Electra Atlantis: Digital Approaches to Antiquity

[First published in AWOL 3/27/09; updated 4/18/2010; updated 12/2/2010; updated 2/2/2012]

Since 1997, the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation has produced each year a volume devoted to a single archaeological museum, aiming to create a series whose scholarly prestige and aesthetic approach contribute to a deeper knowledge and further understanding of the various aspects of the history of Greek civilisation. These volumes are distributed free of charge to those who are on the foundation's mailing list, and to others who request them.

The foundation also issues them in open access digital format. The volume on Τhe Archaeological Museum of Pella is the most recent to appear. Thirteen volumes are now available:

• Aravantinos, Vassilios. Τhe Archaeological Museum of Thebes [Thebes in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/541138/]
• Colonia, Rosina. The Archaeological Museum of Delphi [Delphi in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/540726]
  
• Dimopoulou - Rethemiotaki, Nota. The Archaeological Museum of Herakleion [Herakleion in Pleiadeshttp://pleiades.stoa.org/places/589802]
• Fotopoulos, Dionissis; Delivorrias, Angelos. Greece at the Benaki Museum
  
• Grammenos, D.V. The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
  
• Hadjidakis, P. J. Delos [Delos in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/599587]
  
• Hatzi, Georgia E. The Archaeological Museum of Olympia [Olympia in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/570531]
  
• Kaltsas, Nikolaos. The National Archaeological Museum [Athens in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579885]
• Lilibaki-Akamati, Maria, Ioannis M. Akamatis, Anastasia Chrysostomou, Pavlos Chrysostomou  Τhe Archaeological Museum of Pella  [Pella in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/491688]
• Papaggeli, Kalliopi. Elefsis: The Archaeological Site and the Museum [Elefsis in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/579920]
  
• Steinhauer, George. The Archaeological Museum of Piraeus
• Steinhauer, George. Marathon and the Archaeological Museum [Marathon in Pleiades http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/580021]
• Trianti, Ismini. The Acropolis Museum

As I understand it, Egyptian president Mubarak — a relatively mild ruler – fell from power because many Egyptians could not afford to buy bread.  It was as simple as that.

But the unrest has been very bad for the tourism industry, which is a major part of the money flowing into Egypt.  That income dropped 30% last year.  The possibility of an Islamist government will not precisely encourage the US government to keep up its donations, which form another huge part of Egyptian national income. 

The tourist industry is vital.  In Luxor, when the tourists stopped coming after the Islamist massacres of a few years ago, it provoked street demonstrations in support of Mubarak!  So closely are the incomes of local people connected with the dollars-on-legs arriving at the airport.

I have not felt any special urge to travel there at the moment, but I didn’t feel that trips to Luxor, or Sharm el Sheikh, or the Red Sea Resorts were particularly dangerous.  Until today.

Today I read in the Daily Mail a story that crosses Egypt off the list of places that I would feel safe in visiting.

Security officials secured the release of two female American tourists and their guide, hours after they were kidnapped at gunpoint while vacationing in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula yesterday. …

Three other tourists in the convoy were robbed of their cell phones and wallets as the kidnappers took the guns away from their police escort.

The kidnappers demanded the release or retrial of several of their tribesmen being detained by the Egyptian government. The demands are similar to those of the Bedouins who kidnapped 25 Chinese workers earlier this week.

The tourist group that was attacked was traveling back to the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh after visiting St Catherine’s Monastery in the southern part of the region.

I think that’s pretty much “game over” for Egypt’s tourism industry.  Sharm el Sheikh is a tourist farm, where tourists are farmed for money in return for sunshine and day excursions.  I’d always thought of it as entirely safe. 

The consequence of this must be yet further unrest.  The reason Mubarak was ousted was poverty — and now the poverty must be getting worse, as the supply of money is cut off.

This is sad, sad news for Egypt.

La séance du mercredi 8 février reviendra aux enjeux théoriques et pratiques de l’encodage des textes. Cette déviation par rapport au programme initial, qui prévoyait une séance sur les bases de données, nous permettra de dialoguer avec les maîtres d’œuvre de deux projets.

Enracinés l’un et l’autre dans les traditions intellectuelles des études classiques, ces projets rencontrent des questions d’une portée générale : modélisation et visualisation des inscriptions, pour le premier ; analyse du genre du commentaire, pour le second ; modes de collaboration et renouvellement des pratiques philologiques, dans les deux cas.

Voici donc le programme :

• Marion Lamé, « Représenter scientifiquement le document épigraphique dans un espace numérique » (le carnet Épigraphie en réseau donne des informations sur le travail de thèse de Marion, qui concerne « la reine des inscriptions antiques », les Res Gestae Diui Augusti, et sur sa participation aux activités de la communauté internationale EpiDoc) ;
• Bruno Bureau et Christian Nicolas, « Présentation mise à jour d’HyperDonat : pour une philologie digitale » (voir le site de ce projet collaboratif, ainsi que le carnet HyperDonat, dont l’équipe fait un usage très intéressant dans son étude du commentaire des pièces de Térence par le grammairien Donat. Les développements actuels de cette entreprise lui font aborder presque toutes les questions de l’édition savante numérique.

Au plaisir de réfléchir avec vous grâce à ces deux présentations : nous prendrons tout le temps d’interroger les intervenants et de discuter ensemble !

WordChorus: Searching for Patterns in Ancient Greek Texts!

 

WordChorus is a tool specifically designed to find patterns in Ancient Greek texts. Have you ever wondered how many verses in the Iliad begin with a rough breathing? Or how many words in Antigone end in the phoneme group οι, ει or αι? Do you want to count the number of accents in the Argonautica? If so, you have come to the right place!

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Εθνικό Αρχείο Διδακτορικών Διατριβών (EAΔΔ) - The National Archive of PhD Theses

Το Εθνικό Αρχείο Διδακτορικών Διατριβών (EAΔΔ) συγκεντρώνει τις διδακτορικές διατριβές που έχουν εκπονηθεί στα ελληνικά πανεπιστήμια ή σε πανεπιστήμια του εξωτερικού από Έλληνες διδάκτορες. Την ευθύνη συγκρότησης και διατήρησης του έχει το Εθνικό Κέντρο Τεκμηρίωσης (ΕΚΤ). Στο ηλεκτρονικό αποθετήριο του ΕΑΔΔ διατίθενται περισσότερες από 25.000 διδακτορικές διατριβές, με δυνατότητες αναζήτησης και πλοήγησης. 

The National Archive of PhD Theses contains the PhD theses from all Higher Education Institutions in Greece as well as PhD theses completed by Greek scholars abroad. The National Documentation Centre (EKT) is the organization responsible for the collection, development and maintenance of the National Archive of PhD Theses. The digital repository contains currently, more than 25.000 PhD Theses, available to the end-users for searching or browsing.

Πλοήγηση στο ΕΑΔΔ ανά "Επιστημονικό πεδίο" : "History and Archaeology" 

Browse Discipline Date Author Country Language Degree Grantor

The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze Repository repository is an organized infrastructure of digital content, that offers free access to cultural material. The repository was carried out by the National Documentation Centre (EKT) and the YSMA-Acropolis Restoration Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The repository provides the possibility of immediate access to the frieze, both as a database for scholars and, as digital games for schools and their pupils. The Parthenon Frieze, a unique work of art, is also presented in the website www.parthenonfrieze.gr, which utilizes new technologies to present and elevate cultural content online.

	Stone Block Numbering
	Subject
	Museum
	Frieze Sides
	Games
	Educational booklets
	About Parthenon
	About Parthenon Frieze
	Bibliography
	Glossary
	Contributors

An on-line version of Parts I and III of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary is now available from the Center for Hellenic Studies. Hard copies may be purchased from Harvard University Press. Part II (texts and text commentaries) will be added soon.

In a previous post, I attempted to describe folio 188r of the eleventh-century manuscript of the Iliad known as E4, in order to make some preliminary observations about the manuscript and its relationship to other Medieval manuscripts of the Iliad with scholia. It was a difficult task, even with the help of my colleagues Christopher Blackwell, Mary Ebbott, and Neel Smith. E4 has not been well studied, and it has many features that make it unlike the other manuscripts we have digitized as part of the Homer Multitext. It became clear to me as I was working on it that I could not fully appreciate 188r without understanding its facing page on the left side, folio 187v. I have now had the chance to study 187v in detail, and it has only confirmed my initial impression of the manuscript, that it is an unusual, very likely unique assemblage of text and paratexts that span multiple lines of transmission. The scholia contained on folio 187v, which comment on the text of 188r (containing Iliad 22.1–37), are particularly indicative of the unique character of E4.

Folio 187v is taken up by a hypothesis to book 22, a large selection from Porphyry, and scholia, both with and without lemmata, including comments on the text of the Iliad that is written on 188r. It should be noted from the beginning that there are two separate hands in this manuscript, which both Allen and Erbse deem to be contemporaneous. The first hand has written the hypothesis, the scholia immediately following it, and the text of the poem and paraphrase on the next folio. The second hand has written the selection from Porphyry and the scholia in the margins.

At the top of folio 187v is the excerpt from Porphyry’s Homeric Questions. The following is a transcription from Schrader’s (1880-1882) edition: 

ἠγνόησαν οἱ πολλοὶ ὅτι ἡ κλίσις παρ’ Ὁμήρῳ τὴν περιοχὴν σημαίνει, καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐσχηματισμένα ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ῥήματα, οἷον <οἱ δὲ ῥηγμῖνι θαλάσσης κεκλίαται, χώρης ὀλίγην ἔτι μοῖραν ἔχοντες>· λέγει γὰρ ὅτι περιεχόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν Τρώων ἐπὶ ῥηγμῖνι θαλάςσης συνηλάθησαν. οὕτως λύσεις καὶ τὸ <ὣς οἱ μὲν κατὰ ἄστυ πεφυζότες ἠύτε νεβροὶ ἱδρῶ ἀπεψύχοντο πίον τ’ ἀκέοντό τε δίψαν, κεκλιμένοι καλῇσιν ἐπάλξεσιν· αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὶ τείχεος ἆσσον ἴσαν, σάκε’ ὤμοισι κλίναντες> (Iliad 22.1–4)· λέγει γάρ· περιεχόμενοι τῷ τείχει οἱ Τρῶες, οἱ δ’ Ἀχαιοὶ τὰ σάκη περιέχοντες τοῖς ὤμοις. καὶ τὸ <εὗρεν ἔπειτα μάχης ἐπ’ ἀριστερὰ θοῦρον Ἄρηα ἥμενον, ἠέρι δ’ ἔγχος ἐκέκλιτο καὶ ταχέ’ ἵππω> (Iliad 5.355–356) δηλοῖ περιείχετο, καὶ τὸ <κεῖθ’ ἁλὶ κεκλιμένη ἐριβώλακος ἠπείροιο> (Odyssey 13.235), κεῖται περιεχομένη. πάλιν ὡσαύτως καὶ τὸ <ὅς ῥ’ἐν Ὕλῃ ναίεσκε μέγα πλούτοιο μεμηλὼς λίμνῃ κεκλιμένος> (Iliad 5.708) δηλοῖ περιεχόμενος. καὶ τὸ <οἳ δὴ νῦν ἕαται σιγῇ, πόλεμος δὲ πέπαυται ἀσπίσι κεκλιμένοι> (Iliad 3.134–5) ἀντὶ τοῦ περιεχόμενοι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀσπίδων. γέγονε δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ κλείω· τὸ γὰρ ἀποκλεισθὲν περιέχεται· <οὐδὲ πύλῃσιν εὗρ’ ἐπικεκλιμένας σανίδας> (Iliad 12.120). τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ παρίστησι καὶ τὸ <ἀλλ’ ἐν γὰρ Τρώων πεδίῳ πύκα θωρηκτάων πόντῳ κεκλιμένοι ἑκὰς ἥμεθα> (Iliad 14.739. 40), ἀντὶ τοῦ ὑπὸ τοῦ πόντου περιεχόμενοι.

The comment is part of a larger discussion of the meaning of the word κλίσις in Homer, and Iliad 22.1-4 is cited along with several other passages. The scribe of Ε4 saw that this passage in Porphyry was relevant to the opening lines of 22 (in which the Trojans rest by “leaning” on the walls), and so he copied it here. He links the excerpt from Porphyry to the text of the poem (on folio 188v) by means of a graphical sign, or siglum, which is reproduced in the appropriate place on the other folio. 

Next follow several scholia, written across the full length of the page. These too are connected to the text of the poem by means of sigla (more on which below). After these scholia, the hypothesis begins, with a title written in crimson ink: ὑπόθεσϊς τῆς χι ὁμήρου ῥαψωδίας. 

The hypothesis is followed by more scholia, which are contained within the same text block as the hypothesis. These scholia differ from the surrounding scholia in that they have lemmata. Very significantly, both of the scholia with lemmata recorded in this text block can also be found in A in some fashion. Let’s look at them more closely. 

First, we find in crimson ink ὅν τε κύν’ὠρίωνα followed by a lengthy mythological note, whose content is attributed to Eratosthenes, the third head of the library of Alexandria (c. 235–c. 270). The following is Heyne’s (1834) transcription of the note: 

Ὅν τε κύν’ Ὠρίωνος Τὸν ἀστρῶον κύνα οὕτως ἔφη. ἔνιοι δέ φασι τόνδε τὸν κατηστερισμένον κύνα, οὐκ Ὠρίωνος, ἀλλὰ Ἠριγόνης ὑπάρχειν, ὃν κατηστερισθῆναι διὰ τοιαύτην αἰτίαν. Ἱκάριος γένος μὲν ἦν Ἀθηναῖος ἔσχε δὲ θυγατέρα Ἠριγόνην, ἥτις κύνα νήπιον ἔτρεφε. ξενίσας δέ ποτε ὁ Ἱκάριος Διόνυσον, ἔλαβε παρ’ αὐτοῦ οἶνόν τε καὶ ἀμπέλου κλῆμα. κατὰ δὲ τὰς τοῦ θεοῦ ὑποθήκας, περιῄει τὴν γῆν προφαίνων τὴν τοῦ Διονύσου χάριν, ἔχων σὺν ἑαυτῷ καὶ τὸν κύνα. γενόμενος δὲ ἐκτὸς τῆς πόλεως, βουκόλοις οἶνον παρέσχε. οἱ δὲ ἀθρόως ἐμφορησάμενοι, οἱ μὲν εἰς βαθὺν ὕπνον ἐτράπησαν. ὀψέ τε ἐγερθέντες, καὶ νομίσαντες πεφαρμάχθαι, τὸν Ἱκάριον ἀπέκτειναν. ὁ δὲ κύων ὑποστρέψας πρὸς τὴν Ἠριγόνην, δι’ ὠρυγμοῦ ἐμήνυσεν αὐτῇ τὰ γενόμενα. ἡ δὲ μαθοῦσα τὸ ἀληθὲς, ἑαυτὴν ἀνήρτησε. νόσου δὲ ἐν Ἀθήναις γενομένης, κατὰ χρησμὸν Ἀθηναῖοι τόν τε Ἱκάριον καὶ τὴν Ἠριγόνην ἐνιαυσιαίαις ἐγέραιρον τιμαῖς. οἳ καὶ κατηστερισθέντες, Ἱκάριος μὲν Βοώτης ἐκλήθη, Ἠριγόνη δὲ παρθένος. ὁ δὲ κύων τὴν αὐτὴν ὀνομασίαν ἔσχεν. Ἱστορεῖ Ἐρατοσθένης.

This note is also found on the Venetus A manuscript, though it is not included in Erbe’s edition of the scholia (because Erbse excludes the mythological scholia or “D” scholia from his edition). It is also found in the Venetus B, but in the later, 12th or 13th century set of scholia on that manuscript. (Hence it postdates the construction of E4.) 

A potentially very significant variation is recorded in this note on E4. What is significant about this note is not actually its content, but its lemma. The reading ὅν τε κύν’ὠρίωνα does not match the corresponding text of the poem on folio 188v of E4, nor is it found in any other manuscript, all of which read κύν’ὠρίωνος (“the dog of Orion”). In fact κύν’ὠρίωνα does not make much grammatical sense, though we could take the two accusatives, somewhat awkwardly, to be in apposition to one another (“the dog, Orion”). The Venetus Α scholia, however, record another discussion of this phrase, this one about the proper division of the words:

ὅντε κύν’ ὠρίωνος ὁ Σιδώνιος ὑφ’ ἓν ἀναγινώσκει. ἄμεινον δὲ κατὰ παράθεσιν, ὅτι οἱ κύνες πολλάκις ὀνομάζονται μετὰ τῶν κτητόρων, οἷον Κέρβερος Ἅιδου, Ὄρθρος Γηρυόνου, Ἄλκαινα Ἀκταίωνος· οὕτως κύνα Ὠρίωνος. τῷ δὲ κυνηγετικὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ πλησίον κατηστέρισαν τὸν κύνα.

“The dog of Orion”: The Sidonian reads it as one [word]. But it is better to read it as two, because dogs are often named with their owners, such as Kerberos of Hades, Orthros of Geryon, Alkaina of Aktaion; likewise the dog of Orion. Inasmuch as he was fond of hunting they also made his dog in the constellation next to him. 

Dionysius Sidonius was an Aristarchean scholar who seems to have been very familiar with the methods and scholarship of Aristarchus. (See Nagy 2009: 151–152.) In this comment he seems to be arguing for a reading, perhaps known to Aristarchus, that represents κύν’ὠρίωνος as one word. The only way that such a one-word reading could work grammatically would be if the word were in the accusative case: that is to say, something like κυνωρίωνα. Is it possible that the source from which the scribe of E4 was copying his scholia with lemmata had this other reading? Could such a reading have been corrupted by the influence of the genitive in other sources, so that instead of κυνωρίωνα we find in E4 κύν’ὠρίωνα (divided into two words)? If so, E4’s lemma here would be the sole witness to preserve what seems to be an ancient variation that was being discussed in antiquity. 

The other scholion recorded in this text block, also with a lemma in crimson ink, also has an interesting link to the A manuscript. 

Εἶσϊ τὴν ἑώαν ἀνατολὴν. ἅνεισιν ἀνατέλλει.

A version of this comment is found in several other manuscripts of Homeric so-called D scholia, including the 9th century manuscript Z (= Romanus, Bibl. Naz. Centr. Gr. 6 + Matrit. B. N. 4626), but it is not in B, T, C, or Ge. In the Venetus A, however, ανεισιν ἀνατελλει is written here in semiuncial script above εἶσιν. 

Detail from folio 282v of the Venetus A

This link is now a second indication that the scholia with lemmata in E4 are drawn from a tradition with ties to the Aristarchean scholarship that we find in the Venetus A. 

In the left margin and at the bottom of the folio, surrounding the text block containing the hypothesis and these scholia are additional scholia. These scholia, like those above the hypothesis, do not contain lemmata, and are clearly drawn from other sources. The first two of these scholia are preceded by a siglum in the outer margin, while the final three are preceded by Greek numerals (in the form of letters of the alphabet). The numbered scholia correspond to the numbered scholia in B, E3, and C. The scholia connected to the text with sigla contain material from the so-called “D” scholia. These scholia can also often found in B, but in the second, later hand of B. 

It is clear that the E4 brings together many different sources, which are used selectively and in combination. This is significant because it shows us that the Homeric scholia and other Homeric paratexts cannot be easily defined or placed in a neat stemma. Scribes clearly had a variety of sources available to choose from when constructing a manuscript. We should likewise assume that the text of the Iliad itself was collated in various ways as each manuscript was constructed.  While many scribes may have simply copied an exemplar, we know that they often compared what they were copying to other exemplars and made changes, or else recorded variations in the margins. This practice is especially clear in the Venetus A (on which see Allen 1889). In its text and scholia E4 may well preserve vestiges of the scholarly controversies of antiquity that survive nowhere else.

References cited in this post

Allen, T.W. 1899. “On the Composition of Some Greek Manuscripts: The Venetian Homer.” Journal of Philology 26: 161-181.

Allen, T. W. 1931a. Homeri Ilias  I-III. Oxford.

Dué, C., ed. 2009.  Recapturing a Homeric Legacy: Images and Insights from the Venetus A Manuscript of the Iliad. Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC.

Erbse, H., ed. 1969-1988. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem I-VII. Berlin.

Heyne, C. G., ed. 1834. Homeri Ilias cum brevi annotatione curante C.G. Heyne; accedunt scholia minora passim emendata, necnon Heraclidis Allegoriae Homericae. Oxford.

Nagy, G. 2009. “Traces of an Ancient System of Reading Homeric Verse in the Venetus A.” In Dué 2009a: 133–158.

Schrader, H., ed. 1880-1882. Porphyrii quaestionum Homericarum ad Iliadem pertinentium reliquiae. Leipzig.

Connected places now appear in maps

Institut du Monde Arabe Bibliothèque Numérique

Oeuvrant en faveur de l'établissement de ponts entre les cultures arabe et européenne, l'Institut du Monde Arabe poursuit énergiquement sa mission visant à introduire et diffuser électroniquement la culture arabe en Europe. Ainsi, le partenariat privilégié entre la Bibliotheca Alexandrina et l'Institut du Monde Arabe, a abouti à la création d'une bibliothèque numérique de plus de 1166 ouvrages et 19 titres de périodiques tombés dans le domaine publique mis à la disposition des étudiants, des chercheurs et des internautes du monde entier.


Afin de donner accès à la connaissance à tous et de combler le fossé culturel entre les nations, la préservation de la riche collection de la bibliothèque de l'Institut du Monde Arabe a été effectuée pour servir aux générations à venir ; et ce, en recourant à l'expertise de la Bibliotheca Alexandrina en matière de numérisation. La collection a été déjà numérisée et mise en ligne via une interface conviviale dotée des outils de navigation et des facilités de recherche nécessaires.

Books

• Art (70)
• Généralités (48)
• Histoire et géographie (439)
• Linguistique (119)
• Littérature (199)
• Philosophie (21)
• Religion (179)
• Sciences appliquées, Médecine, Technologie (37)
• Sciences exactes, Sciences naturelles (21)
• Sciences sociales (39)

Journals

• Le Monde arabe dans la recherche scientifique : MARS (10)
• Revue Africaine (67)
• Revue Tunisienne (94)
• أبولو (9)
• الأديب (7)
• الجنان (12)
• الرواية (8)
• الزهراء (2)
• الزهور (4)
• الشهاب (2)
• المعرض (16)
• المقتبس (4)
• المقتطف (128)
• الموسيقى (1)
• جريدة أبي نظارة (10)
• مجلة الرسالة (36)
• مجلة الضياء (8)
• مجلة المعهد الطبى العربى (20)
• مجلة سيركيس (4)

The JISC-funded OAPEN-UK (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) project have published a report on the first round of focus groups, held in the British Library late last year. Various groups of stakeholders (in this case academics who author research material) were brought together to discuss issues surrounding open access monograph publication. The conclusions and recommendations are perhaps less radical (or more practical?) than some discussions of open publication in this venue, but the report still raises some valuable issues. (Full disclosure, I participated in this session.)

The report can be found at: http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/research-findings/y1-initial-focus-groups/authors-readers/

The Digital Preservation Outreach in a Box resources being compiled by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Outreach Working group are designed as a gentle introduction to the concepts of preserving digital information.

There are a lot of words in that sentence that could use some deconstruction. “Gentle,” for example. Is it possible to “gently” introduce and explain a subject as complex as digital preservation?

We certainly hope so! The Outreach WG is focused on building relationships across institutional boundaries to help communicate the value of long-term stewardship and preservation and to publicize the efforts being made to preserve digital resources.

Sorry Mr. Houdini...We said digital "preservation" not "prestidigitation"! Photo credit: Library of Congress

The Box is one tool to aid in communication. It provides a set of resources to support introductory-level education for those who may have little to no knowledge of digital preservation and digital curation issues, to help them with stewarding their digital information.

That’s all great in theory. Now it’s a question of understanding whether some of our expectations about the Box content will actually work out in the real world.

To test some of these assumptions, the NDSA is working with educators around the country to explore ways to incorporate the Box resources into Library and Information Science education, and to provide feedback to the NDSA on how the resources can be made more usable.

One center of activity is here in the DC area. Jane Zhang, an Assistant Professor at the School of Library & Information Science at the Catholic University of America, is teaching LSC 617 this spring, a “Special Topics in Library and Information Science” course on Digital Curation.

One of the main course goals and objectives is to “create outreach tools to educate targeted audience[s] about the basic functions/processes of digital curation and preservation.”

Jane is incorporating the existing NDSA Box resources into the course, and has designed a semester-long project to get her students engaged with the material by suggesting new additions and preparing presentations of their own using Box content. The students may even present a poster on the project this summer at the NDIIPP/NDSA Partners Meeting in July.

Students from Jane Zhang's class discuss the Box materials. Photo credit: Jane Zhang

“Our students are using the resources to prepare for a public awareness workshop on digital preservation as well as contribute to the contents of the Box,” Jane said when discussing her approach. “It’s a great way for them to learn how to turn concepts and principles into public actions!”

(You can see full course syllabus here (PDF).

I took a trip out to visit with the class in early January along with fellow NDSA Outreach WG member Dever Powell of the National Library of Medicine. Dever has been very active in helping to develop the Box resources, and the two of us shared some background on our organizations, information on the goals and work of the NDSA and introduced the students to the rich potential housed in the Box.

The students are excited by the opportunity to contribute to an effort that will have national implications, and we’ll keep checking in with them as the semester plugs along.

Another NDSA Outreach WG member, Kim Schroeder of Archive Media Partners, an Adjunct Faculty at Wayne State University, is incorporating Box content in the classroom and in the first-ever NDSA Student Chapter.

She noted that “organizations like the NDSA are getting traction now because we see the immediacy of practicing digital preservation and not just theorizing.  The need to begin with a tool such as DP in a Box is the critical first step to standardizing a process that we felt initially, through the first 20 years of digital dependency, was unable to be standardized.  Technology has stabilized enough and projects have matured enough that we can move forward to formalize the discipline, its tools and its education.  DP in a box has been a wonderful way to begin to illustrate the research, needs and coming standards.”

The NDSA will continually incorporate the work of these “satellite” efforts back into the Box.

Much of the early work on the Box has taken place in the quiet and security of the NDSA wiki, but a public instance of the Box is in development and will allow all members of the digital preservation community to take advantage of the resources.

In addition to an Omeka digital library of Box resources, the NDSA is also developing a “Digital Preservation Forum” that will offer a space for the community to ask questions about digital preservation, curation and stewardship issues in a user-friendly environment and for NDSA experts to provide authoritative answers.

More to come!

Because of the bereavement, I’m still having difficulty concentrating on anything, and this has very odd effects if you are sat at home, as I am. 

I can’t do anything work related, or indeed anything leisure related either.  I just don’t want to.  It helps if I make myself go out and post a parcel (as I did this afternoon — a copy of the Eusebius book), but otherwise I just sit here.  I’ve no energy.  I don’t care about my projects at all.  Things that are ordinarily of interest leave me cold.  I can’t read many books at all.

It doesn’t help that it’s cold out with snow threatened.  That doesn’t motivate me to go and see friends who knew her.  Not when I might be stuck in a snowdrift.

There’s nothing for me to do, no-one to talk to, and it’s rather like being on Mars.  Very spacey-feeling.

The sunlight drifts through the window, but I don’t care.  Ordinarily I would travel out somewhere, but I don’t care enough to do so.

It seems to be important to make sure you eat properly.  I don’t seem to be hungry a lot of the time.  But you feel a lot more upset if you feel tired or haven’t eaten, it seems.  So … food must be consumed.

I find that things are getting deferred that I ordinarily would deal with immediately. 

I can’t listen to sad songs, and indeed what I can listen to is somewhat limited.

I get waves of pain, lasting 1-3 minutes, in which I can do nothing except walk around the house, saying her name and just hurting.  Then it goes.  At other times I just feel flat.  The pain has been increasing for a while, curiously, but my feeling is that the underlying trend is upward. 

It has helped a lot to get a short book on bereavement.  It indicates some of what I can expect, which is rather helpful.

It’s also helped to have a set of photographs of her, which I begged from people who knew her at college.  It’s only a few, but that’s probably all there ever were; there are none at all of me from my college days, not that I recall.  You didn’t think of it, in those halcyon days.  You would always be young, you thought.  Of course seeing the photos brings pain, but it is a good pain. 

I took the digital images — scanned – down to Boots on a memory stick and had them printed out on the 1 hr service, and they came out fine.  I’ve looked at them a lot.

Talking to some people helps too.  I have had some awful regrets; but talking to a college friend, it seems he was no more successful at that age with the girls than I was, and he tried a lot harder!  So I am freed from wondering what would have happened if I had tried harder, and that does help. 

The main thing seems to be to construct a narrative of her life, to come to terms with it, and to accept that she had a good life and is gone, but that I shall see her again.  How the unbelievers manage without that last bit I do not know.

All very weird, this stuff.  God, very kindly, has given me space to grieve, time when I don’t have to be working.  Praise Him.

One week into working at the Dutch National Libary, host of both teams, I think I can answer that.

Europeana collects metadata descriptions of cultural objects from Europe’s museums, libraries, and archives and provides a portal to search over these descriptions.

The European Library is more focussed, aggregating book catalogues from all 48 national libraries in Europe. It thus provides an aggregated catalogue of every single book in Europe (although there are probably caveats to that I’m not yet aware of), plus some metadata relating to their digitised content.

Both have created signficant networks of expertise to add to the massive amount of data they have aggregated.

But there is a general acknolwedgement that, having spent much effort creating these networks, both sites need to provide a better focus on end user needs.

Therefore, Europeana is beginning to divide up its user groups and allow different groups exploit the aggregated data in different ways e.g. tertiary education, secondary education, tourism, the ‘general public’, commercial industries

Part of the work I’m doing is try and develop Europeana Research, the part of Europeana which will be focussed on researchers. This will start with the European Libarary data, mix in with the Europeana data, add some full-text content from some other new projects (such as a new project to cluster different historic newspapers digitisation projects in Europe) and start to work out ways that this data can be exploited by different research communities.

Obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done to make that work, and I’ll hopefully write about the metadata, content strategies, usability, business model, IPR obstacles / challenges this entails in the next few months (if I’m not drowning in the hot soup of EU funding politics, garnished with a heavy sprinkling Euro-acronyms).

My project will be split up into two components: building a data repository using Kora and writing a corresponding white paper that will discuss my experiences in constructing a model for qualitative data. The first component, the data repository, will house qualitative data, such as one-on-one/focus groups interview transcripts and participant observation field notes.  From my experience, it is this type of data that produces much anxiety for qualitatively driven anthropologists. The repository will also host multimedia content such as photos, audio and video. Another important aspect of the repository will be the inclusion of supplementary material, such as project bios, interview guides, consent forms and code books. Despite the wide range of content proposed for the digital repository, a primary concern that cuts across all platforms for anthropologists, who conduct research with human subjects, is confidentiality and human subject protection. This project seeks to address these issues through the construction of a model that will attempt to embody these concerns.

 

For the second component of my project, I will be working on a white paper that will compliment my experience constructing a data repository for qualitative data. Using my experience as an example, my intention is to use this space to discuss concerns around confidentiality and intellectual property and how they can be addressed or at least mitigated by a set of best practices that will be generated based on my model. One of the most important variables to be considered will be issues of privacy and confidentiality: How can we identifiers will be need to be removed without significantly changing the presented material? As a medical anthropologist, how do I deal with the collection of sensitive medical information and how much of this should be included?

 

One of my intentions for building this repository is to provide an example for anthropologists handling qualitative data. While issues of confidentiality and intellectual property are an extremely important issue, I do not believe these concerns are enough to end the conversation about open access data. I consider these conversations to rest on a continuum where solutions aren’t all or nothing and will vary based on the context. This is fine. With that being said, I consider developing best practices as one step towards providing one example to encourage open source data/sharing among scholars. Given the recent controversy surrounding the American Anthropological Association’s stance on open access , it is important to have these concrete examples.

There’s really only one thing you can do with a book: read it. You can learn from it, cite it or feel that your life has been changed by it, but you can’t directly reuse it (well, apart from making it an
accessory piece of furniture, but that doesn’t make use of the contents of the book). One of the distinctive differences of digital scholarship is that, if it is well designed, it can be used for purposes the original author may not have foreseen. The original author may even discover unintended reuse for digital work, as I did recently.

I had been working on an image service using a URN notation to retrieve and view images of the famous Archimedes Palimpsest. Using a URN like

urn:cite:hmt:chsimg.081v–088r_Arch03v_Sinar_pseudo_no-veil

the service lets you do things like

• Retrieve a binary image at a given size. . This is bifolio 81v–88r at 50 pixels wide.
• 
  Retrieve a region of interest . This extracts from the same image a region with a mathematical figure, the construction of Archimedes, Floating Bodies 1.proposition.1
• open a pannable/zoomable version of the image in a web browser, either with or without a highlighted region of interest. Try these two links to the same bifolio illustrated in the static images above:
  
  1. with no highlighted region
  2. including highlighting of the mathematical figure

For a course I taught in English translation, I put together a text service, allowing you to retrieve passages of text by canonical reference. With a URN like this

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0552.tlg008.chs03:1.proposition.1

the service lets you retrieve archival XML source for a passage. This request gets the XML source for Archimedes, Floating Bodies, postulate 1 — not necessarily a thing of beauty to the casual reader of Archimedes. But it’s trivial to associate an XSLT stylesheet to format the archival XML for reading in a browser, so here is the same passage associated with stylesheet for easy reading.

At some point, the penny dropped, and I realized it would also be trivial to mash up the two services. When I started work on the image service, I had not imagined that the digital images of the Greek palimpsest would be of any interest to Greekless readers of Archimedes, but the mathematical figures in the manuscript are extremely important even if you’re reading Thomas Heath’s public-domain English translation.

A minor addition to the XSLT stylesheet uses the markup indicating the presence of canonically identified figures in Heath’s translation to embed references to the image service.

Try this view of book 1, proposition 1, where any reader (Greek scholar or not) now gets to follow the text in Heath’s translation together with images in the only surviving Greek manuscript of Floating Bodies. Images of regions are embedded in the text, and are linked to the zoomable view of the whole bifolio.

ΔΕΛΤΙΟN ΤΗΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΙΚΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΗΣ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑΣ  - Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society
ISSN: 1105-5758

  Χριστιανική Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία (ΧΑΕ) με ιδιαίτερη χαρά ανακοινώνει την έναρξη λειτουργίας της ηλεκτρονικής έκδοσης του ΔΕΛΤΙΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΙΚΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΗΣ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑΣ (Δελτίον). Οι εξελίξεις στον τρόπο επιστημονικής εργασίας και δημοσίευσης των αποτελεσμάτων της έρευνας μας οδήγησαν στην απόφαση, συγχρόνως με την έντυπη έκδοση του Δελτίου που εκδόθηκε για πρώτη φορά το 1892, να προχωρήσουμε σε παράλληλη ηλεκτρονική έκδοση προσφέροντας στους ερευνητές και το ευρύτερο κοινό εύκολη πρόσβαση, μέσω του διαδικτύου, στο περιεχόμενο του Δελτίου. Η ηλεκτρονική έκδοση του περιοδικού υλοποιείται σε συνεργασία με το Εθνικό Κέντρο Τεκμηρίωσης (ΕΚΤ).

The Christian Archaeological Society (ChAE) is pleased to announce the launch of the online edition of the Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society (Deltion). The developments in research and scholarly communication have led to the decision to publish an online edition of the Deltion alongside the print edition, which began in 1892. The online edition facilitates access to the content of the Deltion for scholars and the wider public. The electronic publication of the journal is carried out in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre (EKT)

2006

Δελτίον XAE 27 (2006), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Νικολάου Β. Δρανδάκη (1925-2004)

2005

Δελτίον ΧΑΕ 26 (2005), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Γεωργίου Γαλάβαρη (1926-2003)

2003

Δελτίον ΧΑΕ 24 (2003), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Νίκου Οικονομίδη (1934-2000)

2004

Δελτίον ΧΑΕ 25 (2004), Περίοδος Δ'

2002

Δελτίον ΧΑΕ 23 (2002), Περίοδος Δ'

2001

Δελτίον ΧΑΕ 22 (2001), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Μανόλη Χατζηδάκη (1909-1998)

2000

Δελτίον XAE 21 (2000), Περίοδος Δ'

1999

Δελτίον XAE 20 (1998), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Δημητρίου Ι. Πάλλα (1907-1995)

1997

Δελτίον XAE 19 (1996-1997), Περίοδος Δ'

1995

Δελτίον XAE 18 (1995), Περίοδος Δ'

1994

Δελτίον XAE 17 (1993-1994), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη της Ντούλας Μουρίκη (1934-1991)

1992

Δελτίον XAE 16 (1991-1992), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του André Grabar (1896-1990)

1991

Δελτίον XAE 15 (1989-1990), Περίοδος Δ'

1989

Δελτίον XAE 14 (1987-1988), Περίοδος Δ'

1988

Δελτίον XAE 13 (1985-1986), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Μαρίνου Καλλιγά (1906-1985)

1986

Δελτίον XAE 12 (1984), Περίοδος Δ'. Στην εκατονταετηρίδα της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας (1884-1984)

1983

Δελτίον XAE 11 (1982-1983), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Αναστασίου Κ. Ορλάνδου (1887-1979)

1981

Δελτίον XAE 10 (1980-1981), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Ανδρέα Γρηγ. Ξυγγόπουλου (1891-1979)

1979

Δελτίον XAE 9 (1977-1979), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη της Μαρίας Γεωργίου Σωτηρίου (1888-1979)

1976

Δελτίον XAE 8 (1975-1976), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Βίκτωρα Λάζαρεφ (1897-1976)

1974

Δελτίον XAE 7 (1973-1974), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Anatole Frolow (1906-1972)

1972

Δελτίον XAE 7 (1970-1972), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Παναγιώτη Μιχελή (1903-1969)

1969

Δελτίον XAE 5 (1969), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Δημητρίου Ευαγγελίδη (1888-1959)

1966

Δελτίον XAE 4 (1964-1965), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Γεωργίου Α. Σωτηρίου (1881-1965)

1964

Δελτίον XAE 3 (1962-1963), Περίοδος Δ'

1962

Δελτίον XAE 2 (1960-1961), Περίοδος Δ'

1960

Δελτίον XAE 1 (1959), Περίοδος Δ'. Στη μνήμη του Νίκου Βέη (1883-1958)

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

TOTEM: The University of Western Ontario Anthropology Journal
ISSN (Print): 1203-8830
ISSN (Online): 1925-8542

TOTEM is a peer-reviewed, student-run journal of anthropology published annually in association with the Anthropology Society and the Department of Anthropology at The University of Western Ontario (U.W.O). TOTEM is currently on its 20th volume; the first volume was published in 1994. 2010-2011 was the first year TOTEM published online through the Scholarship@Western initiative, and 2011-2012 will be the first year we move to an online submission system. 2011-2012 will also be the first year that TOTEM will be selecting one student submission for an Editor's Recognition Award.


TOTEM’s mandate is to publish exceptional works of creative and original research by undergraduate and graduate students in any of the four sub-fields of anthropology including socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological/physical anthropology, and linguistics. TOTEM is dedicated to providing a forum for undergraduates and graduate students in anthropology to present and discuss their work with their peers. Due to anthropology’s interdisciplinary nature, we invite students from other disciplines and institutions to submit papers of value or interest to anthropology and anthropologists.


Our editorial board consists of two Anthropology Department graduate students that are elected to act as co-editors, and our reviewers are drawn from all four fields of anthropology. This year’s co-editors are Andrew Wade, a bioarchaeologist in the fourth year of his PhD program, and Jennifer Morgan, a bioarchaeologist in the third year of her PhD program.


Additionally, we have a large number of peer-reviewers from the undergraduate and graduate Anthropology Department that change every year. We work in conjunction with the undergraduate Anthropology Society at UWO, and have future plans to work with the newly formed Western Anthropology Graduate Society.


TOTEM is also pleased to feature the artwork of David Kanatawakhon-Maracle.

Volume 19 (2011)

Issue 1

Volume 18 (2010)

Issue 1

Volume 17 (2009)

Issue 1

Volume 16 (2008)

Issue 1

Volume 15 (2007)

Issue 1

Volume 14 (2006)

Issue 1

Volume 13 (2005)

Issue 1

Volume 12 (2004)

Issue 1

Volume 11 (2003)

Issue 1

Volume 10 (2002)

Issue 1

Volume 9 (2001)

Issue 1

Volume 8 (2000)

Issue 1

Volume 7 (1999)

Issue 1

Volume 3 (1997)

Issue 1

Issue 2

Volume 2 (1995)

Issue 1

Volume 1 (1994)

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Let&#8217s talk about mobile web development some more! The principle of progressive enhancement is a general principle of front-end web development with wide applicability. Because you have a wide range of capabilities in mobile browsers, the principle is very important in this space as well.

So what is &#8220Progressive Enhancement&#8221? It is the practice of building a web page (and can apply to Css, Html and JavaScript) that works broadly, but with enhancements for more advanced browsers. Perhaps an example is in order. Note the following:

This rectangle is so completely cool.

In fact, that rectangle might be so cool that it isn&#8217t a rectangle at all. On most newer browsers, you should see something like this:

On not as awesome browsers (in this case IE 9), you may see something like this (or worse, because this is actually pretty close).

Here is the css:

<style type="text/css">
    #_rockinsamplesquare
    {
        background-color: rgba(240, 140, 240, .2);
        border: solid 1px #555;
        border-radius: 20px;
        box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #AAA;
        font-family: helvetica, verdana, sans-serif;
        font-size: 1.3em;
        font-weight: bold;
        padding: 20px;
        text-align: center;
        text-shadow: 0 0 20px #000;
        max-width: 450px;
    }
</style>
  

The basic idea behind progressive enhancement is that some things are not crucial for an app/site and if they are not, progressively enhance the thing so that better browsers can have a better experience. But the key here is that older browser users don&#8217t suffer. They still get to read the content or use the app, whatever the context. They just may not get the same experience as someone else.

I remember employing this on a feature we launched when I was on the international team at work. We had a fancy new advanced search page that we wanted to try out. One (very small) part of the design included a portion of the page that had rounded corners. The old school pre-Css 3 way of doing this was to use images to round those corners off, but a) that seemed boring and b) I figured it was too insignificant of a &#8220feature&#8221 (if you could even call it that) to spend time on, so I rounded the corners with Css. Did it look better with rounded corners? Maybe a bit. Did it really matter if someone viewed the site in IE 6 and didn&#8217t see the rounded corners? Not at all. I saved time, had a less annoying task and still created a good enough experience for everyone, though it differed between browsers. This is progressive enhancement.

The principle could also be applied to features. For example, you could use the newer application cache features of Html 5 to enable offline access to some content on your site for those who have it. Browsers that lacked support would simply not be able to browse the site while offline, which is normal behavior anyway. Assuming this was not a key feature of your website, this is another good example of progressive enhancement.

Next

What is next? We are going to talk about the problem of splitting your markup to support desktop and mobile.

We awoke to a foggy morning and our drive to campus saw cloud-burst style snow showers. But the good news is that we’ll see balmy temperatures again today with highs in the 30s!!!

So with the arrival (once again this year) of spring, it seems like a great time for some quick hits and varia.

• Guy Sanders has been on a roll lately with the links, so I’ll pass them on to you:
  • Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society is now available online. This has suddenly made some other journals look really really behind. (Yes, I’m looking at you Journal of Roman Archaeology).
  • The Onassis Foundation has made available online the lovely A. Lazaridou ed., Transitions to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd-7th Century A.D. (New York 2011). Reading it online (through a rather clunky viewer will save you almost $30!).
  • Finally, Greece has made available an index of dissertations online and many of them have full text via a clunky online reader.
• Ten “Metatrends” in technology and education from the NMC Horizon Project (pdf here). I am not entirely sure that Horizon needed “100 distinguished thought leaders from all over the world” to come up with this list.
• The Sunoikisis Consortium is offering a fellowship for participants in the Kenchreai Archaeology Field School. Get your Corinthia on with Dr. Prof. Big Joe Rife.
• An interesting tale of how Amazon’s clever marketing can help an author get noticed.
• I sort of like Twitterfall.
• The AIA might be a bit too ambivalent (for my taste) in their attitudes toward open access to their scholarly publications (via Dimitri Nakassis), American Journal of Archaeology does offer a nice list of blogs now on their page.
• For some reason I am fascinated with these little interviews of famous techtypes. Here’s one on Jason Kottke. And this post by Mr. Kottke on how to pronounce things hilariously is hilarious.
• Selling a story then creating a product. This is the essence of the interwebs.
• And the Internets are now GOOD for you, but we need to figure out how to use it in order for it to make us happy.
• Some interesting thoughts on Contemporary Archaeologies from the Paul Mullins, the President of the Society for Historical Archaeology (via Richard Rothaus).
• Yesterday was Teaching Thursday.
• This 6 by David Warner is just amazing.
• A pretty amazing story of how the famous Dan Reetz saved some girls from sex traffickers using Metafilter.
• Poor T-rex.
• What I’m reading: T. F. Tartaron, D. J. Pullen, R. K. Dunn, L. Tzortzopoulou-Gregory, A. Dill, and J. I. Boyce, “Saronic Harbors Archaeological Research Project (SHARP): Investigations at Mycenaean Kalamianos, 2007-2009,” Hesperia 80.4 (2011), 559-643. (It’s almost 100 pages, so cut me a break!)
• What I’m listening to: Gonjasufi, MU.ZZ.LE, Chairlift, Something.

Hoar frost

Base de données sur les auteurs ancien: édition patristique, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée

Base de données éditée par l’Institut des Sources Chrétiennes (HISOMA - UMR 5189).

Cette base recense tous les auteurs anciens édités dans la collection Sources Chrétiennes ou susceptibles de l’être : il s’agit essentiellement de Pères de l’Église. Elle est régulièrement alimentée par tous les membres de l’équipe Sources Chrétiennes au fur et à mesure de la gestion des projets éditoriaux ; elle peut l’être également par toute personne désireuse d’enrichir la page d’un auteur qu’elle connaît bien.Elle permet de connaître de façon fine le contenu des volumes déjà parus, de ceux en cours de préparation, mais elle a aussi une finalité prospective, puisqu’elle indique les textes que Sources Chrétiennes souhaiterait éditer dans les années à venir et pour lesquels l’Institut cherche des collaborateurs.
Vous y trouverez notamment :

 des informations sur l’état d’avancement des éditions, sur les colloques ou journées d’étude consacrés aux Pères
 des éléments biographiques et bibliographiques, des liens vers des sites dédiés.

 Consulter la base

Only two research projects left to talk about in my survey of what I have done previously, and this is the biggy, the blast-from-the-past upon which your star will forever be hung, the doctorate. I cant even say PhD - you get a DPhil from Oxford, which will confuse people evermore.

My doctoral funding came from an EPSRC grant, working on an established, funded, project at the University of Oxford, which was split between The Department of Engineering Science and the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, as a collaborative project between Professor Mike Brady, and Professor Alan Bowman. They were interested to see if they could use new and novel imaging techniques to try and read the damaged inscriptions on the Vindolanda stylus texts, above. At the start of 1999 I joined them on a 3 year project, where two doctoral students and a postdoc were employed. My role was to work in the space between the classicists and the engineers, given I had a training both in classics (but classical art!) and in computing science.

I'm not going to kid that this wasnt hard work, nor a tough time for me - but looking back, I see its part of the doctoral process that you generally get the stuffing knocked out of you, and then you rebuild yourself and are academically stronger as a result. Essentially, I hadnt done an undergraduate in Engineering, or Maths - but was being examined in Engineering. It was a steep learning curve, and I had a lot of catching up to do, learning a lot both about Latin and Probability Theory, Roman Archaeology and Parallel Computing. I successfully defended in January 2003 - although it took me months to even face doing the (2 hours worth) of corrections, and a further year to go back to the work and turn it into Image to Interpretation, my monograph published by OUP.

I published five pieces on my doctorate, as well as the book. One of them is pretty promissory (in general, something that has the words "Towards" in the title, you think, aye aye.....)

Terras, M (2000) Towards a reading of the Vindolanda Stylus Tablets: Engineers and the Papyrologist. Human IT , 4 (2/3) PDF.

Although the further three pieces are more substantive, the last one contains the maths:

Terras, M. and Robertson, P. (2004) Downs and Acrosses: Textual Markup on a Stroke Based Level. Literary and Linguistic Computing , 19 (3 ) pp.397 - 414 . PDF

Terras, M. (2005) Reading the Readers: Modelling Complex Humanities Processes to Build Cognitive Systems. Literary and Linguistic Computing , 20 (1 ) pp.41 - 59 . PDF

Terras, M and Roberston, P (2005) Image and Interpretation: Using Artificial Intelligence to Read Ancient Roman Texts. HumanIT , 7 (3) PDF.

The final paper is a contribution to an edited volume we were all asked to write a paper for, to reflect what research was being undertaken in our department at UCL, so it has crossovers with these two, above (and there is probably room, at some point, to discuss just how much you can publish in a paper that has already been covered elsewhere, in a different format, for a different audience, as its a pretty murky academic practice):

Terras, M (2006) Interpreting the image: using advanced computational techniques to read the Vindolanda texts. ASLIB Proceedings , 58 (1/2) 102 - 117. PDF.

It's only in the most recent couple of years that I've started to focus again on imaging of manuscript material, and how best we can tackle degraded texts. I'm working again with computer scientists and engineers on some fairly gnarly imaging problems, and its very rewarding - although the fun, now, is knowing I wont be examined at the end of it, and I dont have the "what will become of me!" stress that people have to face at the end of their doctorate (even though I am committed to helping my PhD students over those mental hurdles). It's now almost (six months short of) a decade since I handed in my PhD. How did that happen?????

Plato's Protagoras, a translation

This is an attempt at a collaborative translation of Plato’s Protagoras, a beautiful and challenging dialogue. The lead author is Dhananjay Jagannathan, a graduate student in ancient philosophy at the University of Chicago. Find out more about this translation.

Read the Protagoras, arranged by Stephanus page, with the Greek text, the collaborative translation, and Jowett's translation side-by-side. You can add comments and suggestions at the bottom of each page (see the latest comments, or subscribe to comments via RSS).

309

310

311

312

313

314

315

316

317

318

319

320

321

322

For other collaborative translations project see:

• Suda On-Line 

We are very pleased to tell all our readers about an upcoming special concert by the noted choral ensemble The Sixteen, who will perform at the British Library on 10 February. The Sixteen, led by their conductor and founder Harry Christophers, have been recording and performing worldwide for more than thirty-two years, and they are particularly noted for their interpretations of early English polyphony and other masterpieces of the medieval and Renaissance periods. 

The event on 10 February will include the opportunity for an after-hours visit to our exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, which has inspired The Sixteen's new CD, 'The Genius of Illumination.'  Following this, the ensemble will present a programme of late medieval music entitled 'Musical Illuminations', which will include pieces by William Cornysh, Robert Davy, and even King Henry VIII himself.  A download of the full programme, including texts and translations, is available here.

This concert has unfortunately already sold out, but those who are unable to come to the performance can buy the CD in the British Library shop or online here.

Those who are fortunate enough to have tickets should be aware that the concert will be held in the Entrance Hall of the British Library (rather than the Conference Centre, where events are usually  hosted).  This will be an unseated performance; doors will open at 19.30 and time will be allowed to visit the Royal exhibition.  The Sixteen will perform from 20.30 until 21.20. 

On a related note, there are only about 6 weeks remaining to see the exhibition Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, which will close on 11 March.  Last weekend saw record numbers of visitors, and we expect it to be even busier in the final days, so please plan your visit accordingly!

You can also now follow us on Twitter:  @blmedieval

The image of Alexander Calder above shows him in his studio, circa 1950. It is from a folder titled Photographs: Calder at Work, 1927-1956, undated, part of Alexander Calder’s Papers held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and available online through the efforts of their digitization project. I love that this image capture him in his creative space – you get to see the happy chaos from which Calder drew his often sleek and sparse sculptures.

Back in October, I had the opportunity to visit with staff of the digitization program for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art along with a group of my colleagues from the World Bank. This is a report on that site visit. It is my hope that these details can help others planning digitization projects – much as it is informing our own internal planning.

Date of Visit: October 18, 2011

Destination: Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Smithsonian Archives of American Art Hosts:

• Karen Weiss
• Many additional staff members

Summary:  This visit was two hours in length and consisted of a combination of presentation, discussion and site tour to meet staff and examine equipment.

Background: The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art (AAA) program was first funded by a grant from the Terra Foundation of American Art in 2005, recently extended through 2016. This funding supports both staff and research.

Their digitization project replaced their existing microfilm program and focuses on digitizing complete collections. Digitization focused on in-house collections (in contrast with collections captured on microfilm from other institutions across the USA as part of their microfilm program).

Over the course of the past 6 years, they have scanned over 110 collections – a total of 1,000 linear feet – out of an available total of 13,000 linear feet from 4,500 collections. They keep a prioritized list of what they want digitized.

The Smithsonian DAM (digital asset management system) had to be adjusted to handle the hierarchy of EAD and the digitized assets. Master files are stored in the Smithsonian DAM. Files stored in intermediate storage areas are only for processing and evaluation and are disposed of after they have been ingested into the DAM.

Current staffing is two and a half archivists and two digital imaging specialists. One digital imaging specialist focuses on scanning full collections, while the other focuses on on-demand single items.

The website is built in ColdFusion and pulls content from a SQL database. Currently they have no way to post media files (audio, oral histories, video) on the external web interface.

They do not delineate separate items within folders. When feedback comes in from end users about individual items, this information is usually incorporated into the scope note for the collection, or the folder title of the folder containing the item. Full size images in both the image gallery and the full collections are watermarked.

They track the processing stats and status of their projects.

Standard Procedures:

Full Collection Digitization:

• Their current digitization workflow is based on their microfilm process. The workflow is managed via an internal web-based management system. Every task required for the process is listed, then crossed off and annotated with the staff and date the action was performed.
• Collections earmarked for digitization are thoroughly described by a processing archivist.
• Finding aids are encoded in EAD and created in XML using NoteTab Pro software.
• MARC records are created when the finding aid is complete. The summary information from the MARC record is used to create the summary of the collection published on the website.
• Box numbers and folder numbers are assigned and associated with a finding aid. The number of the box and folder are all a scanning technician needs.
• A ‘scanning information worksheet’ provides room for notes from the archivist to the scanning technician.  It provides the opportunity to indicate which documents should not be scanned. Possible reasons for this are duplicate documents or those containing personal identifying information (PIP).
• A directory structure is generated by a script based on the finding aid, creating a directory folder for each physical folder which exists for the collection. Images are saved directly into this directory structure. The disk space to hold these images is centrally managed by the Smithsonian and automatically backed up.
• All scanning is done in 600dpi color, according to their internal  guidelines. They frequently have internal projects which demand high resolution images for use in publication.
• After scanning is complete, the processing archivist does the post scanning review before the images are pushed into the DAM for web publication.
• Their policy is to post everything from a digitized collection, but they do support a take-down policy.
• A recent improvement was made in January, 2010. At that time they relaunched the site to include all of their collections co-located on the same list, both digitized and non-digitized.

On Demand Digitization:

• Patrons may request the digitization of individual items.
• These requests are evaluated by archivists to determine if it is appropriate to digitize the entire folder (or even box) to which the item belongs.
• Requests are logged in a paper log.
• Item level scanning ties back to an item level record with an item ID. There is an ‘Online Removal Notice’ to create item level stub.
• An item level cataloger describes the content after it is scanned.
• Unless there is an explicit copyright or donor restriction, the items is put online in the Image Gallery (which currently has 12,000 documents).
• Access to images is provided by keyword searching.
• Individual images are linked back to the archival description for the collection from which they came.

Improvements/Changes they wish for:

• They currently have no flexibility to make changes in the database nimbly. It is a tedious process to change the display and each change requires a programmer.
• They would like to consider a move to open source software or to use a central repository – though they have concerns about what other sacrifices this would require.
• Show related collections, list connected names (currently the only options for discovery are an A-Z list of creators or keyword search).
• Ability to connect to guides and other exhibits.

References:

• Image Gallery
• Main Website
• Digitization Project
• Technical Documentation – shares internal procedures and guidelines
• OCLC rapid capture paper
• Scanning equipment

Image Credit: Alexander Calder papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

This post is from from: Spellbound Blog.

Digitization Program Site Visit: Archives of American Art

Metrical Book-Summaries on Two Byzantine Manuscripts

Book 1 (“Alpha”) Summarized with one line of Greek in dactylic hexameter, on the Venetus A and the Escorialensis 4

Each Byzantine manuscript of the Homeric Iliad that the Homer Multitext has digitized represents a complex juxtaposition of many complementary texts. Each contains a text of the poem, in Greek, along with other texts that contain commentaries, summaries, biographies of Homer, or other additional materials. The editors of the HMT divide these texts into two categories: primary texts, which stand alone, and secondary texts, which refer explicitly to primary texts. The text of the Iliad is a primary text, of course, but so is a biography of Homer or a summary of another, lost epic poem such as the Ilioupersis (the “Sack of Troy”). The inter-linear scholia constitute a secondary text, because each note, or “scholion”, refers to a word, phrase, line or passage in the primary text.

One of the most interesting secondary texts that appears on several of these manuscripts is the collection of one-line summaries of each book of the Iliad, from Book 1 (“Alpha”), to Book 24 (“Omega”). After some thought, we have decided to consider these a secondary text, since they accompany and refer to the poetic text. Each of the summaries is written in Greek and in dactylic hexameter, the same poetic meter as the Iliad itself. With this posting on the Homer Multitext Blog, we are pleased to announce a publication of the metrical summaries from two manuscripts, the Venetus A (Marcianus Graecus Z.454 [=822]), and the Escorialensis 4 (Escorialensis ω.I.12 [513 = Allen E⁴]).

Links:

• XML version (with stylesheet for in-browser display)
• HTML version
• Downloadable archive containing XML, stylesheets, and associated files.

This publication consists of an XML document that contains the following fields for each book-summary for each manuscript:

• a label
• a CITE-URN that identifies a region-of-interest on a digital image of a manuscript page
• the text of the metrical summary
• a translation of the metrical summary

The CITE-URN is a canonical reference to a defined section of an image; these concise strings can be resolved to show the image data itself, which is exposed through the CITE Image Service.

Of the twenty-four pairs of summaries, no two are completely identical in every respect. The Venetus A and E4 follow different conventions for punctuation, for example. But eighteen of the twenty-four books are substantially similar from one manuscript to the next.

Six of the summaries have more significant differences in the texts preserved on the Venetus A and the E4.

For Book Γ (3), the two manuscript have:

Venetus A
Text: γάμμα δ’ ἄρ. ἀφ’ Ἑλένης. οἴοις μόθος ἐστὶν ἀκοίταις·
Translation: And then Gamma is from the point of view of Helen; the pitch of battle is only for husbands.

Escorialensis 4
Text: γάμμα δ’ ἄρ’ ἀμφ’ Ἑλένηι· οἴοις μόθος ἐστὶν ἀκοίταις·
Translation: And then Gamma is around Helen; the pitch of battle is only for husbands.

The one-letter difference between the prepositions ἀφ’  and ἀμφ’ is intentional, because the scribes used the correct case for the object-nouns (genitive in the VA and dative in the E4).

In both Books Δ (4) and Θ (8), the summaries consist of the book number (i.e. “Delta”, “Theta”), which serves as the grammatical subject of the sentence. In these two instances, the predicate of the sentence is either in the nominative or the accusative. We read the VA says that “Delta [contains] an assembly [accusative] of the gods,” while E4 says that “Delta [is] an assembly [nominative] of the gods.” Interestingly, in Book 8 this usage is reversed even though the words in 8 are the same as in 4, an “assembly of the gods” (ἀγορ- θεῶν): VA has “Theta [is] an assembly [nominative] of the gods,” and E4 has, “Theta [contains] an assembly [accusative] of the gods.”

The summaries for Book Ζ (6) are subtly different. We translate both of them:

“And then Zeta is the fond discourse of both Andromache and Hektor.”

The Greek for each is:

VA - ζῆτα· δ ὰρ. Ἀνδρομάχης τὲ καὶ Ἕκτορός ἐστ’ ὁαριστύς·
E4 - ζῆτα· δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀνδρομάχης καὶ Ἕκτορός ἐστι ὀαριστύς.

Venetus A · folio 89 verso

The most obvious difference is in VA’s τὲ καὶ … ἐστ’, versus E4’s καὶ … ἐστι. The result is equally valid dactylic hexameter. More interesting is the presentation of the word ὀαριστύς on the Venetus A.

We see what looks like an intentional space between ὁ and αριστύς, but the scribe is meticulous about using breathings, so we conclude that he intended this to be one word. The word is, as we have translated it, ὀαριστύς, “fond discourse”. It should properly have a smooth-breathing, as it does on the E4, but the scribe of VA has written a very clear rough-breathing. Did the scribe, unfamiliar with this exclusively epic word, guess wrong at the (no longer pronounced in the 10th century) breathing?

In Book Η (7), between E4 and the Venetus A, the words translated here “one-on-one” are reverse: μόνος μόνωι (in E4) versus μόνωι μόνος (in the Venetus A). The two versions are equally correct, grammatically and metrically.

Taken together, these differences, while minor, do not seem to us likely to be attributed to “scribal error”. It seems more likely that we have two different presentations of traditional material, with its own tradition that includes a certain amount of variation. The differences in Books 4, 6, 7, and 8 might suggest that the scribes were not in fact looking at a written source, but knew this material – perhaps as aids to navigating the 24 books of the poem reduced to a jingle committed to memory. This is purely speculation.

Katie Phillips, a Sophomore at Furman University, is editing the metrical summaries on the Escorialensis 3, which we will look forward to adding to our publications, and to our analysis of this interesting secondary text on the Byzantine witnesses to the Iliad.

Folio 188 recto of the manuscript of the Iliad known as E4.

In this post I will give some basic information about the Iliad manuscript known as E4 (Allen, = West F, Escorialensis Ω.I.12), and then proceed to describe a single folio in detail, folio 188 recto. (Thanks to University of Houston undergraduates Kat Dybala and Matthew Davis for their contributions to my understanding of this folio!)  In this way it will be possible to see how E4 relates to other manuscripts in the Homer Multitext as well as the several features that distinguish it from them.

E4 is an eleventh-century parchment codex, thought by Allen and previous scholars to be later than E3 (also eleventh century).  It consists of 216 folios, containing a complete text of the Iliad, a commentary with lemmata on Iliad 1–2.300, lives of Homer, a summary of the Cypria, an excerpt from the Batrachomyomachia (“Battle of Frogs and Mice”), excerpts from Porphyry, and other scholia with lemmata. The main text of the Iliad begins on folio 7, where a new set of scholia likewise begins. Individual books are preceded by hypotheses and a one verse metrical summary (the same one verse summaries that you find in Venetus A). The layout of E4 is quite different from Venetus A, Venetus B, and E3. On each folio there are two columns. The left column contains the text of the poem and the right columns consist of a paraphrase. According to Allen (1931:148), E4 is not related to any of the other early minuscule manuscripts. The manuscript seems to have been acquired in Venice for the price of 25 ducats, according to a subscription on the last folio (liber mei Benedicti Cornelii quem emi meis pecuniis pretio ducatorum viginti q).

Folio 188r

Folio 188r of the manuscript known as E4 (= West F, Escorialensis Ω.I.12) marks the beginning of Iliad book 22. We may compare it to Venetus A folio 282r, Venetus B folio 292r, and E3 283r. Its facing page on the left side, folio 187v, is taken up by a hypothesis, a large selection from Porphyry, and scholia, including comments on the text of the Iliad that is written on 188r.

Layout and Adornment

The folio contains Iliad 22.1-37 in the left column, and a paraphrase in the right. There are scholia in the top and outer margins and between the lines of the paraphrase. This layout differs considerably from that of the Venetus A, the Venetus B, and E3, where there is a central block of Iliad text with scholia surrounding it in the top, bottom and outer margins, as well as, to a much less extent, in the inner margin.

A large omega in red comprises the first letter of the main text of the poem in the left column. The initial omicron of the paraphrase  text in right column is also in red, and somewhat larger than the rest of the paraphrase text, set in the margin to the left of the text block.  Occasionally the initial letters of the line in both the left and the right columns are highlighted in a similar way.

There is a metrical summary of the book in red ink that spans the width of the two text blocks. It is placed just under a decorative border across the top, also in red ink. The summary reads: ἱλιάδος χ ὁμήρου ῥαψωδίας : χι δ‘αρα τρὶς περὶ τεῖχος ἄγων κτάν‘ Ἕκτορ‘ Ἀχιλλεύς (Rhapsody 22 of the Iliad of Homer: Chi. And leading him around the walls three times, Achilleus kills Hektor). This is the same summary as in Venetus A. There is no other subscription on the page. Note that the Venetus B has a different summary: χῖ Θέτιδος γόνος ὡκὺς ἀπώλεσεν Ἕκτορα δῖον :- ἀρχὴ τῆς χῖ ὁμήρου ῥαψωδίας  :- (Chi. The swift offspring of Thetis kills brilliant Hektor.  [This marks] the beginning of rhapsody 22 of Homer). E3 has the same summary as B; for this book in E3 there does not seem to be anywhere the summary of A in any hand.

We can already see that E4 has many features that distinguish it from the other manuscripts with scholia, including those of comparable date. Its layout is different, it contains a running paraphrase of the poem, and its metrical summary at the start of each book matches the tradition that we find in A, not B. The hypotheses at the start of each book of E4 are not found in A, B, or E3.

Main text

There are 37 lines of the poem on folio 188r, considerably more than would be found on a typical folio of A, B, or E3. For this reason E4 consists of only 216 folios, whereas A has 327 and B has 338.

12    E4 reads δεῦρ’ ἐλιάσθης (with A, T, and several other mss.) whereas several papyri and B read δεῦρο λιάσθης.

18    E4 and the codex Ambrosianus read ἀφείλαο where most manuscripts read ἀφείλεο.

27    E4 reads ὀπώρηις along with A (the text of A appears to have been corrected here) where most mss. read ὀπώρης.

30    E4, A, and one other manuscript read ὁ δ’ where others and the papyri read ὁ γ’.

33    E4 reads γ’ ἐκόψατο where most other manuscripts and the papyri read γε κόψατο.

36    E4 and A read ἑστήκει where most manuscripts read εἱστήκει.

Although one folio cannot be considered a representative sample, E4’s text of the Iliad on this folio seems to resemble A more closely than B.

Scholia

The scholia of E4 seem to have been collected from several different sources. There is a set of numbered scholia which corresponds to the numbered scholia in B, E3, and Laurentianus 32.3 (= Allen C and West C). There is another set of scholia in the same hand that is connected to the text with symbols, and these contain material from the so-called “D scholia” (also known as the scholia minora). This set of scholia is also found in B, but it is in the second, later hand of B. The scholia in this group are linked to the text through signs.

On folio 188r, we do find both numbered scholia and scholia linked to the text through symbols. Some scholia are written between lines of the paraphrase. The scholia that we find on E4 can all for the most part be found in B (not A), but they do not have the same layout as in B and their associated numbers and symbols do not correspond with those in B. In a future post I plan to provide a transcription of the scholia on folio 188r together with a comparison with the corresponding set on B and E3. There are definitely differences. For example, we find this comment at the top of folio 188r of E4:

ἀκέοντο: ἐθεραπεύοντο· κυρίως ἀκεῖσθαι τὸ ἄχος ἰᾶσθαι· καὶ τὸ ὃ δή ποτε θεραπεύειν· ὅθεν Φρύγες ἀκεστὴν τὸν ἰατρόν· καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι ἀκέστριαν.

Most of this comment, but not the whole, is in the numbered scholia of B and in E3 (with no lemma however in B or E3), while the whole, with the exception of ἐθεραπεύοντο, is also in T. So for this scholion, E4 resembles T more closely than B.

Preliminary observations

A preliminary study of a single folio reveals that E4 is a very unusual manuscript, both in its layout and content. Its main text seems very possibly in some way related to the tradition of A, while its scholia are related to those of B (and E3 and C). The scholia are related to those of B, but there are many differences between the two sets, most notably that the group of scholia connected by symbols are in a later hand of B (and not present in E3) while in E4 they are in the same hand and of the same date as the numbered scholia. As Allen observed, this manuscript cannot be precisely connected with any single other manuscript or manuscript family, and it would well deserve further study.

Recent stories from the world of archaeology!

The Penn Museum celebrates its 125th anniversary year by placing an arguably incomparable collection of ancient artifacts online for the world to see. The Penn Museum Online Collections Database is designed as a utility for scholars to obtain preliminary information on artifacts for research purposes, for teachers and students to explore a region’s cultural materials, and for any person who wishes to electronically organize and file their own set of favorite “finds” and share them with others. The database currently contains hundreds of thousands of object records and over fifty thousand images and is growing.

A scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is challenging the conventional wisdom about a 2,000-year-old artifact recently discovered in the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem.  The button-sized object was thought to be a seal indicating the purity of offerings, but Prof. Shlomo Naeh argues that the object is a kind of voucher or token which enabled the Temple administrator to keep track of commerce related to sacrificial offerings.

The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage (ADACH) has unveiled its plans for two key projects in Al Ain: the Al Ain National Museum and Hili Archaeological Park. Hili Archaeological Park is an internationally significant archaeological site, comprising Bronze Age, Iron Age and Islamic remains.

An update on  Ness of Brodgar, a Neolithic site in the Orkney islands that is looking progressively more like a temple complex.

Pompeii risks joining the World Heritage in Danger list. A Unesco report has identified serious problems with the World Heritage Site, including structural damage to buildings, vandalism and a lack of qualified staff.

Excavations at Mont-Saint-Michel uncovered the remains of  the Tower of Denis, a fortification tower built sometime around 1479 and demolished in 1732. 

Finds of residential architecture at Cahokia indicate that it was not a seasonal, ceremonial center, but an affluent neighborhood of Native Americans, set amid the largest concentration of people and monumental architecture north of what is now Mexico, large even by European and Mesoamerican standards of the day.

Plans to restore Rome’s nearly 2,000-year-old Colosseum are causing rumblings among heritage workers and restorers, compounded by reports in December that small amounts of powdery rock had fallen off the monument. The current $33 million (25 million euro) restoration plans to restore the Flavian amphitheater, which once hosted spectacular shows and gruesome gladiatorial battles, are being sponsored by Diego della Valle, of luxury Italian brand Tod’s, in exchange for advertising rights.

A terracotta head excavated from a village in Nigeria is one of the best-preserved examples of its kind ever discovered. It is a product of the Nok culture, an Iron Age culture that flourished from about 1000 BC to AD 500.

They got married, had children, made beer. Although they lived 3,500 years ago in Nippur, Babylonia, in many ways they seem like us. Whether they were also slaves is a hotly contested question which Jonathan Tenney, assistant professor of ancient Near Eastern studies, addresses in the newly released “Life at the Bottom of Babylonian Society: Servile Laborers at Nippur in the 14th and 13th Centuries, B.C.”

The Global Heritage Network (GHN), the world’s first early warning and site monitoring system dedicated exclusively to endangered cultural heritage sites in developing countries, became operational in March of 2011. The Network features updated satellite imagery for 175 of the developing world’s most significant archaeological and cultural heritage sites, including profile information on at least 80 of those sites.

Mexican archaeologists have found some 3,000 cave paintings, some almost 2,000 years old, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.

A collection of rare ancient Greek coins which has been hidden away for two decades is expected to sell for millions of dollars when it goes up for auction in New York on Wednesday.

Now a leading scientific body, the Munich-based Max Planck Society, is teaming up with Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science to create a joint center devoted to studying archaeology and human evolution, to be based in both Rehovot, Israel, and Leipzig, Germany.

Spain has won a major victory in its long court battle with a Florida-based deep-sea salvage company over rights to an estimated $500 million in silver and gold coins, officials said Wednesday. The treasure was recovered in 2007 from a 19th century sunken ship off the Spanish coast.

 

Latest in a Playing with PELAGIOS series

Some of the PELAGIOS partners distribute their annotation RDF in a relatively small number of files. Others (like SPQR and ANS) have a very large number of files. This makes the technique I used earlier for adding triples to the database ungainly. Fortunately, 4store provides some command line methods for loading triples.

First, stop the 4store http server (why?):

$ killall 4s-httpd

Try to import all the RDF files.  Rats!

$ 4s-import -a pelagios *.rdf
-bash: /Applications/4store.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/4s-import: Argument list too long

Bash to the rescue (but note that doing one file at a time has a cost on the 4store side):

$ for f in *.rdf; do 4s-import -av pelagios $f; done
Reading <file:///Users/paregorios/Documents/files/P/pelagios-data/coins/0000.999.00000.rdf>
Pass 1, processed 10 triples (10)
Pass 2, processed 10 triples, 8912 triples/s
Updating index
Index update took 0.000890 seconds
Imported 10 triples, average 4266 triples/s
Reading <file:///Users/paregorios/Documents/files/P/pelagios-data/coins/0000.999.101.rdf>
Pass 1, processed 11 triples (11)
Pass 2, processed 11 triples, 9856 triples/s
Updating index
Index update took 0.000936 seconds
Imported 11 triples, average 4493 triples/s
Reading <file:///Users/paregorios/Documents/files/P/pelagios-data/coins/0000.999.10176.rdf>
Pass 1, processed 8 triples (8)
Pass 2, processed 8 triples, 6600 triples/s
Updating index
Index update took 0.000892 seconds
Imported 8 triples, average 3256 triples/s
... 

This took a while. There are 86,200 files in the ANS annotation batch.

Note the use of the -a option on 4s-import to ensure the triples are added to the current contents of the database, rather than replacing them! Note also the -v option, which is what gives you the report (otherwise, it's silent and that makes my ctrl-c finger twitchy).

Now, back to the SPARQL mines.

Former MITH Associate Director Doug Reside, now Digital Curator for the Performing Arts at the New York Public Library, was recently covered by Jennifer Schuessler in “Tale of the Floppy Disks: How Jonathan Larsen Created ‘Rent’” on The New York Times Arts Beat blog. The article highlights Doug’s research on musical theatre preservation, specifically the curation of the 189 floppy disks left behind by Jonathan Larsen, creator of Rent.

When he’s not rummaging through stacks of floppy disks, Doug is leading the encoding and documentation of Music Theatre Online, a digital archive of texts, images, video, and audio files relating to early musical theatre, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about Doug’s work, follow @dougreside on Twitter or read his posts on the NYPL blog.

Well done, Doug!

Particularly appropriate for a digital classicist or archaeologist with an interest in digital preservation and a high level of computer skills (from University of York jobs):

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) has a vacancy for a Digital Archivist for a fixed term of two years, commencing immediately.

The post will involve accessioning, mounting, and indexing of data collections, validation of data and conversion into preferred formats; curation and migration of digital collections; design and development of user interfaces; and discussion and data audits with data depositors.

You should have a first degree or postgraduate qualification in archaeology and/or computer science, and you should possess an exceptionally high level of ICT skills.

Among the American Numismatic Society's current projects is Online Coins of the Rome Empire (OCRE), which is a free, open-access catalog of Roman Imperial Coins.  Each coin type numbered in RIC will be represented with a nomisma URI.  A NUDS XML record will describe the typological attributes of the coin-type, as well as link to associated physical objects in various collections (Mantis, to start).  An early Numishare blog post describes this feature in more detail.  We will be presenting a prototype of OCRE at CAA in March (abstract).  The OCRE project not only provides stable URIs for coin-types, but also a user interface for searching, browsing, and mapping Roman Imperial Coins in the same manner of Mantis.

Since a coin-type record can point to related coins in other collections, Numishare can extract physical attributes of those coins, as well as findspots (if available).  The Solr index, for example, will ingest all of the weights of associated physical coins to ascertain the average weight and standard deviation for a coin-type.  The accuracy of these measurements improves proportionally to the number of coins from which the weights are derived.

Numishare currently supports comparing the average weight of a particular coin type to the average weights of associated facets, e.g., by the same authority, denomination, or material across the entire collection.  Eventually, it will support user-set queries: compare RIC Augustus 410 (a silver denarius) with other silver coins of Augustus and with silver coins of the late 3rd century AD.  These sorts of quantitative analyses will no doubt serve as a great resource to numismatists and ancient historians.

The general distribution of Numishare supports a quantitative analysis tab for coin-type records that have associated weight measurements.

So, I want to see how hard it is to query the RDF that PELAGIOS partners are putting together. The first experiment is documented below.

Step 1: Set up a Triplestore (something to load the RDF into and support queries)

Context: I'm a triplestore n00b. 

I found Jeni Tennison's Getting Started with RDF and SPARQL Using 4store and RDF.rb and, though I had no interest in messing around with Ruby as part of this exercise, the recommendation of 4store as a triplestore sounded good, so I went hunting for a Mac binary and downloaded it.

Step 2: Grab RDF describing content in Nomisma.org

Context: I'm a point-and-click expert.

I downloaded the PELAGIOS-conformant RDF data published by Nomisma.org at http://nomisma.org/nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf.

Background: "Nomisma.org is a collaborative effort to provide stable digital representations of numismatic concepts and entities, for example the generic idea of a coin hoard or an actual hoard as documented in the print publication An Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards (IGCH)."

Step 3: Fire up 4store and load in the nomisma.org 

Context: I'm a 4store n00b, but I can cut and paste, read and reason, and experiment.

Double-clicked the 4store icon in my Applications folder. It opened a terminal window.

To create and start up an empty database for my triples, I followed the 4store instructions and Tennison's post (mutatis mutandis) and so typed the following in the terminal window ("pelagios" is the name I gave to my database; you could call yours "ray" or "jay" if you like):

$ 4s-backend-setup pelagios
$ 4s-backend pelagios

Then I started up 4store's SPARQL http server and aimed it at the still-empty "pelagios" database so I could load my data and try my hand at some queries:

$ 4s-httpd pelagios

Loading the nomisma data was then as simple as moving to the directory where I'd saved the RDF file and typing:

$ curl -T nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf 'http://localhost:8080/data/http://nomisma.org/nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf/'

Note how the URI base for nomisma items is appended to the URL string passed via curl. This is how you specify the "model URI" for the graph of triples that gets created from the RDF.

Step 4: Try to construct a query and dig out some data.

Context: I'm a SPARQL n00b, but I'd done some SQL back in the day and XML and namespaces are pretty much burned into my soul at this point. 

Following Tennison's example, I pointed my browser at http://localhost:8080/test/. I got 4store's SPARQL test query interface. I googled around looking grumpily at different SPARQL "how-tos" and "getting starteds" and trying stuff and pondering repeated failure until this worked:

PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX oac: <http://www.openannotation.org/ns/>

SELECT ?x
WHERE {
 ?x oac:hasBody <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/462086> .
} 

That's "find the ID of every OAC Annotation in the triplestore that's linked to Pleiades Place 462086" (i.e., Akragas/Agrigentum, modern Agrigento in Sicily). It's a list like this:

• http://nomisma.org/nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf#igch1910-agrigentum-5
• http://nomisma.org/nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf#igch2089-agrigentum-24
• http://nomisma.org/nomisma.org.pelagios.rdf#igch2101-agrigentum-32
• ...

51 IDs in all.

But what I really want is a list of the IDs of the nomisma entities themselves so I can go look up the details and learn things. Back to the SPARQL mines until I produced this:

PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
PREFIX oac: <http://www.openannotation.org/ns/>

SELECT ?nomismaid
WHERE {
 ?x oac:hasBody <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/462086> .
 ?x oac:hasTarget ?nomismaid .
} 

Now I have a list of 51 nomisma IDs: one for the mint and 50 coin hoards that illustrate the economic network in which the ancient city participated (e.g., http://nomisma.org/id/igch2081).

Cost: about 2 hours of time, 1 cup of coffee, and three favors from Sebastian Heath on IRC.

Up next: Arachne, the object database of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.

Querying Pleiades annotations out of Arachne RDF was as simple as loading the Arachne Objects by Places RDF file into 4store the same way I did nomisma and running the same SPARQL query.  Cost: 5 minutes. Now I know about 29 objects in the Arachne database that they think are related to Akragas/Agrigentum. For example:

• 41149: Sarkophag mit dem Hippolytosmythos (Agrigent, S. Nicola): 
  http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/entity/1098273 == http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/41149
• 75: Statue des Apollon (Agrigent, Museo Civico): http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/entity/1060434 == http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/75
• 75000: Atlant des Olympieions von Agrigent (Akragas, Agrigentum, Agrigento): http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/entity/1111253 == http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/75000

Over the past few months I took up the Paleo diet. Since then, a lot of people have asked me about it. Paleo isn't so much a diet as a lifestyle change that eliminates glutens, refined sugars, among other things. Paleo isn't all that new, popularized in the 1970s but stretches back further, and differs in some ways from other low carb and slow carb diets.

Paleo is short for "paleolithic" and refers to the Paleolithic Era of human existence, a period stretching roughly from Homo sapiens to the invention of agriculture. The science behind Paleo argues that our bodies have not evolved to process the diets that dominate our lives today, including grains (wheat, rice, barley), legumes (beans, peanuts), and dairy. Our foods have changed a lot over the last 10-15,000 years -- but genetically, we're not much different from the human species that lived 100,000 years ago. We haven't had the time to adapt.

I haven't been perfect in following it and really fell off the wagon over the holidays, but I've nearly gotten back on track. I immediately noticed changes when I started the lifestyle -- more energy, felt like I was thinking more clearly, sleeping better. Best of all, I lost a stunning amount of weight simply by changing the way I ate. Many people who start the lifestyle note similar effects, including numerous other health benefits.

So, here's a few of the sources I read when I got started down the path.

Books

• Robb Wolf, The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

General

• Robb Wolf's Paleo FAQ
• Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint
• Reddit's Paleo FAQ and /r/paleo
• Paleo Hacks

Blogs

• Every Day Paleo
• Nom Nom Paleo
• Paleo Plan
• Paleo on a Budget

Liquid error: No such file or directory - /Users/hepplerj/projects/jekyll-blog/_includes

Over the past few months I took up the Paleo diet. Since then, a lot of people have asked me about it. Paleo isn't so much a diet as a lifestyle change that eliminates glutens, refined sugars, among other things. Paleo isn't all that new, popularized in the 1970s but stretches back further, and differs in some ways from other low carb and slow carb diets.

Paleo is short for "paleolithic" and refers to the Paleolithic Era of human existence, a period stretching roughly from Homo sapiens to the invention of agriculture. The science behind Paleo argues that our bodies have not evolved to process the diets that dominate our lives today, including grains (wheat, rice, barley), legumes (beans, peanuts), and dairy. Our foods have changed a lot over the last 10-15,000 years -- but genetically, we're not much different from the human species that lived 100,000 years ago. We haven't had the time to adapt.

I haven't been perfect in following it and really fell off the wagon over the holidays, but I've nearly gotten back on track. I immediately noticed changes when I started the lifestyle -- more energy, felt like I was thinking more clearly, sleeping better. Best of all, I lost a stunning amount of weight simply by changing the way I ate. Many people who start the lifestyle note similar effects, including numerous other health benefits.

So, here's a few of the sources I read when I got started down the path.

Books

• Robb Wolf, The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet

General

• Robb Wolf's Paleo FAQ
• Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint
• Reddit's Paleo FAQ and /r/paleo
• Paleo Hacks

Blogs

• Every Day Paleo
• Nom Nom Paleo
• Paleo Plan
• Paleo on a Budget

Liquid error: No such file or directory - /Users/hepplerj/projects/jekyll-blog/_includes

A. Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte

Courtesy of Alin Suciu

• Angelicus Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte Bd. I: Textpublikation (Brussels: Edition de la Fondation égyptologique reine Elisabeth, 1930) download
• Angelicus Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte Bd. II: Übersetzungen und Anmerkungen (Brussels: Edition de la Fondation égyptologique reine Elisabeth, 1931) download
• Angelicus Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte Bd. III: Einleitung in koptische Zaubertexte (Brussels: Edition de la Fondation égyptologique reine Elisabeth, 1930) download

“Film screening” by atmtx, on Flickr

Now that this year’s Academy Awards nominations have been announced, ‘tis the “season” for revisiting some of the best movies of the past year.  But in addition to the creating and enjoying of the films themselves, there is another issue which those in the film industry, along with the Library’s digital preservation partners, are researching and working on behind the scenes – preservation of these digital films.

Several years ago, a report called “The Digital Dilemma” was published by NDIIPP partner, and Digital Preservation Pioneer, AMPAS. This report focused on digital preservation issues for major Hollywood studio films, as well as for other larger digital film projects produced by commercial, scientific and government organizations.

In January of this year, the same organization published a follow up report, “The Digital Dilemma 2: Perspectives from Independent Filmmakers, Documentarians and Nonprofit Audiovisual Archives” (the pdf available on this page.)

As stated on the report page:

The Digital Dilemma 2 focuses on the more acute challenges faced by independent filmmakers, documentarians and nonprofit audiovisual archives.  While 75 percent of theatrically released motion pictures are independently produced, these communities typically lack the resources, personnel and funding to address sustainability issues that are available to major Hollywood studios and other large, deep-pocketed enterprises.  Independent filmmakers create – and nonprofit film archives collect and store – a sizeable part of moving image and sound heritage.

This latest report includes a brief history of this industry, and details the results of interviews with independent filmmakers and documentarians covering their use and management of digital materials, and other unique challenges faced by this community.  There is also a section focused on marketing and distribution, as well as on nonprofit audiovisual archives (the destination for many of these films) discussing their methods of digital preservation and access, file formats, storage systems, and basic preservation practices.  The archives section also includes some recommendations from archivists that would help advance their efforts, such as development of software tools specifically for audiovisual archives.

Though the report’s focus is on long term preservation, according to the results of the study’s surveys, most of the filmmakers had more immediate concerns.  That is, getting their films viewed by an audience, and moving to the next project.  And it’s no wonder – digital preservation is a particular challenge here, not only due to lack of resources, but to the many technical issues involved (such as the very large file sizes for digital films, for example). The report concludes with some proposals to help filmmakers and archives advance their digital preservation strategy.

As always with a major report such as this, especially as AMPAS is one of our digital preservation partners, we spread the word through social media channels (facebook, and twitter “@ndiipp”).  And word is indeed spreading  – here are a few recent articles that do a good job of putting this issue in context:

• T. Reed writes in “Film Courage”:  Time vs. Technology and the Frailty of Digital Media,
• An article by David S. Cohen in “Variety”s Technology News,
• And this from “The Verge”, by Jesse Hicks, which generated a good bit of discussion in the comments section.

Both Digital Dilemma reports, and all the discussion they inspire, further reinforce the basic idea that any kind of digital media is indeed fragile, and that while access and distribution of materials is made easier, long-term stability – for film as well as all other digital items – is in a race against time.

 

[First posted in AWOL 5 October 2010. Updated 2 February 2012]

The Alexandria Center for Hellenistic Studies

The Alexandria Center for Hellenistic Studies, was established as a joint collaboration between the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Onassis Foundation, the Vardinoyannis Foundation and the University of Alexandria. Graduates of departments of Classics or Archeology may apply for the Masters directly. Non-specialized students will take a one year qualifying Diploma, which qualifies candidates to apply for a Masters degree.

• Digital Library

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 1-2-3-4-5 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 9-10-11 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 12-13-14 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 15-16-17 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 18-19-20 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 21-22-23 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 46 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 6 Publication Date: 1904 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 40 Publication Date: 1953 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 41 Publication Date: 1956 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now

Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 42 Publication Date: 1967 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 43 Publication Date: 1975 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 44 Publication Date: 1991 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 45 Publication Date: 1993 Language: English Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin Author(s): Subject(s): Archéologie Volume: 47 Publication Date: 2003 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 24 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 27 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 30 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 31 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 32-33 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 34-35 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 36 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 37 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 38 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: 39 Publication Date: 1926-1951 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Monuments de l'Egypte gréco-romaine Author(s): Subject(s): Egypt Antiquities - Classical antiquities - Sculpture, Greco Roman Egypt - Sculpture Volume: vol. 2 pt. 2 Publication Date: 1934 Language: Italian Category: Sculpture to ca. 500 Read now Rapport sur la marche du service du musée pendant l'exercice 1929-1921 Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Art - Greco-Roman Volume: Publication Date: 1923 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Rapport sur la marche du service du musée en 1913 Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Art - Greco-Roman Volume: Publication Date: 1914 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: no. 8 1905 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Bulletin de la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie Author(s): Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - Archaeology Volume: no. 7 1905 Publication Date: 1898-1925 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Read now Annuario del Museo Greco-Romano Author(s): Adriani, Achille. Subject(s): Matḥaf al-Yūnānī al-Rūmānī (Alexandria, Egypt) Volume: vol. 1 Publication Date: 1934 Language: Italian Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Annuaire du Musée Greco-Romain (1933-34 - 1934-35) : La Nécropole de Moustafa Pacha Author(s): Adriani, Achille. Subject(s): Art, Greco-Roman Volume: Publication Date: 1933 Language: French Category: Read now Annuaire du Musée gréco-romain Author(s): Adriani, Achille. Subject(s): Greco-Roman Volume: vol. 2 Publication Date: 1940-1952 Language: Arabic Category: Ancient world Read now Annuaire du Musée gréco-romain Author(s): Adriani, Achille. Subject(s): Greco-Roman Volume: vol. 3 Publication Date: 1940-1952 Language: Arabic Category: Ancient world Read now La côte Alexandrine dans l'antiquité Author(s): Botti, Giuseppe Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities Volume: vol. 1 Publication Date: 1897 Language: French Category: Ancient world Read now Plan de la ville d'Alexandrie à l'époque ptolémaique Monuments et localités de l'ancienne Alexandrie; Mémoire présenté à la société archéologique Author(s): Botti, Giuseppe Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Descriptions et voyages Volume: Publication Date: 1898 Language: French Category: Africa Read now L'acropole d'Alexandrie et le sérapeum d'apres Aphtonius et les fouilles : mémoire présenté à la Société archéologique d'Alexandrie à la séance du 17 août 1895 Author(s): Botti, Giuseppe Subject(s): Aphthonius - 4th cent - Greece - Acropolis (Athens) - Serapeum Volume: Publication Date: 1895 Language: French Category: General history of Africa Egypt & Sudan Read now Fouilles à la colonne Théodosienne (1896) : Mémoire présenté à la Société archéologique Author(s): Botti, Giuseppe Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities Volume: Publication Date: 1897 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Catalogue des monuments exposés au Musée gréco-romain d'Alexandrie Author(s): Botti, Giuseppe Subject(s): Art - Greek - Roman - Classical antiquities - Catalogs Antiquités gréco-romaines Volume: Publication Date: 1900 Language: French Category: Galleries, museums, private collections Read now Egitto greco e romano Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Egypt - Antiquities - History - Greco-Roman period, 332 B.C.-640 A.D. Volume: Publication Date: 1957 Language: Italian Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Iscrizioni greche e latine Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Inscriptions, Latin - Inscriptions Egypt Alexandria Catalogs - Inscriptions, Greek Volume: Publication Date: 1911 Language: Italian Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now La necropoli di Sciatbi Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Egyptian Art - Glassware - Ancient Egypt - Roman Egypt - Tombs - Antiquities Volume: vol. 2 Publication Date: 1912 Language: Italian Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Alexandrea ad Aegyptum : a guide to the ancient and modern town, and to its Graeco-Roman museum Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) - Antiquities - History - Matḥaf al-Yūnānī al-Rūmānī - Oudheden - Roman Antiquities - Guid Volume: Publication Date: 1922 Language: English Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Le musée Gréco-Romain, 1925-1931 Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Matḥaf al-Yūnānī al-Rūmānī (Alexandria, Egypt) Volume: Publication Date: 1925 Language: French Category: Read now Le musée Gréco-Romain, 1931-1932 Author(s): Breccia, Evaristo Subject(s): Matḥaf al-Yūnānī al-Rūmānī (Alexandria, Egypt) Volume: Publication Date: 1931 Language: French Category: Read now Mémoire sur l'antique Alexandrie : ses faubourges et environs découverts par les fouilles, sondages, nivellements et autres recherches, faits d'aprés les ordres de son Altesse, Ismaïl Pacha, vice roi d'Egypte Author(s): Falakī, Maḥmūd Bāshā Subject(s): Egypte - Antiquités - Alexandrie (Egypte) Volume: Publication Date: 1872 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now L'architecture et la décoration dans l'ancienne Egypte Author(s): Jéquier, Gustave - Mestral Combremont, Victor de Subject(s): Egypte - Antiquités - Temples - Architecture Volume: vol. 3 Publication Date: 1920-1924 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now L'architecture et la décoration dans l'ancienne Egypte Author(s): Jéquier, Gustave - Mestral Combremont, Victor de Subject(s): Egypte - Antiquités - Temples - Architecture Volume: vol. 1 Publication Date: 1920-1924 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now L'architecture et la décoration dans l'ancienne Egypte Author(s): Jéquier, Gustave - Mestral Combremont, Victor de Subject(s): Egypte - Antiquités - Temples - Architecture Volume: vol. 2 Publication Date: 1920-1924 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now City of Alexandria town planning scheme : (projet d'aménagement, d'embellissement et d'extension de la ville d'Alexandrie) Author(s): McLean, William Hannah Subject(s): Urbanisme Égypte Alexandrie Volume: Publication Date: 1921 Language: French Category: Area planning (Civic art) Read now L'ancienne Alexandrie : étude archéologique et topographique Author(s): Neroutsos, Tassos Demetrios Subject(s): Alexandria (Egypt) Volume: Publication Date: 1888 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Les Grecs en Égypte d'après les archives de Zénon Author(s): Préaux, Claire - Zēnōn Subject(s): Grecs - Égypte - Antiquité - Civilisation Volume: Publication Date: 1947 Language: French Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now Pharos, antike, Islam und Occident : ein beitrag zur parchitekturgeschichte Author(s): Thiersch, Hermann Subject(s): Lighthouses - Egypt - Alexandria Volume: Publication Date: 1909 Language: German Category: Architecture to ca. 300 Read now رسالة عن الاسكندرية القديمة و ضواحيها و الجهات القريبة منها التى اكتشفت بالحفريات و اعمال سبر الغور و المسح و طرق البحث الاخرى Author(s): حسين، محمد عواد - الفلكى، محمود احمد حمدى Subject(s): الإسكندرية (مصر) - آثار- الآثار اليونانية - الآثار الرومانية - احياء و ضواحى - خرائط Volume: Publication Date: 1966 Language: Arabic Category: History of ancient world Egypt Read now

Just back from a flying visit to Groningen, where I presented at a Lustrum which celebrated 25 years of Humanities Computing - or "Alfa-Informatica" - there. I was invited to present about Digital Humanities, and my talk can be summed up in one sentence:

Why dont Digital Humanities folk talk to Computational Linguistics folk, and vice versa?

It was a lovely event - fun, and informative. I particularly enjoyed meeting Eduard Hovy, and hearing his talk about issues in training question and answer systems, and the way they parse questions we set them. I met some good people, and heard some interesting things.

Groningen is a lovely University town, very vibrant. I managed to include a couple of hours in my schedule to have a bit of a wander, which is becoming more important to me as I travel away from home. If you dont manage to see the place at all, it just becomes a veeeeeery long commute to give a half an hour, sometimes hour long, lecture. In my recent trip to Portugal, I managed an hour to go and see the Frida Kahlo exhibition, in Groningen I had an hour to trawl round fleamarkets, finding some cool dutch tat. I have upcoming trips, in the next month, to Edinburgh, Paris and Munich. Its all good - I enjoy the travel, tend to get lots done when I am away from home, get one or two good night's sleep, meet new people - and if I'm lucky, get a wander round a city, and enjoy the chance to explore.

Onassis Foundation USA Publications

Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd – 7th Century AD

"Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd – 7th Century AD." contains an introductory essay by Peter Brown, and essays by Fabrizio Bisconti, Kimberly Bowes, Averil Cameron, Slobodan Ćurčić, Jaś Elsner, Henry Maguire, Katherine Marsengill, Aristotelis Mentzos, Helen Saradi-Mendelovici, and Ioannis Touratsoglou.


New! Read the Transition to Christianity Catalogue online.
Click here

You can now watch the taped sessions online.

One of the key arguments against assigning term papers to undergraduate students is that they have a very limited audience. This argument assumes, of course, that most post-collegiate writing has a significant audience, but anyone with time in academia (or business) knows that many of the things that we write are never read at all.

For example, each year, I write a reflective, self-evaluation of my teaching for my annual report. I assume that no one reads it.

I include it here so that at least a few people will see it:

Teaching Self Evaluation

Teaching was my top priority in Spring 2011 and Fall 2011. Over these two semesters, I taught 8 classes, co-advised on one completed M.A. thesis and advised another. The heavier teaching load allowed me to focus more time on teaching by forcing me to spend less time on research and service. In particular, this time with a heavier teaching load made me become more efficient in my course preparation and grading. Additional courses also gave me a chance to experiment with new forms of teaching including a language class and two digital history practica which could enter my rotation on a more regular basis at some point in the future.

Both the language class and practica involved one-on-one work with students as they worked to develop the skills necessary to negotiate unfamiliar texts. Theodore Mommsen famously advised historians to study languages and law. Perhaps in our increasingly digital age, historians should be encouraged to understand digital tools and (of course) languages. I discovered that I needed to develop a more robust skill set both in terms of pedagogy and in terms of technical knowledge to coax even senior graduate students through the complex world of digital content development.  My own trial and error method for learning software or web-based applications did not transfer successfully to students far more tentative in their approach to technology. Moreover, my own high-flexible approach to research projects, which tends to emphasize highly punctuated, but continual development through breaking large projects into many small tasks, found very little purchase among the students. As a result, both digital history practica did not accomplish successfully their larger goals. Future digital history courses will need to be more highly structured and more directed toward getting the students broadly familiar with digital tools and the range of digital technologies at play in both popular culture and in historical research.  

Conversely, I was far more successful encouraging Latin students to take a more trial and error approach to translating in Latin 202. I found that teaching Latin gave me invaluable experience in a classroom environment where a range of abilities and aptitudes manifest. Some students required hands on attention to internalize basic instructions, others only learn by doing, and others still can take abstract concepts and apply them in the real world with a minimum of guidance. While I knew this in a conceptual way, I am not sure whether I had a chance to see it play out in as dynamic way as I did in teaching a language. 

In the Spring of 2012, I plan to bring some of the lessons that I have learned teaching Latin and digital history to play in my History 240: The Historians Craft course. While the course has largely remained unchanged since I made a major revision in 2010, I will add conferences to my course this semester. The conference will involve a one-on-one meeting with each student to discuss the research proposal that they develop over the second half of the class. The idea is that some students will struggle to grasp the techniques and principles of research that I introduce over the course of the semester without some required face-to-face time. While I will not require it in the Spring, I will make bonus points available and strongly recommend it in class. If it is successful, I will make conferences a regular part of the course in the Fall 2012. 

I made a significant change to my History 502: Graduate Historiography course in the Spring of 2011. I eliminated two of the traditional writing assignments – a comparative, critical book review and a longer historiographic essay. The addition of the new History 501: Research Methods course, which was designed to reinforce many of the basic graduate research and writing skills, made these rather routine papers less necessary in History 502. In their place, I moved to a weekly journal which then became the basis for a longer, reflective research paper. This paper asks the students to use their weekly reflections as a source for an reflexive study of their own engagement with various modes of historical thinking. In other words, I am asking the students to recreate a though experiment postulated by R.G. Collingwood who argued that when he re-read his own writing he was rethinking his past thoughts and thus producing history. The reflexive assignment in History 502 not only reinforces the ideas introduced by Collingwood on the writing of history, but also asks the students to reflect on their own learning experience. To use the lingo of the day, this is a form of “closing the loop”.   

My History 101: Western Civilization course has not seen many changes over the course of the 2011 academic year. Most of the changes have been minor tweaks to the delivery and continued work to clarify the structure of the course. While this class has not produced a systematic and reliable body of student evaluations, the outcomes of graded assessments continue to improve suggesting that minor adjustments to how I communicate my expectations and requirements.  I am working now with the Office of Disability Services to prepare an edited transcript of each of my podcast lecture. These will form a textbook for the class. From the Fall of 2010 on, I committed to teaching more as an important step to teaching better. Experience teaching Latin and starting the development of a digital history course gave me experiences that were transferable to my History 240 course which is one of the anchors in my rotation. Over the past 5 years, I have gradually made my History 502 more experimental and driven by reflexive methods that involve a meta-cognitive closing of the loop as an important part of the graded assessment. Finally, my online 101 class has continued to evolve based on feedback provided by a careful reading of graded assessment. 

Twitter has been an invaluable tool for me as a new grad student and growing scholar. Communicating and building connections over Twitter has helped form relationships with my colleagues and professors in my program and across the university. Using Twitter has also afforded me access to the growing domain of digital humanities through the tweets of scholarly publications, organizations, thought leaders, and my own colleagues – in fact, it was through a tweet that I learned of the Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative at MSU.

Though I have been a Twitter user for years, I first experienced its utility in a scholarly context while attending my first major academic conference. I had never been to a major academic conference before and I thought that the conference backchannel might be a good way to get acclimated to the new practices and setting. I was right: using the Twitter hashtag for the conference, I scouted lunch spots, found electrical outlets in the conference center, and made plans easily with colleagues from home. More recently, while attending a comparatively smaller, DH-centric conference, I found Twitter useful for making connections with new people, asking questions and discussing conference talks as they were happening, and learning about the talks that I wasn’t able to attend due to concurrent scheduling. In both cases, the conference backchannels gave me access to information that I likely would not have had as a newcomer to not only the conferences, but academia in general.

Based on my own experience, it is evident that Twitter can be a powerful tool for folks attending academic conferences, both newcomers and seasoned vets. That said, it is my goal this semester to build a tool which enhances the utility of Twitter in the context of scholarly conferences.

Introducing Corridor
I will build a web application called Corridor. It is a web application that will be used to collect and collate metadata for Twitter hashtags which are used during academic conferences. Though Twitter hashtags mediate and aggregate conference tweets among those “in-the-know”, they can be inaccessible to an outsider, even if the conversation is one that interests them, because conference hashtags often look like complete nonsense (e.g. #cccc11, #cw2012, #ir11, #HASTAC2011). The primary feature of the tool, then, will be to contextualize conference hashtags, displaying user-curated metadata about specific conferences; this will include the title of the conference, location, dates and more information. I hope that Corridor will help illuminate the exciting backchannel discourse of scholarly conferences for newcomers to online academia, but newcomers to academia in general.

Corridor will also be able to track relations or connections between other hashtags used at the conference as a means of resolving redundant hashtags. For instance, the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta last spring had several hashtags: #cccc2011, #cccc11, and #cccc are just a few of the primary tags. I used Tweetdeck to follow multiple conference hashtags, but it was impossible for me to view all tags in one stream. This resulted in silos of conference discourse; the effect of redundant, non-mainstream hashtags for conference attendees who are trying to engage via Twitter is like being marooned on an island.

Other primary features Corridor will includes are Twitter authentication for user accounts and social or crowd-sourced moderation as a means to keep the hashtag ecosystem in order. Future iterations include tweet sorting tools; metrics for measuring the velocity of individual tweets or Twitter users; conference tag clouds based on keywords from tweets; and more.

Outlook and Challenges
Bootstrap, a framework made by Twitter, seems like a viable option for constructing the design of Corridor. With a strong background in HTML and CSS and nearly a decade of learning by unmaking and breaking things, I’m confident about the prospect of working with Bootstrap. Digging into the Twitter API and programming Corridor will undoubtedly pose a significant challenge for me, but it’s one that I look forward to.

Programming literacy is an essential skill for humanist scholars. The web is a programmed tool that permeates our social lives, our work, and our communication practices. By precluding ourselves the means to understand how the web is built and how it functions on a technical level, we do ourselves a great disservice. However, I hope that after I’ve grown some programming chops of my own from my work on Corridor this semester that I will be prepared to produce cutting edge scholarly work that is valued in both academic and non-academic communities.

Photo by Aaron Hockley; used with permission CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Traditionally when bioarchaeologists are discussing trends in disease or burial patterns, while it may be based on individuals, it is spoken about at the population level. We assess the way that culture and biology shape populations. Human remains are lumped … Continue reading →

Columbia University Libraries cuneiform collection in CDLI

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI <http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/>), in partnership with the Rare Book andManuscript Library of the Columbia University Libraries in New York(CUL, <http://library.columbia.edu/indiv/rbml.html>), is pleased toannounce the addition of new digital content to its web offerings.

The collection of 629 cuneiform texts of the Columbia UniversityLibraries is one of the oldest in North America and is made up of anunusual mixture of genres of materials ranging in date from theProto-Elamite period to Hellenistic times. The Ur III texts in thecollections have been the subject of several scholarly publicationsdating from as early as 1896 (William R. Arnold, Ancient-BabylonianTemple Records in the Columbia University Library), and were mostrecently gathered together in a comprehensive 2010 monograph by StevenGarfinkle, Herbert Sauren, and Marc Van De Mieroop (=CUSAS 16). Butbeyond the tablets from the Ur III period, the CUL collection remainsrelatively unstudied.

Following the 2010 publication, CDLI staff contacted Jane Siegel, RareBook Librarian of the CUL, and with her kind assistance and that ofthe CU library staff, UCLA graduate student Jared Wolfe was, in Juneof last year, able to flatbed scan all then accessible artifacts. Theraw images of that campaign were subsequently processed to CDLIfatcrosses by UCLA staff, and have been posted to web, accessible boththrough CDLI's search page<http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/cdlisearch/search/indexi.php> as well asthrough a special website dedicated to the collection at<http://cdli.ucla.edu/collections/columbia/columbia.html>, with abrief introduction written by M. Van De Mieroop at<http://cdli.ucla.edu/collections/columbi/columbia_intro.html>. Wewelcomecorrections and additions to our text identifications, and areparticularly desirous to learn of specialist interest in the scholarlyedition of texts listed as unpublished. The now available image
documentation, itself reduced for web dissemination from archival600ppi tif to 300ppi jpg files, is envisioned as a facilitator in thepreparation of annotated manuscripts.

The imaging and image processing in this Columbia-CDLI collaborationwere made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,and are part of the on-going mission of CDLI to ensure the long-termdigital preservation of ancient inscriptions on cuneiform tablets,and, in furtherance of cuneiform research, to provide persistent, freeglobal access to all available text artifact data.

For the CDLI and the CUL:
Jane Siegel, Rare Book Librarian, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University
Marc Van De Mieroop, Professor of Ancient History, Columbia University
Robert K. Englund, Director, CDLI

The Kittredge Collection relaunched Sunday evening.  The Kittredge Numismatic Foundation was an early sponsor of Numishare directly after it had been released to the community as an open-source project and a proponent of many of its early features, including the XForms-based backend.  The data has been migrated to NUDS from Encoded Archival Description (for coins) and disseminated with the latest version of Numishare.  The data is still a work in progress; mints point to geonames.org URIs, while materials and object types point to nomisma.org URIs, but much work is left to be done to point other numismatic concepts to unique identifiers.

The Kittredge Collection contains all of the latest mapping and linked open data features detailed in this blog, as well some new additions--particularly the expandable date facet on the browse page that allows the user to select coins by century and decade (example: http://kittredgecollection.org/results?q=%28decade_num%3A1650+OR+decade_num%3A1670+OR+decade_num%3A1690%29).  This feature was ported over from EADitor.

I’m getting ready to go on a trip to Israel with a local church group, as part of my cunning plan to make more links with the local Christian community.  It seemed to me, rightly or wrongly, that 6 days in the company of people from my area, looking at things in which we are both interested, should be productive of friendships.

The tour seems to be staggeringly expensive, yet the actual quality of hotels etc is lower than I have stayed in for many years.  These pilgrimage tours are a rum lot!  But I expect I can endure for a few days, and I hope to see Galilee. 

Likewise, for unexplained reasons, we see to have an overnight flight.  Never been on one of those.

Slightly worryingly, the travel pack includes a small hymnbook.  I wonder under what circumstances that gets used!  Some Christian groups can do weird things, like running people around all day and then expecting them to attend a bible study in the evenings when everyone is tired.

Predicted temperatures are not great.  The last time I was in Jerusalem was 20 years ago (and don’t those numbers sneak up on you?!), and it was perishingly cold.  The other thing I remember from that tour is the pickpockets outside the church of the holy tomb.  Must make sure that I don’t give them any business!

The task of earning a living will return soon enough.  In the mean time, I am trying to make hay.

Announced today:

OIMP 34.

Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East

Purchase Book Download PDF Terms of Use

This fully illustrated catalog of essays, descriptions, and commentary accompanies the Oriental Institute special exhibit Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East (on exhibit February 7 through September 2, 2012). Picturing the Past presents paintings, architectural reconstructions, facsimiles, models, photographs, and computer-aided reconstructions that show how the architecture, sites, and artifacts of the ancient Middle East have been documented. It also examines how the publication of those images have shaped our perception of the ancient world, and how some of the more "imaginary" reconstructions have obscured our real understanding of the past. The exhibit and catalog also show how features of the ancient Middle East have been presented in different ways for different audiences, in some cases transforming a highly academic image into a widely recognized icon of the past.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Map of the Middle East

1. Introduction. Jack Green
2. The Oriental Institute and Early Documentation in the Nile Valley. Emily Teeter
3. The Epigraphic Survey and the “Chicago Method.” W. Raymond Johnson
4. The Sakkarah Expedition. Ann Macy Roth
5. Photography and Documentation of the Middle East. Emily Teeter
6. The Oriental Institute Photographic Archives. John A. Larson
7. Aerial Photographs and Satellite Images. Scott Branting, Elise MacArthur, and Susan Penacho
8. Facsimiles of Ancient Egyptian Paintings: The Work of Nina de Garis Davies, Amice Calverley, and Myrtle Broome. Nigel Strudwick
9. Preserving the Past in Plaster. William H. Peck
10. Drawing Reconstruction Images of Ancient Sites. Jean-Claude Golvin
11. The Persepolis Paintings of Joseph Lindon Smith. Dennis O’Connor
12. Three-Dimensional Digital Forensic Facial Reconstruction: The Case of Mummy Meresamun. Joshua Harker
13. A Brief History of Virtual Heritage. Donald H. Sanders

Catalog
Concordance of Museum Registration Numbers
Checklist of the Exhibit
Bibliography

---

• Picturing the Past: Imaging and Imagining the Ancient Middle East
• Edited by Jack Green, Emily Teeter, and John A. Larson
• Oriental Institute Museum Publications 34
• Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2012
• ISBN-10: 1-885923-89-9
• ISBN-13: 978-1-885923-89-9
• Pp. 184; 168 illustrations
• $29.95

For an up to date list of all Oriental Institute publications available online see:

The Oriental Institute Open Access Publications

Thamyris, nova series: Revista de Didáctica de Cultura Clásica, Griego y Latín 
ISSN: 1137-5205

Delegación de Málaga de la SEEC en colaboración con los Deptos. de Filología Griega y Latina de la Universidad de Málaga

Número 1 (2010)

Nota de la Dirección de la revista Thamyris para el primer número de la nova series	1-2
José Manuel Cervera Entrena, Mitología Clásica y teatro: una propuesta didáctica para 1º de la ESO, «MISS OLIMPO 2010»	3-22
Fernando Lillo Redonet, Ampliando el corpus didáctico: textos latinos para Navidades y Reyes en Bachillerato y primeros años de Universidad	23-41
Alejandro Valverde García, Un acercamiento a Sófocles a través del cine: La Antígona de Yorgos Tsavelas	43-47
Antonio Albuera Guirnaldos, Algunos aspectos de la vida cotidiana del mundo antiguo en la serie Roma	49-60
Santiago A. Cabello Berdún, En torno al vino y los phármaka en la Odisea: una visión interdisciplinar	61-84
Begoña Rodríguez Idígoras, Juro por Apolo	85-97

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Analecta Malacitana Electrónica (AnMal electrónica): Revista de Filología de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
ISSN: 1697-4239

La Revista Analecta Malacitana veía la luz en 1978, apoyada por las distintas secciones del ámbito de la Filología en la Universidad de Málaga. Su objetivo esencial era convertirse en cauce de difusión abierto y pluralista a labores filológicas de entidad científica. Con un marcado carácter de miscelánea filológica el proyecto tuvo como catalizador e impulsor al Dr. Olegario García de la Fuente, cumpliendo en una primera etapa con una idea de variedad equilibrada, de la que puede ser buena muestra el volumen XV de 1992, precisamente dedicado como homenaje a quien ha sido el primer Director de la Revista. En dicho volumen se reúnen ensayos teóricos de hondo calado (sobre el cuestionamiento del comentario de textos o la historia del concepto Siglo de Oro) con una extensa nómina de estudios monográficos: desde formulaciones lingüísticas en la legislación foral leonesa a la novelística de Martín Gaite, pasando por la novela sentimental, el diálogo renacentista o los trabajos sobre Federico García Lorca. 

		Número 29 diciembre 2010
Número 28 junio 2010	Número 27 diciembre 2009	Número 26 junio 2009
Número 25 diciembre 2008	Número 24 junio 2008	Número 23diciembre 2007
Número 22 junio 2007	Número 21febrero 2007	Número 20 diciembre 2006
Número 19 junio 2006	Número 18 diciembre 2005	Número 17 junio 2005
Número 16 diciembre 2004	Número 15 junio 2004	Número 14 diciembre 2003
Número 13 junio 2003	Número 12 diciembre 2002	Número 11 junio 2002
Número 10 diciembre 2001	Número 9 julio 2001	Número 8 febrero 2001
Número 7 septiembre 2000	Número 6 mayo 2000	Número 5 enero 2000
Número 4 septiembre 1999	Número 3 mayo 1999	Número 2 enero 1999
Número 1 septiembre 1998

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

Bulletin du Cercle lyonnais d’égyptologie Victor Loret

 

Le Bulletin du Cercle Lyonnais d'Égyptologie Victor Loret, est une revue fondée en 1987 par l'association éponyme pour fournir des informations sur l'activité égyptologique de la région et diffuser des savoirs. Elle a été arrêtée en 1996 après la parution de dix numéros annuels, les volumes 1-10. Elle est remplacée désormais par la revue Kyphi dont six numéros sont parus.

La diffusion du bulletin étant assez régionale, donc limitée, et certains numéros étant maintenant épuisés, la MOM et le CLEVL ont souhaité rendre accessible à une plus vaste communauté de chercheurs le contenu de cette revue par sa mise en ligne. 

Bulletin n° 1 - 1987 - 12 pages
- MONTANDON (Maurice), Lyon et l'Egypte antique - Le Cercle d'Egyptologie Victor Loret, p.2
- ANONYME (Anonyme), Lyon : plus de cent années d'enseignement universitaire, p.3-7
- ANONYME (Anonyme), Programme trimestriel : octobre - décembre 1987, p.8
- ANONYME (Anonyme), Programme de 1988, p.9
- ANONYME (Anonyme), L'égyptologie dans la région, p.10
- ANONYME (Anonyme), Quelques indications bibliographiques, p.11

Bulletin n° 2 - 1988 - 20 pages
- COUCHOUD (Sylvia), La bière en Egypte pharaonique, p.7-11
- GABOLDE (Marc), Notes sur un "Scarabée de coeur" conservé au Musée de Roanne, p.13-20

Bulletin n° 3 - 1989 - 24 pages
- GOYON (Jean-Claude), Un évènement méconnu : Victor Loret et la seconde cachette royale, p.5-12
- PECOIL (Jean-François), Dessiner une maison, p.13-19
- GRAINDORGE (Catherine) et PECOIL (Jean-François), Les Lyonnais en Egypte - Congrès du Caire 1988 , p.20-22

Bulletin n° 4 - 1990 - 80 pages
- GABOLDE (Marc), Une lettre inédite de Jean-François Champollion à la bibliothèque de l'Académie de Lyon, p.6-36
- MEEKS (Dimitri), Les oiseaux marqueurs du temps », p. 37-52., p.37-52
- COUCHOUD (Sylvia), Le début des connaissances mathématiques en Egypte au troisième millénaire, p.53-57
- CAZAUX (Jacques), Israël est né en Egypte, ou de Bethléem à Karnak, p.58-73

Bulletin n° 5 - 1991 - 100 pages
- CHAPPAZ (Jean-Luc), Petites notes sur Aïda ou l'égyptologie enchantée, p.4-24
- COUCHOUD (Sylvia), Rainer Maria Rilke à Karnak, p.25-32
- DREW BEAR (Marie), Hermoupolis-la-Grande : une métropole d'Egypte d'après les papyrus grecs, p.33-40
- GABOLDE (Marc) et GATIER (Pierre-Louis), Achôris en Forez : le sphinx de la Bâtie d'Urfé, p.41-61
- GOYON (Jean-Claude), "A l'ombre des Térébinthes ..." Victor LORET aux heures sombres de la seconde guerre mondiale, p.62-69
- LABIB-THIELLEMENT (Aïda), Quelques données sur le blé en Egypte ancienne, p.70-78
- GABOLDE (Marc), Compte rendu du colloque "After Tutankhamon" au château de Lord Carnarvon à Highclere 15-17 juin 1990, p.79-95

Bulletin n° 6 - 1992 - 142 pages
- GOYON (Jean-Claude), Hathor, l'ivraie et l'ivresse, p.7-16
- GABOLDE (Marc), Etude sur l'évolution des dénominations et de l'aspect des pylônes du temple d'Amon-Rê à Karnak, p.17-60
- ROBERT (Laurence), Notes sur un curieux relief du IIIème pylône du temple d'Amon-Rê à Karnak, p.61-78
- COUCHOUD (Sylvia), Quelques aspects de l'habillement en Egypte pharaonique, p.79-91
- BONNET (Charles), Mission archéologique de l'Université de Genève à Kerma; Rapport de la campagne 1991-1992, p.92-98
- FILAL (Abdellah), La région thébaine dans les relations des voyageurs anciens de 1600 à 1799 "Description de l'Egypte", p.99-102
- BOULET (Evelyne), A propos de "Ozymandias of Egypt" de Shelley, p.103-106
- GABOLDE (Marc), Compte rendu d'une mission dans le secteur de la Vallée des Trois Puits de la Vallée des Reines, p.109-117
- HEREIL (Catherine), Les oies de Sokaris, p.118
- ALY (Mohamed Ibrahim), A propos du prince Khâemouaset et de sa mère Isetneferet. Nouveaux documents provenant du Sérapéum, p.119-120
- SAMBIN (Chantal), Les dieux de Medamoud sous les premiers Ptolémées.Les portes du musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, p.121-124
- SIMON (Claire), Râpes, siphons ou philtres pour pailles : développement égyptien d'un art de boire, p.125

Bulletin n° 7 - 1993 - 88 pages
- AUFRERE (Sydney), Le cosmos, le minéral, le végétal et le divin, p.7-24
- COUCHOUD (Cécile), Pharmacopée excrémentielle dans les papyrus médicaux de l'époque pharaonique, p.25-38
- FITZENREITER (Martin), L'égyptomanie dans la marche de Brandebourg, Rheinsberg, Potsdam et Berlin, p.39-62
- LEBLANC (Christian), Le temple de millions d'années de Ramsès II à Thèbes. Histoire et sauvegarde du Ramesseum, p.63-76

Bulletin n° 8 - 1994 - 72 pages
- BERGER (Eric), Faire revivre l'Egypte ... ou l'égyptomanie chez le romancier français, classique ou populaire, p.7-24
- GUILHOU (Nadine), Rituel funéraire au Moyen Empire : l'Ouryt et la lutte contre les insectes nécrophages, p.25-34
- NICOLOTTI (Muriel) et POSTEL (Lilian), L'animal et le monde de l'au-delà : les momies du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Lyon, p.35-48
- VERNUS (Pascal), Les étrangers dans la civilisation pharaonique, p.49-68

Bulletin n° 9 - 1995 - 74 pages
- CZERNY (Ernst), A propos du sphinx : quelques remarques sur un être bien connu, p.7-24
- SIMON-BOIDOT (Claire), Accessoires de porteurs d'eau, p.25-32
- CHRISTOPHE (Louis-A), Une figurine funéraire inédite de Bakenkhonsou, premier prophète d'Amon, p.33-44
- VANDERSLEYEN (Claude), La gloire de Ransès III, p.45-51
- VERCOUTTER (Jean), La Nubie soudanaise, quarante ans après, p.52-56

Bulletin n° 10 - 1996 - 88 pages
- GOYON (Jean-Claude), Les nombres consacrés : de l'origine antique et égyptienne de quelques expressions familières, p.7-20
- VAN DIJK (Jacobus), La tombe de Maya, Directeur du Trésor de Toutânkhamon, à Saqqara, p.21-44
- POSTEL (Lilian), Nouvelles recherches dans la tombe de Ramsès II (KV 7), p.45-74
- GOYON (Jean-Claude), Jean-Jacques FIECHTER. "La Moisson des dieux" : la constitution des grandes collections égyptiennes (1815-1830), p.75-76
- POSTEL (Lilian), Jean-Luc CHAPPAZ et Sandra POGGIA. Collections égyptiennes publiques de Suisse : un répertoire géographique, p.77-79

List of Open Access Journals in Ancient Studies

From Ressources en ligne, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon

Atlas des Sites du PRoche-Orient (ASPRO)

L’ Atlas des Sites du Proche-Orient (ASPRO) se présente comme un répertoire analytique de près de 2 000 sites occupés entre 14 000 et 5 700 BP (environ 14 000 - 4 500 av. J.-C.) sur un territoire qui s’étend du Sinaï au Turkménistan et de l’Anatolie au golfe Arabo-Persique.

Publié en 1994 sous une forme papier aujourd’hui épuisée (Publications de la Maison de l’Orient), l’ensemble de la base de données a été mise en ligne sur le Web et un chantier a été ouvert pour l’actualisation et le développement de cette base.

Celle-ci est à présent proposée sous forme d’une interface Web cartographique, développée avec la société ESRI-France, qui permet différents types de requêtes :
– affichage des sites sur fond de carte en relief ;
– recherche par régions avec possibilité de zoom jusqu’au 1/500 000e ;
– différenciation entre sites prospectés, sondés, fouillés à partir du 1/millionième ;
– interrogation des informations disponibles pour chaque site : fiche descriptive, références bibliographiques, informations sur la période, descriptif par niveaux stratigraphiques, datations 14C disponibles ;
– construction de cartes par domaines biogéographiques et requêtes, ex. : sélection de sites par périodespour un domaine donné ;
– mesures de distances ;
– impression des cartes sur les résultats des requêtes...

 Découvrez l’Atlas

Le développement de la base de données sur les sites, notamment son élargissement à Chypre, au Caucase et au sud de la Péninsule Arabique, se poursuit dans le cadre du chantier avec l’aide d’une équipe internationale.

From Ressources en ligne, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon

Base de Données des Amphores Gauloise de Narbonnaises

Les compositions chimiques constituent une base de référence indispensable pour les comparaisons. Les données sont stockées dans la base de données générale du laboratoire de céramologie. Un extrait de cette base a été constitué pour mettre à disposition les données chimiques sur les amphores de Narbonnaise sur le Web. Les interrogations sont possibles pour le moment par site de découverte. En choisissant un nom de site dans le menu déroulant on obtient la description des exemplaires du site puis en cliquant sur le numéro d’analyse, on obtient la composition chimique correspondante.

Cette base est en cours de développement et les critères d’interrogation vont s’étoffer progressivement.

Accès à la base de données

From Ressources en ligne, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Lyon

by Yosef Garfinkel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Saar Ganor, Israel Antiquities Authority

The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research recently published a book review by Dr. R. Arav on our final excavation report for the 2007–2008 seasons at Khirbet Qeiyafa (BASOR 364:93–97). This review falsely attributes many absurd claims to the site’s excavators—for example, that the Iron Age city of Khirbet Qeiyafa was destroyed by rain.

Another notable vulgar statement is found on page 95: “If we are to take the assumptions of the authors seriously—that Tell Qeiyafa is indeed the Judahite She`arayim, situated in ‘Efes Damim,’ the battlefield of David and Goliath, and was not deserted in a peaceful manner—then could it be that the match between David and Goliath was not as narrated in the Bible and that the Judahites actually lost this battle?”

Dr. Arav presents here a mixture of factual inaccuracy and fantasy. Khirbet Qeiyafa suddenly appears with a new name: “Tell Qeiyafa,” and is turned into the site of biblical Efes Damim (a claim never made in our report). The biblical account, of disputed historical value, places the battle between David and Goliath in the Valley of Elah while Khirbet Qeiyafa is located on a hilltop above a valley. The biblical story describes the military force against the Philistines as “Saul and the men of Israel” (1 Sam 17:2, Revised Standard Version) while Dr. Arav turns these into “Judahites.” It is of little comfort that not only Qeiyafa I is subject to abuse in this review, but the Bible as well. Click here for the full-length response, in which we reply to 18 erroneous points in Dr. Arav’s review.

Yesterday, Bethany suggested that the public comments on the American OSTP request for info regarding public access to digital data would be a good target for some data mining:

DHers, let's see some text-mining & viz! All responses to OSTP RFIs on public access to fed-funded research now online: is.gd/jimJ6v

—
Bethany Nowviskie (@nowviskie) February 01, 2012

So, I downloaded the pdf and turned it into plain text. I did not do any cleanup; what follows is a brief look at large-scale patterns, with all the caveats and cautions that that implies. I loaded the raw txt into Voyant Tools, where one can do some initial frequency counts and so on – available here. (NB – the corpus reader tool does not seem to work from this link; but all other Voyant tools do. You may also upload the txt file yourself into Voyant, which may solve the corpus reader problem – the txt is available in the zip file below).

Then, as is often my wont, I topic modeled it by individual line (for 25 topics). Below are the raw topics w/o interpretation. I also mapped the topics to their documents using Gephi. As there were >30 000 lines, I pruned to show just the lines where an individual topic accounted for more than 2/3rds of its composition (and joining it to its minor topics). I ran the modularity routine to determine ‘communities’ within those comments; gephi suggests 15 communities. The communities centered on 15, 9, and 23 seem to be most prominent. Here are all my data files (zipped download, ca. 46mb; includes gephi files).

What does this all mean? I’ll leave it to the reader to decide that for herself. Larger screenshot.  (scroll to bottom for update).

List of Topics

1.	data digital types repository shared sets collected established serve place major variety small reasonable physionet low prevent establishing archived acquired continuing certified helpful aspects trial presented interested strategic base releasing spent put conventions decades directorate attention campus proteomics capturing confidential leveraging subsequent choices articulated efficiently initiated learned deposit methods meaningful
2.	long community term project stewardship effort share practice nature al researcher projects driven ensuring opportunities supported individual exchange genetics end short collection includes defined find maintaining brazma responsibility distributed building addressed hosting hard communication ode advantage piwowar evaluation maintenance treated emerge evolution enables descriptive reducing widespread networks planning months met
3.	publication require archiving ensure journals users field guidelines database high publishing quality significant reports primary supporting sharing widely ecg privacy life basis integrity challenge identify biomedical leads concerns underlying annotations electronic open mandates dryad enabling progress min clinical instance hours standardized parties released efficient permanent confidentiality expected individual remain beat
4.	data open important identifiers grants future analysis persistent benefit unique free full step multiple requirement source point exist citations requiring repositories availability note accessibility list critical today reference researcher subjects encouraged lost increased experts raw larger move restrictions gathering ease image aera transparent considerations generate problems hand consortia noted outcome
5.	economic comment centers creation gov easier growth allowing elements consideration washington id decisions icpsr fr education number statistical offer team de locations dc informed performance assessment st big usa controls inclusion practical skills digitaldata colleagues statistics run forward pp street home expert partnerships laboratory tt protections frameworks asked accessed fit
6.	resources scholarly infrastructure including datasets develop potential models innovation key approach organization sustainable business number program online area reporting increase open greater machine global recognized adopted integration basic exclusive contributions represent great submission standardization infrastructures sufficient capacity understanding internet past importance ddi continued lifecycle learning early communications traditional expect website
7.	policies agency costs benefits developing system differences respect burden general proposed relative stakeholders recognize article databases focus force problem interest fund task critical recommended difficult report longer scientist flexible cases students participate position blue rapidly initiatives financial november written requiring possibility range recognizing demonstrate framework longterm line networked books blog
8.	data repositories time government technical relevant question private created products period raw investigators trusted collections record determine challenges continue change resources industry medical adopt evidence gis direct bodies intended sector ready track usability measures partners fully stored purposes responses personal structure companies functions extensive consortium host solution integrated countries manage
9.	standards digital publications http reuse org interoperability www needed linking enable datacite repurposing format iso purposing orcid emerging migration uk openly define cultural initiatives worldwide inform inter verified eu promotes index beneficial approval site html pdf components likelihood seal insight circumstances creativecommons computing mechanism operations strongly ansi significantly previous permits
10.	researchers grant published data nsf include articles journal funds datasets related part dataset fields programs cases code means final result materials papers applications lack similar education act highly cited species included dollars rules document supplemental paper submitted protected receive generally advance investments findings date subsequent active evolve administrative assume america
11.	data citation organizations discipline set stewardship archive verification alliance ndsa licensing members generated minimized ongoing center single resource purpose complex embargo criteria location focused individuals grantees usable analyses multi present norms maintain committed signals independent detailed barriers selection patents description protocols transparency associations protein distribution engaged managers mandating actively usage
12.	access public digital preservation information rfi minimum providing encouraging broadly experiment miame microarray page discoverability taxpayer tool comprehensive unclassified cyberinfrastructure utilize represented verifiable commission piece equilibrium measurements decentralized iwgdd capable entrepreneurs fear depositing sustain paleoanthropology recording enhancing permitted michael authority distinct confusion constitutes studies personnel scope strengths mechanism intuitive expression
13.	work copyright required deposit level content current commons institutional collaboration years good creative licenses cc form society collaborative activities license publisher broad considered works subject mandate dois experience areas terms institution incentive success protection law participation start identify consistent diverse fees patent procedures recent knowledge boundaries action kind facts core
14.	data management sharing plans requirements plan implementation contribute part proposals meet states proposal united include ethical complete awareness professionals interdisciplinary implement capture priorities kinds reviewers nasa endeavor explicit book dataone balance techniques criteria submissions mandatory physiotoolkit ad mining copyrighted contact sage statements healthy direction cycle increasingly relating goods contributing specification
15.	scientific research funded federally resulting dissemination american discovery productivity enterprise valuable metrics rewards taxpayer reason diversity discussions existence assigning successfully reduction isn allocate secret attempts overcome evaluation visualizations billion organizing trained operational occurs documentary provided plays quickly connection measurement assessing conjunction recorded ore animals broadening archivist modes game hosts argue
16.	funding provide costs mechanisms address issues preserving disciplinary questions real improved provided expertise comments requires study ways search methods recommendations specifically result social extent issue increasing establishment ieee minimal collaborations manner tracking participants answer cooperative copies considerable cover posed greatest path stage budget sensitive comply fostering citations selected exploitation basic
17.	existing standard create tools economy archives web grow software formats model large sciences world build markets jobs industries order preserve linked wide proprietary activity pay lead biology directly scale type promoting people computational easily permit definition limited achieve production improving sites machines interoperable view text follow kitware controlled concept conduct
18.	data make scientists developed review sharing produced peer assure original reviewed mechanisms legal easy incentives publish understand simple principles projects year makes literature produce regard viewed citing reward prior scholarship store facilitate due responsible expensive explore domains details sense assess ecosystem collections times display perform topics pass latency handle genetic
19.	services accessible based publicly making university domain library additional curation innovative professional systems stimulate societies network addition author january state local retention adoption apply technologies infrastructure physical offer conditions material steps congress added lab fact physics baseline phd ecological banding california award market specialized allowed options fully press environmental bird
20.	data metadata international cost common storage impact doi identifier essential creating facilitate deposited goal freely ensure object proper service central levels link ffsr producers semantic guidance acquisition file broader documents reasons culture links nations european agreements providers identifying fits cross astronomy committees issue partnership citable desired necessarily starting security job
21.	information science policy national technology ostp request response foundation context nih opportunity human office social health council institute committee service member engineering studies genome medicine respond concern strong input institutes writing acra pub contract publically care enhance stakeholder behalf greatly dedicated administration design educational commitment similar detail dependent quantitative barriers
22.	research communities institutions stakeholders libraries researchers universities clear establish knowledge academic investment government user association recognition range training ideas consensus managed vital survey return manage develop biological submit higher archival found advances back preserved growing board legitimate publication periods matter investigator limited mandated expressed vision collecting trust actual energy aabb
23.	federal agencies compliance disciplines encourage improve effective promote approaches verify account coordination inherent measure differences control staff recommend faculty creation give files coordinate register regulations processing monitor describe collaborate accommodate operate discoveries redundant option layer supporting closely recommends dublin familiar university claim ensures worthwhile changing sponsored ample deep joint huge
24.	specific publishers intellectual property working steps interests rights protect group groups authors funders commercial case report release profit publishing involved supports simply interest ability environment niso librarians issues initiative ip core managing discussion explicitly mission director primarily responsibilities expectations money transfer amounts applicable outcomes points interagency don stakeholder foster openness
25.	support standards development practices results made process efforts attribution successful credit examples role secondary processes reported characteristics applied play sources goals documentation cite pm producing maintain maximize values computing draft download post provenance meeting biodiversity facilitates proposals accreditation helping educators small spread reader bermuda keeping funder intensive certification domains replication

UPDATE: This is why the DH & Twitter community is so awesome. I mentioned to Bethany that one mode networks (topics joined directly to other topics on basis of shared composition of a line) would provide a ‘truer’ picture than my two mode networks, and Scott Weingart duly did the heavy lifting:

@electricarchaeo @nowviskie scottbot.net/uploads/pubacc… here are those one-mode networks you ordered!

—
Scott Weingart (@scott_bot) February 01, 2012

…and the resulting visualization shows that things boil down into two communities, with 24,10, and 12 being most prominent. So which is right, one mode or two mode? While two modes make more apparent common-sense, in terms of analyseses and metrics, you want to go with one modes. Thickness of the line depicts a stronger relationship between the two topics.

UPDATE 2: Scot Weingart’s Gephi visualization of the same materials, with topic top words swapped for the numbers.

On January 6, 2012, I had the opportunity to attend CurateGear, an interactive, day-long event focused on digital curation tools and methods held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Trevor Owens from the Library of Congress Presenting ViewShare at CurateGear

This meeting did many things right.

It introduced attendees to the wide spectrum of digital curation activities, from appraisal to ingest to auditing and preservation.  The general nature of these activities is not dissimilar to those working with physical archives, but there are some specific challenges for which tools and workflows are needed. For example:  automated assessment and extraction of technical and structural information from and about files, creation of authentic copies made from the original media, assignment of fixities for preservation auditing and the extraction and creation of metadata. There is a growing community of practice in these areas.

Each session contained four speakers who were limited to 15 minutes each.  Then each session was followed by an hour of demos by the speakers from the previous sessions.  And they had to be live demos.  That’s right, the attendees got the opportunity to see a live demo of every tool that was presented.  And there were long breaks where people got to meet each other and compare notes. More conferences should do this.

The organizers invited speakers who are, for the most part, practitioners in the field, who have experience they can share and tools they can show.  Not every tool is available –some are in development–but it was a great learning opportunity to see what practices, workflows and tools exist, or should exist and so are being developed.

The people who participated in this event as speakers or attendees came from many communities: federal agencies, research university archives, state archives, library and information schools and digital forensics and it was exciting to see so much overlap and conversation. Among the tools and services that were presented at the conference were:

• Archivematica
• BitCurator
• DCAPE
• Duke Data Accessioner
• Georgia Tech File Format Library
• Gumshoe
• National Library of Australia Digital Preservation Knowledgebase
• SafeArchive
• ViewShare

I strongly encourage people to go to the CurateGear site to review the presentations that have been posted. This is an exciting area of tool development, addressing the needs of the automation of digital collection appraisal and ingest and the curation these collections throughout their life cycle.  Some of these tools are already available as open source, and there is most definitely a lot of room for participation in these efforts and in the development of new ones.

 

Back in November, the US government's Office of Science and Technology Policy solicited comments on potential policy surrounding public access to scholarly work.  All comments were accepted through January 12 and were recently released.

The statement released by the American Anthropological Association can be read here, and the Archaeological Institute of America statement is here.  In short, both statements insist that there is no problem with public access to scholarly output.

The anthro-Twitter-verse, where there has been a long and interesting discussion on open access science, was immediately up in arms.  Anthropology bloggers have started posting, critiquing and condeming the AAA/AIA responses:

• Neuroanthropology: AAA Takes Public Stand Against Open Access
• Savage Minds: AAA Response about Public Access to Scholarly Publications; How do we mobilize anthropologists to support open access? 
• Publishing Archaeology: AAA Joins the Dark Side of the Force
• Dienekes' Anthropology Blog: The AAA Opposes Open Science
• Doug's Archaeology: AAA Fail!  This Time on an Epic Scale; Why This #AAAFail is Epic

I'm pretty amazed at how narrowly the AAA defines "public" in their statement.  I thought that, as anthropologists, our public was, well, everyone.  Many of the bloggers above have already made cogent remarks that mirror my own views on open access science, so I'll end with a brief anecdote.

Anthropology graduate programs frequently take 10 years to complete.  At many institutions, funding is only available for a portion of that.  Graduate students drop out.  They do fieldwork and write their dissertations while not enrolled, to save on the cost of tuition that is not covered by any research grants they might have, then they re-enroll to graduate.  Since grad students obtain access to journals primarily through their graduate institution, dropping out means losing access to scholarly work in the field and even during the writing phase.  Most of us position ourselves near an institute of higher learning while we're writing - either our own or one at which we are adjuncting - because we know that it is imperative to have up-to-date information on our field.  But access to anthropological knowledge is not a given for these researchers.

It's problematic that the AAA doesn't recognize the problems that many grad students have accessing published research.  It shows that, as an organization, they are out of touch with the growing body of not just scholars-in-training, but also adjuncts and independent researchers.

I support open science, and I encourage you to do the same.  If you have thoughts on the topic, click through to the Savage Minds posts above and leave suggestions.

The coincidence between the archaeology of mining in Cyprus and my new (albeit small) research interest in the archaeology of work camps in western North Dakota is exciting. I spent the weekend reading some relatively recent publications from Bernard Knapp and his team who excavated the site of Politiko-Phorades in the eastern Troodos mountains of Cyprus (see here and here).

The site itself was a Late Bronze Age copper smelting site in impressive state of preservation. Discovered in the course of the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project and that team has worked to associated the site with larger systems established to support the extraction of copper from the Troodos mountains. Knapp argued that the site probably only functioned seasonally and was worked by individuals who also contributed to the local agricultural economy. A nearby settlement with access to arable land, then, provided agricultural support for the resource extraction. The system described by Knapp understands mining as a practice that functions at the physical margins of economic systems and remained dependent on longstanding subsistence practices. The emergence of large Late Bronze Age centers like Kition and Enkomi, however, almost certainly influenced the settlement patters that supported the extraction of mineral resources.

In a 2003 article in the American Journal of Archaeology, Knapp seeks to take this analysis a step further by exploring how these patterns of production have shaped communities. Drawing on evidence and models from world archaeology, Knapp reflected on the impermanence and marginal status of the Politiko-Phorades production site and its productive and ideational relationship to the surrounding landscape. The marginal position of mining communities forged a tension between social and economic isolation and profound dependence on “other places”. No one is from a mining community, but, at the same time, these places must have both generated and depended upon social understandings. Knapp regards the forms of habitus that emerge in these contexts as central to the formation of “imagined communities” necessary to ensure both social cohesion and economic productivity at industrial sites.

The archaeology of mining communities poses another unique set of problems. The disjunction between the social life of a community and the material reality of these sites is particular profound in that the sites are typically occupied for short periods of time and received minimal investments in features that would enable archaeologists to analyze social organization of the community. In fact, the handful of pottery recovered from the site of Politiko-Phorades that could have been associated with domestic activities does not seem to have received anything more than cursory analysis in Knapp’s preliminary publications of the site. In other words, the small amount of fine wares that probably derived from basic domestic activities at the site, primarily speak to “the specialized nature of the site” rather than providing the basis for understanding the efforts of Bronze Age metal workers to preserve ties to “the outside world” of socially constructed relationships.  In the preliminary analysis and in the preserved evidence, then, the economic world of the mining community seems to overwrite the scant evidence for a social life.

Knapp concludes his 2003 article with a series of recommendations for the archaeology of community in an industrial context and suggests that three steps remain necessary:

At least three steps are needed to develop further an archaeology of communities:

1. to engage studies of place in examining the relationship between locality and community.
2. to refine and elaborate the concerted of the “imagined community”
3. to examine more closely and understand more fully the association among people, locality, community, and material culture as the outcome of specific social and historical processes.

In western North Dakota, the massive influx of workers in support of the oil industry has energized new discussions on the nature of communities in these otherwise sleepy (and we can say marginal) regions. The attitudes of longtime residents in these areas have centered on the disruptive effects of these new arrivals and this new industry on their communities. There has been less attention, however, on the communities that have formed among the new arrival to western North Dakota.

We know, however, that workers in western North Dakota follow longstanding practices common to mining and industrial communities. The investment in habitation is minimal and reflects an interest in maximizing the economic return on their efforts and the limited expectations for the long term sustainability of their activities. The boom in both sanctioned and unsanctioned work camps and the appearance of well-defined work sites provide a material locus for at least some activities central to social organization. There are complemented by less clearly defined areas such ranging from the bars, strip clubs, and restaurants that have grown up to serve the influx of works to jails, schools, churches, and town centers which have become places for the interaction between pre-existing communities and new arrivals.

The changes in western North Dakota have led both longtime residents and new comers to re-imagine their communities and establish new ways of viewing the local landscape and their own sense of place. While both groups recognized the local landscape as fundamentally productive (whether in terms of its mineral wealth or in terms of its agricultural potential), they nevertheless recognized fundamentally different relationships between lands, economy, and community. The ties between community and productive space which Knapp underscored in his articles have become contested as both sides read the landscape in an effort to legitimize their own practices and policies.

An archaeology of community in the context of western North Dakota will invariably consider the relationship between material objects, settlement, and social organization as set against changing notions of community and the physical and productive landscape.

(My title is not mine! It is lovingly borrowed from Bre Pettis and Kio Stark’s “Cult of Done Manifesto”)

I love lists almost as much as I love agendas and program management in general. Here is a status update in list form for you, Dear Reader. And Team, please feel free to expand/clarify/correct the following:

1. We have finalized the texts we’re going to be uploading into Prism for first-round users. Today, some of us tested a few of the suggested “highlighting” categories with help from our low-tech friends: transparencies, markers, and photocopies. Ed, Brooke, Annie, and I will be reviewing and revising categories over the next few days, and the entire Praxis team is invited to test our new suggestions this coming week.

2. The development team met their latest milestone goal: authentication and authorization for the Prism site is a go! User accounts! Ding!

3. As Lindsay notes, the wireframes (and thus, for the most part, the user story), are finalized. Design wizzes (plural of wiz?) Ed and Lindsay have been rocking out on the front-end work: Ed continues to wow us with his aesthetic brilliance (see his “striptease” post of Jan 26), while Lindsay works on making the dream a reality via CSS/HTML.

4. We’ve been inspired by the recent trend toward internationalizing Ruby on Rails applications, and have nominated the most Continental of our Fellows, Alex, to the position of Internationalization Expert(-to-be). I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from him about this exciting new development in the near future.

5. Finally, on a more personal note: I continue to enjoy how much time I get to spend with my colleagues while we work toward a common goal. Collaborative ventures certainly pose some challenges that would be non-issues in individual project contexts, but I think we’re all benefiting from learning how to work not only with digital tools but also with one another. The Fellows’ lounge was busy busy busy today–and that’s the way we like it!

Check out Daniel Lende's post on Neuroanthopology, "American Anthropological Association takes public stand against open access." This concerns an open letter submitted by AAA Executive Director William Davis to the White House call for public comment on public access to scholarly publications. Wow, it looks like the AAA has lined up with the commercial publishers, not with scholars and researchers.

Do you recall the cartoon I published on open access a few weeks ago? Well, the AAA has now joined with commercial publishers as the tail wagging the research dog.

This development makes me glad that I resigned from the American Anthropological Association last year. It is one thing to complain about a professional association that is inefficient or clueless or off-base about some things. But the situation is really bad when the leadership goes over to the dark side of the force, making scholars ashamed of being anthropologists.