 500 BCE - 640 CE). There are about 15,000 of these inscriptions, written primarily in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, by Jews, Christians, Greeks, and Romans. They range from imperial declarations on monumental architecture to notices of donations in synagogues to humble names scratched on ossuaries, and include everything in between.

There are approximately 1,500 inscriptions currently in the database, with more added regularly. These inscriptions can be accessed via the "Search" Button on the left. 

Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine is an ongoing project at Brown University. It has been generously supported by the Center of Digital Scholarship and the Office of the Vice President of Research at Brown University. We welcome your feedback.

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Inscriptions

 [First posted in AWOL 23 July 2010. Updated 17 June 2013]

 Inscriptiones Graecae: Elektronische Edition

Inschriften sind die Fußnoten im Buch der Geschichte der alten Welt; nur daß über weite Strecken der Haupttext fehlt.

Inschriften sind Primärquellen zur Geschichte, Religionsgeschichte, Sprachwissenschaft, Onomastik usw., die die antiken Autoren ergänzen, illustrieren, korrigieren. Jede Inschrift ist ein Original. Meist verstümmelt gefunden, sind sie in hohem Maße der Ergänzung und Interpretation bedürftig. Mitunter gelingt es, verstreute Fragmente ein- und derselben Inschrift zusammenzusetzen. Der Zustrom an neuen Inschriften hält unvermindert an: jährlich werden ca. 1000 neu publiziert.

Inschriften sind in der Regel auf Metall eingeritzt oder punziert, auf Stein eingemeißelt und mit Farbe (rot, blau) ausgelegt. Qualität und Menge der Inschriften ist abhängig von den zur Verfügung stehenden Gesteinen. Metallplatten sind besonders auf der Peloponnes verbreitet. Bleiplättchen werden, zusammengerollt, für Verwünschungen bevorzugt. Silber und Gold sind äußerst selten. Die ältesten Inschriften stammen aus dem 8. Jh. v.Chr. Es gibt keinen Zwischenraum zwischen den Worten (scriptio continua); Interpunktionen finden sich in frühester Zeit willkürlich, in der Kaiserzeit nach röm. Vorbild gelegentlich; dann auch Abkürzungen.

Der Inhalt der Inschriften äußerst mannigfach. Am häufigsten sind Grabinschriften auf Grabstelen (mit Relief), -säulen, -altären: Namen der Toten und Gruß. Eine besondere Form bilden Grabgedichte - Weih-Inschriften an die Götter, oft auf dem geweihten Gegenstand selbst angebracht; häufig nach einem Sieg bei sportlichen oder musischen Agonen gestiftet [16]. - Ehren-Inschriften, vor allem Unterschriften von Statuen, erst seit dem 4.Jh. v.Chr. häufiger, in röm. Zeit massenhaft. - Bildhauer-Inschriften, in denen sich der ausführende Künstler nennt. - Dekrete mit den Beschlüssen der Gesamtgemeinde oder ihrer Abteilungen und Vereine, im Formular in den einzelnen Poleis verschieden. Es überwiegen Ehrendekrete für Bürger anderer Poleis, Könige, römische Magistrate, denen das Ehrenbürgerrecht (Proxenie) verliehen wird. - Freilassungsurkunden von Sklaven, oft als (fiktiver) Verkauf an eine Gottheit vollzogen und in deren Tempel dokumentiert. - Grenz- und Hypothekensteine (horoi). - Gesetze und Regelungen privatrechtlicher sowie öffentlicher und sakraler Angelegenheiten bis hin zur Kodifizierung geltenden Rechts. - Religiöse Texte, Hymnen (mit Noten). - Briefe von hellenistischen Königen und römischen Kaisern. - Bauinschriften, Abrechnungs-Urkunden, Inventarlisten von sakralem Gerät. - Listen und Kataloge von Gegenständen (z.B. auf den Schiffen der athenischen Flotte) und Personen (z.B. von eponymen Beamten, Priestern). - Zwischenstaatliche Urkunden (Asylieurkunden, Staatsverträge, Akten der Rechtssprechung).

Die Sammlung der antiken Inschriften wurde im Jahre 1815 von der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften auf Antrag von August Boeckh beschlossen. In den vier Bänden des "Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum" wurden 1828-1859 alle damals bekannten Inschriften gesammelt und kommentiert. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff vereinte 1902 das Prinzip der Autopsie mit dem der Vollständigkeit, beschränkte zugleich die auf 15 Bände geplanten "Inscriptiones Graecae" (IG) auf Griechenland, Italien und die Inseln der Ägäis. Zur Aktualisierung der Sammlung sind Neuauflagen (editio altera) sowie Supplementbände vorgesehen.

Die digitale Edition enthält, beginnend mit dem im Jahre 2001 erschienenen Band IG IX 1², 4, Texte und deutsche Übersetzungen aller Inschriften; die Aufnahme von Übersetzungen in anderen Sprachen ist vorgesehen. In den Übersetzungen wurde auf diakritische Zeichen weitgehend verzichtet; Ergänzungen sind nicht eigens gekennzeichnet, sondern ergeben sich aus dem Vergleich mit der Edition. In bestimmten Fällen sind weitergehende Ergänzungen aus dem kritischen Apparat in eckigen Klammern [ ] wiedergegeben; für den Sinnzusammenhang notwendige sowie erklärende Zusätze sind durch runde Klammern ( ) kenntlich gemacht. Lücken gleich welchen Umfangs werden einheitlich durch "- - -" gekennzeichnet. Alle Zeitangaben sind v. Chr., sofern nicht anders angegeben. Die Abkürzungen "S. d." (= "Sohn des") und "T. d." (= Tochter des") umschreiben das griechische Patronymikon.

• Startseite
• Digitale Edition
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Übersicht

Attika, 5.Jh. v.Chr.

IG I³, 2, 500 - IG I³, 2, 1517

IG I³, 2

Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores. Fasc. 2: Dedicationes, catalogi, termini, tituli sepulcrales, varia, tituli Attici extra Atticam reperti, addenda. Edid. David Lewis et Lilian Jeffery adiuvante Eberhard Erxleben. - XIII, S. 489-998. Berlin 1994

Attika, Spätantike Inschriften

IG II/III² 13248-13690

IG II/III² 5

Inscriptiones Atticae aetatis quae est inter Herulorum incursionem et Imp. Mauricii tempora. Edid. Ericus Sironen. - X, 218 S., LI Tab., Berlin 2008

Aigina

IG IV² 2, 746 - IG IV² 2, 1239

IG IV² 2

Inscriptiones Argolidis. Fasc. 2: Inscriptiones Aeginae insulae. Schedis usus quas condidit Hans R. Goette edid. Klaus Hallof. - XIII, 200 S., XXVIII Tab., Berlin 2007

Inseln des Ionischen Meeres

IG IX 1², 4, 786 - IG IX 1², 4, 1779

IG IX 1², 4

Inscriptiones Phocidis, Locridis, Aetoliae, Acarnaniae, insularum maris lonii. Fasc. 4: Inscriptiones insularum maris Ionii. Schedis usus quas condidit Guentherus Klaffenbach auxitque Daniel Strauch, adiuvante Mathias Lawo edid. Klaus Hallof. Titulos Ithacenses retractavit John M. Fossey. - XII, 402 S., XLIV Tab., Berlin 2001

Ostlokris

IG IX 1², 5, 1780 - IG IX 1², 5, 2047

IG IX 1², 5

Inscriptiones Phocidis, Locridis, Aetoliae, Acarnaniae, insularum maris lonii. Fasc. 5. Inscriptiones Locridis orientalis. Schedis usa quas condidit Guentherus Klaffenbach edid. Daniela Summa. - X, 148 S., 20 Tab., Berlin 2011.

Kos. Kalymna. Milesische Inseln

IG XII 4, 1, 1 - IG XII 4, 1, 423

IG XII 4, 1

Inscriptiones Coi, Calymnae, insularum Milesiarum. Curavit Klaus Hallof. Pars I: Inscriptionum Coi insulae: Decreta, epistulae, edicta, tituli sacri. Edid. Dimitris Bosnakis, Klaus Hallof, Kent Rigsby. - XI, 339 + vii S., Berlin 2010.

Samos. Ikaria. Korassische Inseln

IG XII 6, 1, 1 - IG XII 6, 2, 1290

IG XII 6, 1

Inscriptiones Chii et Sami cum Corassiis Icariaque. Pars 1: Inscriptiones Sami insulae: Decreta, epistulae, sententiae, edicta imperatoria, leges, catalogi, tituli Atheniensium, tituli honorarii, tituli operum publicorum, inscriptiones ararum. Edid. Klaus Hallof. - XII, 345 + viii S., Berlin 2000.

IG XII 6, 2

Inscriptiones Chii et Sami cum Corassiis Icariaque. Pars 2: Inscriptiones Sami insulae: Dedicationes, tituli sepulcrales, tituli Christiani Byzantini Iudaei, varia, tituli graphio incisi, incerta, tituli alieni. Inscriptiones Corassiarum, edid. Klaus Hallof. Inscriptiones Icariae insulae, edid. Angelus P. Matthaiou. - VII, S. 346-756, LVIII Tab., Berlin 2003

Sites and Finds

Deep Time at Tall Hisban, Jordan

In Focus: Abel Beth Maacah

Bethsaida, Israel—Take a Tour of Current Excavations

Illustrated lectures

Everyday Life from the Archaeological Record: Prof. Aren Maeir

Sarah Parcak: Archeology from space

Ashkelon: Seaport of the Philistines, Lecture by Lawrence Stager

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On Friday, our traditional day off here in Polis, I went for a walk in the country with my friend and fellow archaeologist Tina Najbjerg. We walked up to the ridge that separates the fertile Chrysochous Valley from the more arid and remote Akamas Peninsula in Greece. Our walk even included the picturesque ruin of a small, maybe Middle Byzantine monastery know as the Pyrgos tis Regainas. 

Hogarth describes part of the walk like this in his Devia Cypria (1889):

“On this side of the Akamas we enter a land of classical and mediaeval romance ; for here, according to Cypriote tradition, was the Fontana Amorosa of Ariosto, and a distinct and far more beautiful “Vrisis ton Eroton”, where the natives say that Aphrodite wedded Acamas. There can be little doubt that the two have probably but one origin, and that the real ‘fount of love ‘ is the present “Vrisis ton Eroton”", although the western tradition has identified itself with a separate spring. The latter rises at the foot of the cliff in a tiny bay half-an-hour’s ride north of Agios Nicola, and is a prosaic little fount enough; but the former, three and a half miles to the south, near the Potami tchiflik, has no rival in Cyprus. Approaching from the sea the traveller follows a rushing stream up a densely wooded ravine, barred at last by sombre cliffs, whose top can scarcely be discerned through the arch of boughs; spreading and shimmering over the slanting face of the rock falls a mountain stream, until near the base the cliff slopes inwards and the water falls from a forest of maiden-hair fern in a thousand silver threads to the pool below : across the threads here and there shoot stray shafts of sunlight, penetrating the dense shade of a gigantic fig-tree, and three separate springs rise on either side under the cliff and gurgle down to join the pool. The traveller, whose eyes have seen only the rock and scrub of waterless Cyprus, seems in an enchanted spot, not seeing from whence the water comes, and he ceases to wonder that native fancy has peopled the spot with legendary loves, and sailors carried westward vague reports of its beauties to the ears of Ariosto.

Between the rival fountains and a little back from the coast lies a mediaeval relic now known as Pyrgos, the ‘ Tower ‘ ; an arched gateway gives entrance to a small cloister of which only the northern side is standing, the wall showing traces of fresco. Round about are foundations of out-buildings, and disused paths lead through the brushwood : east of it is a little spring and some fine pine-trees. There can be no doubt that it was once a small monastery, or a metoichi of a larger one.”

It seemed pretty nice to me too. In fact, it was nice enough that I just enjoyed the shade of the oaks and the little ruined monastery and left my camera in my bag for a while.

They day was warm and just a bit hazy. Our main goal of the walk was to take in the amazing views.

View north over the Chrysochou Bay

Standing atop that ridge and look around, I got the uncanny feeling that I could be anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean and have these views (well, not anywhere literally, but that the Mediterranean countryside looked like this). I’m not a naturalist, but even I could identify the wild olives, carob, scrubby oaks, and pine common to the Mediterranean littoral. They left scratches on my legs from the bare branches that goats have The rocky ground, the thin soils, the sea borne breeze, even the smells of goats, oregano, and salt air made our walk familiar. 

A view south to the Akamas

While rickets is primarily thought to be a disease of industrialization, there was an earlier spike in prevalence especially within Europe. Rickets is primarily due to lack of exposure to ultraviolet B rays, caused by lack of sun exposure, poor environmental conditions or bad nutrition. The early post-modern period in Europe was plagued by low … Continue reading »

This is a quick reminder of the 23rd June deadline for extended abstracts for The Connected Past special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. The call for submissions to this special issue is now open. So don’t hesitate any longer and send us that awesome networky paper you have been working on! As you can gather from the CFP below, we want to have a focused special issue with solid case studies that illustrate how network analysis can be useful in archaeology. However, we are really keen to publish really innovative approaches, things that have not been tried before by archaeological network analysts. We look forward to reading your abstracts!

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Connected Past: critical and innovative approaches to networks in archaeology

A special issue of Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

Edited by: Anna Collar, Tom Brughmans, Fiona Coward and Barbara Mills

Over the last decade the number of published archaeological applications of network methods and theories has increased significantly. A number of research themes deserve further exploration, however. How do particular archaeological research contexts drive the selection and adaptation of formal network methods from the wide range of existing approaches? What is the role archaeological data can play in network methods? What are the decisions we are faced with when defining nodes and ties, and what assumptions underlie these definitions? How can our theoretical approaches be expressed through formal methods incorporating empirical data? Are network theories and methods compatible? How can materiality be incorporated within existing network approaches? How can we deal with long-term network evolution within archaeological research contexts?

This special issue aims to illustrate through innovative and critical archaeological case studies that these problems can be overcome, and that by doing so the role of archaeological network analysis within the archaeologist’s toolbox will become better defined.

This special issue invites well-developed archaeological case studies in which a network-based method is formulated as the best approach to an archaeological research question. A key conviction of this special issue is that theoretical and methodological concerns should be raised through practice. As such, papers are expected to either develop a critical and detailed archaeological analysis through commonly applied network-based approaches, or to illustrate how archaeological research contexts can require the development or adoption of innovative network techniques. Such a collection of case studies will illustrate that the network is not an end-product; it is a research perspective that allows one to ask and answer unique questions of archaeological relevance.

Please send extended abstracts (1000 words) to connectedpast@soton.ac.uk by 23 June 2013.

Notification of acceptance: July 2013.

Submission of full papers for peer-review to guest editors: 22 September 2013.

Submission of revised papers for peer-review to JAMT: 24 November 2013.

Please note that the acceptance of extended abstracts and peer-review by guest editors is not a guarantee that the paper will be published in the special issue. Individual papers will have to successfully go through the JAMT peer-review process before publication can be guaranteed.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: jamt, journal of archaeological method and theory, news, publication, special issue, TCP, the connected past

GreekandLatinUCL  (on YouTube)

The Department of Greek and Latin at UCL is one of the premier Classics departments in the UK. It offers study programmes at the BA, MA and PhD level, produces high-quality research and is keen to share its expertise with the general public.

UCL Greek & Latin has more than ten permanent members of staff as well as part-time staff and postgraduate researchers with diverse backgrounds and a variety of research interests. We are a vibrant community that covers all the main areas of ancient Greek and Latin language and literature as well as aspects such as philosophy, palaeography, linguistics and the reception of the ancient world in the modern period. 

For more information on the Department visit: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/

• 

    

  13:32

  UCL Greek Play

  24 views

  UCL Greek Play
  Every year UCL produces a Greek play, funded by the Department, which over the course of its run attracts more than two thousand people to see it. In 2011 & 2012 the Department of Greek and Latin offered an ...
  
• 

  
  

  56:06

  Professor Eric Csapo (University of Sidney) - 'The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude'

  22 views

  Professor Eric Csapo (University of Sidney)
  'The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude'
  the 2013 A. E. Housman Lecture
  The UCL Department of Greek and Latin regularly hosts a public lecture named in honour of its ...
  
• 

  
  

  54:01

  Dr Peter Meineck (NYU) - The Theatre that Moved the Soul, Lecture at UCL

  38 views

  The Theatre that Moved the Soul: Understanding the Power of Ancient Greek Drama through Modern Cognitive Science - Dr Peter Meineck (NYU)
  http://www.ucl.ac.uk/classi......
  Filmed and edited by Marco Cosentino
  

Did you miss the Lindisfarne Gospels and St Cuthbert Gospel on BBC Radio 3? Then fear not, as the whole programme is available to listen again (United Kingdom only, alas) on the BBC iPlayer. Presented by author David Almond, the programme explores the place of these majestic manuscripts in art,...

 [First posted 9/24/09.  Updated 16 June 2013]

AVI : Attic Vase Inscriptions : Attische Vaseninschriften
Wachter, Rudolf

AVI (Attic Vase Inscriptions / Attische Vaseninschriften) is an extended and web-based continuation and development of Henry R. Immerwahr's CAVI (Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions). AVI's main part is the interactive database, which is now ready in its preliminary version, but we also provide informations about the project's prehistory (by Henry Immerwahr), protohistory, and present and future aims, bibliography (more than 3000 titles), as well as some texts on alphabets and phonology of the Attic dialect.

You can download Henry Immerwahr's original CAVI as a pdf (version of January 2008, 7.7 MB, new versionof January 2009, 6.8 MB, here mirrored from the original website, see also http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/attic/index.html).

CAVI has been completely integrated into the AVI database, whereby, as a first step, the bibliographical references and many more things have been unified in order to make them searchable. The content has not been changed, however, except for small additions by R.W., added in double square brackets [[...]], and quite a few corrections, mainly in the bibliographical sections.

On 17 February 2010, I was happy to present our new site, designed and programmed by Simone Hiltscher. It replaces the first site of 2004. In the meantime many new features have been added, mainly in the bibliographical section. On 13 December our search form was put online, which allows you to search the database according to precise criteria. In February 2011, the free text search followed, which has now been brought to near perfection. The next step will be the entry form for additions and corrections. The next step will be the entry form for additions and corrections. And finally, there will be photographs. So do come back regularly!

We hope you will find AVI useful and interesting, and we will welcome all contributions and comments, made by e-mail for the time being, but soon also directly into the database.

AVI database  database search
 how to contribute
 gen. abbreviations
 epigr.
 abbreviations
 collections
 shapes
 painters
 potters
 dates

Friday is our day off at Polis. We used the morning to talk about our plans for the rest of our time here at Polis – Bill and I leave Polis on the 26th to head back to Larnaka before I fly out on the 27th. This means that we have 10 more possible work days here, and we want to make sure that we do not leave Polis and realize later that we forgot to look at some critical unit’s pottery. In the afternoon, I went out to the basilica with my IUP colleague, Bev Chiarulli, to conduct a small GPR scan of the are next to the excavated area of the EF2 basilica. Bev is on the island doing some GPR and GIS mapping for Alan Simmons’ archaeological project at Ais Yiorkis. IUP actually has 2 faculty on Cyprus doing research this summer. Anyway, she is processing the data at the moment, so nothing to show yet. After finishing up the GPR scan, we went to one of our favorite restaurants up the coast to watch the sunset – it always has a fabulous sunset, plus the pizza there is always good too.

RSM

Are lines of sight between Roman towns important for explaining their location? Through a case study on visibility patterns between urban settlements in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain, this paper will discuss how Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM) can help explore hypothetical past processes of interaction and site location. With these models the frequency of certain subnetworks in random networks and the empirically attested network is compared, to examine the probability that the subnetworks might have emerged through random processes. This paper will critically evaluate the potential and limitations of such an approach for archaeology.

Digital Historians

Lots of active historians do digital work, and we should be doing more to connect with one another so that we know about ongoing work and can foster collaboration.

So, register yourself, and you can tell us about your work, your ideas, and the ways that you are interacting with other digital historians. Join a Group or start one. Get involved.

Everyone is welcome!

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There is not much content related to antiquity yet, but it is a user driven site so join, contribute, participate.

Bibliographie de Georges Legrain

Appel à contributions pour la bibliographie en ligne de Karnak

Afin de permettre une plus large diffusion des travaux relatifs aux temples de Karnak et pour offrir la bibliothèque en ligne la plus complète possible pour le site de Karnak, les auteurs qui souhaitent rendre leurs publications accessibles sur cette page sont invités à prendre contact avec la documentation du CFEETK ( sebastien.biston-moulin@cnrs.fr). 

Bibliographie de Georges LEGRAIN relative à Karnak :

76 références, 100 % en ligne.

1929

— LEGRAIN (G.), Les temples de Karnak. Fragment du dernier ouvrage de Georges Legrain, Directeur des Travaux du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte, Bruxelles, 1929.

1925

— LEGRAIN (G.), GAUTHIER (H.), Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire. Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers. Indices des tomes I, II et III, CGC, 1925.

1917

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le logement et transport des barques sacrées et des statues des dieux dans quelques temples égyptiens », BIFAO 13, 1917, p. 1-76.

1916

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Fragment de texte. Titre nouveau », ASAE 16, 1916, p. 174.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Observation d’un phénomène optique », ASAE 16, 1916, p. 153-158.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Où fut Thèbes-Ouasit ? () », ASAE 16, 1916, p. 171-173.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes sur le dieu Montou », BIFAO 12, 1916, p. 75-124.

1915

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le Premier Prophète d’Amon Ap-Ouaitou-Mes », ASAE 15, 1915, p. 269-272.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « La litanie de Ouasit », ASAE 15, 1915, p. 273-283.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « La déesse Shahdidiit », ASAE 15, 1915, p. 284-286.

1914

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Au pylône d’Harmhabi à Karnak (Xe pylône) », ASAE 14, 1914, p. 13-44.

— LEGRAIN (G.), Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire. Nos 42192-42250. Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers, tome troisième, CGC, 1914.

1910

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. LXIII-LXVI », ASAE 10, 1910, p. 101-113.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. LXVII », ASAE 10, 1910, p. 258-259.

1909

— LEGRAIN (G.), Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire. Nos 42139-42191. Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers, tome second, CGC, 1909.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Excavations and Explorations », EEFR, 1909, p. 14-16.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Les dernières lignes de la grande inscription de Ménephtah à Karnak », RecTrav 31, 1909, p. 176-179.

1908

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. LX-LXII », ASAE 9, 1908, p. 271-284.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Postscripts [Travaux à Karnak en 1907-1908] », EEFR, 1908, p. 80-82.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le dossier de la famille Nibnoutirou », RecTrav 30, 1908, p. 73-90.

— LEGRAIN (G.), Répertoire généalogique et onomastique du Musée du Caire. Monuments de la XVIIe et de la XVIIIe dynastie, Genève, Leipzig, 1908.

1907

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XXXIX-XLVI », ASAE 8, 1907, p. 51-59.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XLVII-XLVIII », ASAE 8, 1907, p. 122-129.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XLIX-LVI », ASAE 8, 1907, p. 248-275.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Introduction à l’étude de la sculpture égyptienne (fragment). Les débuts de l’art thébain », BIE 7/4e série, année 1906, 1907, p. 75-84.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Excavations and Explorations », EEFR, 1907, p. 19-23.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « La grande stèle de Toutankhamanou à Karnak », RecTrav 29, 1907, p. 162-173.

1906

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XXX-XXXVI », ASAE 7 , 1906, p. 33-57.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection, XXXVII-XXXVIII », ASAE 7, 1906, p. 183-192.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Deux stèles inédites », ASAE 7, 1906, p. 226-227.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Sur quelques monuments d’Aménôthès IV provenant de la cachette de Karnak », ASAE 7, 1906, p. 228-231.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Fouilles et recherches à Karnak », BIE 6/4e série, année 1905, 1906, p. 109-127.

— LEGRAIN (G.), Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire. Nos 42001-42138. Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers, tome premier, CGC, 1906.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Excavations and Explorations », EEFR, 1906, p. 21-23.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Comment doit-on établir une généalogie égyptienne ? », RecTrav 28, 1906, p. 1-6.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Nouveaux renseignements sur les dernières découvertes faites à Karnak (15 novembre 1904 — 25 juillet 1905) », RecTrav 28, 1906, p. 137-161.

1905

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XVIII-XXVI », ASAE 6, 1905, p. 130-140.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XXVII », ASAE 6, 1905, p. 192.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XXVIII », ASAE 6, 1905, p. 284-285.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Les récentes découvertes de Karnak », BIE 5/4e série, année 1904, 1905, p. 109-119.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Excavations and Explorations », EEFR, 1905, p. 22-24.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Renseignements sur les dernières découvertes faites à Karnak », RecTrav 27, 1905, p. 61-82.

— LEGRAIN (G.), Les récentes découvertes de Karnak. Communication faite à l’Institut Égyptien dans la séance du 7 novembre 1904, Le Caire, 1905.

1904

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Rapport sur les travaux exécutés à Karnak du 31 octobre 1902 au 15 mai 1903 », ASAE 5, 1904, p. 1-43.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XVI-XVII », ASAE 5, 1904, p. 281-284.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Rapport sur les travaux exécutés à Karnak du 28 septembre 1903 au 6 juillet 1904 », ASAE 5, 1904, p. 265-280.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. XI-XV », ASAE 5, 1904, p. 133-141.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Les travaux de 1903 à Karnak », BIE 4/4e série, année 1903, 1904, p. 447-451.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Excavations and Explorations », EEFR, 1904, p. 25-27.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes prises à Karnak. IX-XII », RecTrav 26, 1904, p. 218-224.

1903

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Second rapport sur les travaux exécutés à Karnak du 31 octobre 1901 au 15 mai 1902 », ASAE 4, 1903, p. 1-40.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « La grande stèle d’Amenôthès II à Karnak », ASAE 4, 1903, p. 126-132.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Logogriphes hiéroglyphiques », ASAE 4, 1903, p. 136-137.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes d’inspection. III-X », ASAE 4, 1903, p. 193-226.

— LEGRAIN (G.), MASPERO (G.), « Notice sur le temple d’Osiris Neb-djeto. Note additionnelle », ASAE 4, 1903, p. 181-186.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Les nouvelles découvertes de Karnak », BIE 3/4e série, année 1902, 1903, p. 153-167.

1902

— LEGRAIN (G.), NAVILLE (E.), « L’aile nord du pylône d’Aménophis III à Karnak », AMG 30, 1902, p. 1-22.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple de Ptah Rîs-anbou-f dans Thèbes », ASAE 3, 1902, p. 38-66.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple de Ptah Rîs-anbou-f dans Thèbes (suite) », ASAE 3, 1902, p. 97-114.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Observations de M. G. Legrain au sujet de son étude sur les infiltrations à Karnak », BIE 4/4e série, année 1901, 1902, p. 289-292.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak. III. La chapelle d'Osiris, maître de la vie », RecTrav 24, 1902, p. 208-214.

1901

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Mémoire sur la porte située au sud de l’avant-sanctuaire à Karnak et sur son arche fortuite », ASAE 2, 1901, p. 223-229.

— LEGRAIN (G.), MASPERO (G.), LUCAS (A.), ET AL. (), « Documents relatifs à la Salle Hypostyle de Karnak (1899-1901) », ASAE 2, 1901, p. 164-181.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Rapport sur les travaux exécutés à Karnak du 25 septembre au 31 octobre 1901 », ASAE 2, 1901, p. 265-280.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes prises à Karnak. V-VIII », RecTrav 23, 1901, p. 61-65.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak. II », RecTrav 23, 1901, p. 65-75.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak. II. La chapelle et le tombeau d’Osiris Ounnofré au mur est du temple d’Apet (suite) », RecTrav 23, 1901, p. 163-172.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Sur un fragment d’obélisque trouvé à Karnak », RecTrav 23, 1901, p. 195-196.

1900

— LEGRAIN (G.), EHRLICH (F.), MASPERO (G.), « Rapport de M. Legrain sur les travaux exécutés à Karnak pour le démontage des colonnes de la salle hypostyle (10 décembre 1899 - 23 mai 1900) », ASAE 1, 1900, p. 193-210.

— LEGRAIN (G.), MASPERO (G.), NICOUR (Ch.), ET AL. (), « Rapports sur l’écroulement de onze colonnes dans la salle hypostyle du grand temple d’Amon à Karnak, le 3 octobre 1899 », ASAE 1, 1900, p. 121-140.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Notes prises à Karnak. I-V », RecTrav 22, 1900, p. 51-65.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak. Le temple d’Osiris-Hiq-Djeto, partie éthiopienne », RecTrav 22, 1900, p. 125-136.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Le temple et les chapelles d’Osiris à Karnak », RecTrav 22, 1900, p. 146-149.

1897

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Deux stèles trouvées à Karnak en février 1897 », ZÄS 35, 1897, p. 12-19.

1896

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Textes gravés sur le quai de Karnak », ZÄS 34, 1896, p. 111-118.

— LEGRAIN (G.), « Les crues du Nil depuis Sheshonq Ier jusqu’à Psametik », ZÄS 34, 1896, p. 119-121.

These are a day late because of a mid-afternoon hike into the Akamas Peninsula yesterday. I’ll post some photos of it on Monday most likely. In the meantime, get your Saturday started right with some quick hits and varia.

• Some efforts to prepare the Corinthian Diolkos more interesting for tourists and protected. Let’s hope they don’t read David Pettegrew’s recent article.
• Hesperia 82.2 is up and ready to go, and this version is graced by Tracey Cullen’s retirement letter. She has been a fantastic editor and she has made Hesperia into the elegant, dynamic journal that it is today.
• The archaeology of and in video games and its Twitter feed. Considering how much our students play video games, think about video games, and learn from video games, this is probably worth following.
• The architecture of Taksim Square in Istanbul and current protests.
• A very cool approach to making more scholarship open access from the University of Michigan’s Press.
• Steve Conn on Gordon Gee’s retirement.
• Harvard and the humanities.
• Baseball at the Sydney Cricket Ground?! I’m not sure how I feel about this…
• On a similar note, the Ashes in Australia 2013/2014. I know what I’ll be watching on Christmas night (in the U.S.).
• In the meantime, there is India-Pakistan today making the otherwise irrelevant Champions Trophy seem significant. This is a cool article that puts that rivalry in perspective.
• I’m not entirely sure what this is, but I’m going to keep an eye on it.
• More on Man Camps in Williams County and the roads in McKenzie County.
• I love the logos of old airlines, almost as much as I love how certain old airplanes looked.
• Crazy stop action video of a supercell thunderstorm cloud.
• A nice corrective to how we think we should cook steak.
• What I’m reading: R. Maguire’s dissertation: Late Antique Basilicas on Cyprus: Sources, Contexts, History (2012). (Hey it’s long!)
• What I’m listening to: The Oblivians, Desperation.

I was recently asked on Facebook if there is "a new places feed from Pleiades". The answer is: yes, and then some. Here are the details.

Resolved

Thank you for your patience. This issues has been temporarily resolved. We are meeting with our server team to discover a permanent solution, but expect no further disruptions related to this issue.

Dear T-PEN users:

Over the last week, we have been experiencing some performance issues with T-PEN related to serving up images to users.  This has been intermittent but it has happened enough to disrupt service.  We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.  We are working to discover the root causes and make the necessary corrections.  We ask for your patience in this matter and we will keep users updated on the progress. Our aim is to address this issue as quickly as possible and restore T-PEN to the reliable status that it has enjoyed. Please do not hesitate to contact the Center for Digital Theology if you have any questions.  You can contact us at digitaltheology@slu.edu.

Sincerely,
Dr James R. Ginther, PhD
Director,
Center for Digital Theology

The following is a guest post by Jefferson Bailey, Strategic Initiatives Manager at Metropolitan New York Library Council, National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group co-chair and a former Fellow in the Library of Congress’s Office of Strategic Initiatives.

“Brooklyn Public Library (Ingersoll Memorial), Prospect Park Plaza, New York. General view from Park Plaza.” Image from Wikimedia Commons via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. LC-G612-T-3909

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to teach a personal digital archiving workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library Information Commons, the Central Library branch’s new center consisting of meeting rooms, a training lab, and open workspace with a variety of multimedia computer workstations. Having helped run a number of personal digital archiving events at D.C. area public libraries as part of Preservation Week 2012, I believe in the role that public libraries can play in helping provide guidance to the general public about preserving their digital materials of personal importance. As many public libraries begin to emphasize and extend the role they play in helping citizen and individuals create, document, and preserve digital content, much of it of potential social and historic value, there is evermore chance to advocate for personal digital archiving directly with the local community through workshops and special events.

NDIIPP, of course, provides a wealth of guidance on personal archiving for individuals.  NDIIPP also provides guidance to libraries and other institutions planning and running an event or program through the Personal Digital Archiving Day Kit. Ongoing interviews and case studies featured on The Signal, such as posts calling for more citizen archivists  and posts highlighting the work of public libraries teaching personal archiving, are just a couple of other ways the program has spread the word about personal digital preservation.

BPL Information Commons. Image courtesy of Brooklyn Public Library

My workshop, “Save Your Digital Stuff,” was largely built on the NDIIPP’s guidance and attendees had question both expected, such as about file naming practices for digital images and scanner and format recommendations for digital conversion, as well as questions unexpected, such as how to preserve one’s online dating profile. Workshop participants were also interested in the overall role that archivists play in preserving digital information and some minor hilarity ensued when the conversation turned to digital wills and one inquisitive attendee wanted clarity on the difference between an archivist and an actuary.

As is often the case, workshop attendees evinced a mild bewilderment at how best to manage and save what often feels like a deluge of digital content but were interested in practical strategies and tools for how best to undertake saving their digital stuff. I emphasized that knowing what you want to preserve is one of the most crucial steps in personal archiving and that, after you have accomplished that, the rest of the steps fall in place naturally.

Overall, it was a fun event and I continue to think that public libraries, many of which provide technology training to the public and many of which also house local history collections, are ideally situated to help proselytize and advise citizens and communities on how best to preserve their valuable digital materials. I look forward to continued collaboration between public libraries and preservationists on supporting digital preservation for the people.

I’m getting interested in the manuscript tradition of the works of Polybius.  Basically books 1-5 of his history come down to us directly.  Books 6-18 are transmitted by a collection of excerpts known as the Excerpta Antiqua.  Finally there are long quotations in some of the compendia of the time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.  I have just ordered a copy of Moore’s study on the mss., and will doubtless know more on Monday.

But a google search revealed that one ms. of books 1-5 is accessible at least: British Library, Additional, 11728, written in 1416.  Looking at my Loeb of book 1, I can even read the Greek script (not, for me, by any means to be taken for granted).

I was interested to see that the text was divided into sections, each marked with a red capital letter.  Not, I note, the same ones used in the Loeb!

[First posted in AWOL 6 November 2009. Updated 14 June 2013]

Revue de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes

ISSN: 0035-1652

en ligne 1760-8430

Fondée en 1845 par Léon Rénier, la revue publie actuellement deux fascicules par an formant un tome. Chaque fascicule comprend : 

- des articles (linguistique, histoire, littérature…) ;
- un bulletin bibliographique d’une trentaine de pages rendant compte des parutions récentes sur le monde antique ;
- les résumés en anglais et en français des articles du fascicule ;
- dans chaque premier fascicule, une Chronique d’étymologie grecque conçue et réalisée en liaison avec le GDR 1038 (« Linguistique du grec ancien »).

Elle a pour but, tenant compte de l’évolution rapide des disciplines comparatives, de fournir les éléments nécessaires à une révision du Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque de Pierre Chantraine) ; dans le second fascicule de l’année, une liste de tous les ouvrages reçus pour comptes rendus et une table des matières (par tome).

2011/1 (Tome LXXXV)   Tome LXXXV, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2010/2 (Tome LXXXIV)   Tome LXXXIV, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2010/1 (Tome LXXXIV)   Tome LXXXIV, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2009/2 (Tome LXXXIII)   Tome LXXXIII, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2009/1 (Tome LXXXIII)   Tome LXXXIII, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2008/2 (Tome LXXXII)   Tome LXXXII, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2008/1 (Tome LXXXII)   Tome LXXXII, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2007/2 (Tome LXXXI)   Tome LXXXI, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2007/1 (Tome LXXXI)   Tome LXXXI, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2006/2 (Tome LXXX)   Tome LXXX, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2006/1 (Tome LXXX)   Tome LXXX, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2005/2 (Tome LXXIX)   Tome LXXIX, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2005/1 (Tome LXXIX)   Tome LXXIX, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2004/2 (Tome LXXVIII)   Tome LXXVIII, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2004/1 (Tome LXXVIII)   Tome LXXVIII, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2003/2 (Tome LXXVII)   Tome LXXVII, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2003/1 (Tome LVXXII)   Tome LXXVII, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2002/2 (Tome LXXVI)   Tome LXXVI, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2002/1 (Tome LXXVI)   Tome LXXVI, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2001/2 (Tome LXXV)   Tome LXXV, numéro 2

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

2001/1 (Tome LXXV)   Tome LXXV, numéro 1

.......................................    [ Consulter ce numéro ]

See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5 th -15 th centuries)

RELMIN is a five-year project funded by the European Research Council and directed by John Tolan, professor of history at the University of Nantes.
Database in French and English.

"This is the pilot version of what will become a major text database of legal texts concerning the status of religious minorities in the Middle Ages. The base currently contains several hundred texts, but will gradually grow to several thousand texts by 2015."

"The database consists of original texts (Latin, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, etc.), translations into English and French, notes and commentaries, and a bibliography. We hope that it becomes an important tool for research concerning the history of European and Mediterranean laws about pagan, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian minorities, and the history of interfaith relations."

"Zekr is an open source Quran study software for Windows, Linux and Mac. It's designed to ease access to the most authentic and valuable text of Muslims. Zekr provides Quran translations, recitation, search and other features to study Holy Quran."

 Features

• Advanced Qur'an search, Qur'an root
• Qur'an multi-recitation (online and offline)
• Bookmark management, Import, Export, Multi-bookmark
• Comparative translation / Search within translations
• Themes

David Gimbel brings the news that his doctoral dissertation is now available to the public in PDF form through the Oxford University Research Archive.

Gimbel, David Nelson, (2002). The Evolution of Visual Representation: The elite art of early dynastic Lagaš and its antecedents in late Uruk period Sumer and predynastic Egypt. D. Phil. University of Oxford.

A quick search indicates that many other useful open access publications are also available in the Oxford University Research Archive. Go and see for yourself.

For the newest issue of the Society for Archaeological Sciences Bulletin, my article discusses mortuary and bioarchaeology in the field. “As the summer approaches, many archaeologists’ thoughts turn to their field season, whether doing their own independent excavation, conducting survey prior to construction, leading or attending a field school. Fieldwork is an essential part of being an archaeologist, and for … Continue reading »

The secret to making sustainable, strong concrete may have been at the bottom the Mediterranean Sea for the past 2,000 years: Researchers believe that the ancient Romans created concrete that is more environmentally friendly and durable than modern cement.

Kazakhstan archaeologists have found a tomb of a “Saka princess”. The burial site of the high-ranking young woman was discovered during reconstruction of Taskesken-Bakty road in Urdzhar region of East-Kazakhstan oblast.

The workers who built the pyramids of Giza and the accountants and managers who organised them achieved architectural immortality – but you wouldn’t know it from where they lived. Built in a flood zone, their town was repeatedly destroyed by flash floods. Bizarrely, the Egyptians kept rebuilding in the same place despite the continual devastation.

For the first time, a bone tumor has been found in a Neanderthal rib bone dated to about 120,000 years ago. The rib was recovered at a site near Krapina in present-day Croatia. The tumor, a form of cancer called fibrous dysplasia, predates previous evidence of such by more than 100,000 years.

A team of experts in Mali says damage to Timbuktu’s unique cultural heritage under rebel control is much worse than was first estimated. They say Timbuktu is completely degraded and that more of its famous mausoleums than previously thought are damaged.

With a tiny sample of brain tissue from the world-famous glacier corpse, Ötzi, a team of scientists was able to extract and analyse proteins to further support the theory that Ötzi suffered some form of brain damage in the final moments of his life.

New excavations this year are hoping to unearth traces of even earlier settlements than those previously discovered at Turkey’s well-known ancient site of Alacahöyük, which currently draws around 50,000 visitors a year.

In an article to appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science Chilean chemists report their investigation into the consumption of plant-derived hallucinogenic substances through smoking and snuffing in prehispanic indigenous cultures in Chile. The search for substances was conducted via hair anlaysis of mummies from the Atacama desert in northern Chile (c. 100 B.C. – 1450 AD).

The International Association to Save Tyre, established to protect the UNESCO World Heritage site on the southern coast of Lebanon, is raffling off Picasso’s 1914 cubist drawing “L’homme au Gibus” (“Man With Opera Hat”) to raise money for research and projects at the protected ancient city.

An ancient granite statue representing a decapitated Mesoamerican ball player has been discovered at the pre-Hispanic site of Piedra Labrada, southeast of the Mexican state of Guerrero during repair work to a water pipe line.

Last week Chasing Aphrodite revealed documents suggesting the $5 million $2 million bronze Dancing Shiva purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 2005  had been stolen from an Indian temple not long before. Now they have revealed evidence that additional statues in the museum were also recently looted.

A practically pristine Jewish ritual bath, or “mikveh,” possibly dating back to the late 19^th century in this tiny rural community is a one-of-a-kind discovery that will reshape our understanding of a fascinating but often-overlooked part of Jewish life in America, according to University of Connecticut researchers who excavated the site.

Some researchers are suggesting that Neanderthals were driven to extinction by a massive volcanic eruption near Naples. The suggestion is one of the topics under debate this week at a conference at London’s British Museum examining what forces led to the destruction of the Neanderthals.

Professor Martin Richards, co-authors a new article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. It refutes a recent theory, that there is archaeological evidence for the presence of modern humans in southern Asia before the super-eruption of the Mount Toba volcano in Sumatra.

A fleet of eight prehistoric boats, including one almost nine metres long, has been discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry on the outskirts of Peterborough. The vessels, all deliberately sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are the largest group of bronze age boats ever found in the same UK site and most are startlingly well preserved.

According to the Sakurai city board of education, a mask unearthed at the Daifuku archaeological site likely dates to the latter half of the second century in light of accompanying finds. This places it several decades earlier than the previously oldest known wooden mask in Japan, which was unearthed at the nearby Makimuku site.

Some 1,000 years ago, the Vikings set off on a voyage to Notre Dame Bay in modern-day Newfoundland, Canada, new evidence suggests.

~~~

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this blog or found by following any link on this blog. ASOR will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information. ASOR will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The opinions expressed by Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of ASOR or any employee thereof.

Annual Report: The Netherlands Institute for the Near East Leiden - The Netherlands Institute in Turkey Istanbul

NINO initiates, supports, and conducts scholarly research in the civilizations of the Near East from the ancient to the early modern period. In particular, it concentrates on the archaeology, history, languages, and cultures of Egypt, Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Persia. In addition to its scientific research, NINO supports and advances the cultural relations between the Netherlands and the Near East. NINO is an independent foundation with ties to the academic community of the Netherlands. It is located on the premises of Leiden University and is associated with the university through a memorandum of cooperation.

NINO meets its goals of scientific study and cultural contact not only in the Netherlands but also by managing a subsidiary institute in Istanbul. Its premier library is one of the major ones in this field in the world and attracts scholars both from the Netherlands and abroad. NINO publishes journals and books on the ancient and modern Near East. It also houses several important collections of books, archival materials, and cuneiform tablets and supports research projects, as well as conducting its own projects.

• J. Eidem, C.H. van Zoest et al. 2012
  Annual Report NINO and NIT 2011
• J. Eidem, C.H. van Zoest et al. 2011
  Annual Report NINO and NIT 2010
• J. Eidem, C.H. van Zoest et al. 2010
  Annual Report NINO and NIT 2009

See the full List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Konkordanzen zu den Inscriptiones Graecae 

In den Jahren 2009 und 2010 wurden vom Seminar für Alte Geschichte/Institut für Epigraphik der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Zusammenarbeit mit der Arbeitsstelle Inscriptiones Graecae an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zwei online abfragbare Konkordanzen erstellt. Die Konkordanzen werden fortlaufend aktualisiert.

Konkordanz IG - SEG

Diese Konkordanz ermöglicht die Abfrage aller in der SEG referenzierten IG-Inschriften. Nach Eingabe von IG-Band und -Inschrift erhält man eine Liste aller SEG-Einträge der Bände 1-58. Aufgeführt werden auch SEG-Einträge, die sich vor dem Erscheinen des entsprechenden IG-Bandes mit dessen Inschriften befassen.

Konkordanz IG - IG

Diese Konkordanz enthält alle Verweise von IG-Inschriften auf frühere oder spätere Auflagen. Zudem wurde berücksichtigt, wenn Inschriften in weiteren IG-Bänden Aufnahme fanden.


Die Online-Abfragen wurden konzipiert und realisiert von Michael Tieke, Seminar für Alte Geschichte / Institut für Epigraphik an der WWU Münster. Beide Konkordanzen wurden auf Fehler überprüft. Falls Sie weitere Fehler finden, wenden Sie sich bitte an eine der beiden folgenden Kontaktadressen.