Pleiades: News and Views

Ancient World Digital Publishing Test Suite << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:17:38 +0000

This post is just a brief notice that I have begun a test suite of xhtml+rdfa and related documents to facilitate my work on digital publication for ancient world scholarship. It's very much "pre-release" at this point so I'm putting the suite out there for the sake of sharing, not because it's useful in its current state.

Right now, there are a few files in a git repository at http://github.com/sfsheath/awdp-test/. To download, try http://github.com/sfsheath/awdp-test/archives/master.

As the files become more useful, I'll talk more about what I'm trying to achieve with this project.

A new Concordia term: "where" (needed for linking papyri to Pleiades resources) << Horothesia (Tom Elliott)

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Elliott) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:46:08 +0000

In discussions this week with Sean and Hugh, we explored what would be minimally necessary for web feeds describing the papyrological documents now being surfaced via http://papyri.info.

In the long term, we'd like to link not only to descriptive resources (at Pleiades or elsewhere) for their modern places of finding but also any ancient places attested in the texts themselves (having done named-entity analysis on all 50,000+ documents, the first steps in which are now underway by Mark Depauw and the Trismegistos team in Leiden).

In the near term, we can express geographic linkages on the basis of the nome attributions recorded for the papyri by the editors of the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens whose records are incorporated into the papyri.info contents.

But none of the terms we had previously defined in our Concordia link-type thesaurus precisely fit this information. We did have several geographic terms (findSpot, origin, observedAt and attestsTo), but we needed to add a more generic one: "where". The nomes as indicated by HGV are geographical classifications, based on the ancient regions, made primarily for facilitating reference and review by modern scholars. They don't necessarily constitute "find spot" or "place of origin" in every case. This "where" term idea followed naturally from Sean's earlier efforts to advocate for a "where" link relation type. A link in a feed entry using this term will simply indicate that the described resource should be treated as being located, in a general way, at the place described by the linked resource.

Hopefully, this term will be useful not only for papyri.info, but also for other pre-existing datasets where the location information recorded about ancient artifacts is similarly less precise than the born-digital epigraphic corpora that guided the minting of our initial thesaurus terms. Hopefully it will also prove useful in contexts such as those that Sebastian has recently been blogging about.

RDFa Patterns for Ancient World References << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:49:19 +0000

I am continuing to experiment with semantic links within digital publications relevant to the Ancient World. Here's a snippet from the same article I drew from in the last post.

In 124, Polemon had spoken before Hadrian and persuaded him to make a gift of money and grant a series of honors to Smyrna, not least of which was a second temple to the imperial cult (IvS 697; Burrell 2004: 42-48).

The "things" I want to identify are:

The year 124 as an event.
The sophist Polemon
The emperor Hadrian
The imperial cult
And the two citations

And I want to do this in a standards-based way that is automatically recognizable by third-parties (or at least their software agents).

As before, I'm using RDFa. In a future post, I'll explain this choice and talk about what RDFa and RDF are, but for now I'm diving right in.

The relevant namespaces that I'm using are:

xmlns:dbpedia="http://dbpedia.org/resource/"
xmlns:cito="http://purl.org/net/cito/"
xmlns:ev="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/event/"
xmlns:ex="http://example.org/"
xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
xmlns:frbr="http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core#"
xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#"
xmlns:owl="http ://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#"
xmlns:rdfs="http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#"
xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

All the markup that follows is experimental and comments are welcome, of course.

Polemon
The reference to Polemon now looks like:


<span id="id2209"
 about="#id2209"
 typeof="skos:Concept foaf:Person"
 resource="[dbpedia:Polemon_of_Laodicea]"
 rel="owl:sameAs cite"
 property="rdfs:label">Polemon</span>

With the '<head>' of the document including '<base href="http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html"/>', that RDFa gives the following RDF/turtle:


<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id2209>
    owl:sameAs dbpedia:Polemon_of_Laodicea ;
    a skos:Concept, foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> dbpedia:Polemon_of_Laodicea ;
    rdfs:label "Polemon"@en .

Some observations:
The pairing of 'id' and 'about' attributes means that I can identify a span of text and then say things about it.

I then give that span a type. Here I say that it's a skos:Concept and a foaf:Person. Which concept and which person? http://dbpedia.org/resource/Polemon_of_Laodicea. 'skos:Concept' will be used on all named-entities, and their nature will be further qualified when it's useful.

Why "owl:sameAs'. Here I follow the usage of dbpedia.org. If you look at the Polemon page, you'll see the same construct used to make the link to freebase. 'owl:sameAs' also underlies sameas.org (see the n3 for Hadrian).

The metaphor here is that I am instantiating Poleman as a concept and person present in the text. That should be recognizable and actionable. There is some redundancy in how I go about doing it, but that is in the spirit of convenience for future processors of this data.

"In 124"
This looks like:

<span id="id3724"
 about="#id3724"
 typeof="frbr:Event"
 rel="owl:sameAs"
 resource="dbpedia:124"
 property="ev:startdate"
 datatype="xsd:year"
 content="124">In 124</span>

Same basic process. I isolate some text as individually addressable. I say what is, in this case a FRBR Event. Here I also embed a machine-readable property, the start date, into the document , but retain the inline text as the label.

But I am probably on less-firm ground here. I use FRBR because it's an LOC approved standard. I annotate the event with an RSS Event property and that's a little weak. And it might seem odd to equate the event with the dbpedia representation of the year 124. If you follow through to the wikipedia version, that does refer to Hadrian's trip east, which is the setting for Polemon's speech. In the case of a better known event, I think I'd prefer to link to a representation of that, for example http://dbpedia.org/page/Sack_of_Rome_(455). The 'owl:sameAs' on that page will eventually redirect you to the right Wiki page.

Here's the RDF/Turtle produced by the above RDFa:

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id3724>
    owl:sameAs <dbpedia:124> ;
    ev:startdate "124"^^xsd:year ;
    a frbr:Event, skos:Concept .

As above, the goal is for this to be usable in a number of contexts.

References
There are two inline references at the end of the sentence. The first is to a primary source, an inscription at Smyrna as published in Petzl, G. (1982). Die Inschriften von Smyrna. Bonn: Habelt. The second is to Barbara Burrell's Burrell, B. (2004). Neokoroi: Greek cities and Roman emperors. Cincinnati classical studies, new ser., v. 9. Leiden: Brill.

Here's the RDFa for the second:

<span id="id4616"
 about="#id4616"
 typeof="ex:Citation"
 rel="cito:citesAsAuthority cite"
 resource="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53013513"
 property="rdfs:label">Burrell 2004: 42-48</span>

This is similar markup as previously, except I'm not instantiating it as a 'skos:Concept'. I am using the CITO ontology to indicate the relationship between the works, but note that I'm currently making up the type 'ex:Citation'. Perhaps I could use 'cito:Document' but that doesn't seem quite right. I really want to mark this span of text as being a citation but haven't found just the right RDF vocabulary. I looked at BIBO but, like CITO, it doesn't have the exact class I want. BIBO is linked with Zotero so I'd like to use it. For now, CITO has a more detailed set of relationships between citing and cited documents so I'm going with that. Worldcat also isn't great because there's confusion about the 'terms of use' but it will do for this experimental phase.

Here's the RDF/Turtle:

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id4616>
    cito:citesAsAuthority <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53013513> ;
    a ex:Citation ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53013513> ;
    rdfs:label "Burrell 2004: 42-48"@en .

The RDFa for the epigraphic reference looks like:

<span id="id9773"
 about="#id9773"
 typeof="ex:Citation"
 rel="cito:citesAsAuthority ex:citesAsPrimarySource"
 resource="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8935414"
 property="rdfs:label"><i>IvS</i> 697</span>

The main difference here is that I'm also making up the 'ex:citesAsPrimarySource' value for the rel attribute. The concept of "Primary Source" and references thereto is important for the Humanities and we need a way of indicating its usage.

It's also important that I'm referring to the publication of the inscription, not the inscription itself. When a digital surrogate becomes available, I can point to that. In the meantime, a way of standardizing references to parts of a work would be useful. But I don't think you can just tag on a fragment identifier, as in http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8935414#no.%20697, since the implication there is that such an ID actually exists. And it might be rude to put the same after a '?'. Something to ponder...

Instead of continuing on with each named entitiy, here's the whole sentence with RDFa visible:

In 124, Polemon had spoken before Hadrian and persuaded him to make a gift of money and grant a series of honors to Smyrna, not least of which was a second temple to the imperial cult (IvS 697; Burrell 2004: 42-48).

And here's the RDF/Turtle:


<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id3724>
    owl:sameAs <dbpedia:124> ;
    ev:startdate "124"^^xsd:year ;
    a frbr:Event, skos:Concept .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id2209>
    owl:sameAs dbpedia:Polemon_of_Laodicea ;
    a skos:Concept, foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> dbpedia:Polemon_of_Laodicea ;
    rdfs:label "Polemon"@en .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id5130>
    owl:sameAs dbpedia:Hadrian ;
    a skos:Concept, foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> dbpedia:Hadrian ;
    rdfs:label "Hadrian"@en .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id39156>
    owl:sameAs <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550771> ;
    a geo:SpatialThing, skos:Concept ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550771> ;
    rdfs:label "Smyrna"@en .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#4168>
    owl:sameAs <dbpedia:Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)]> ;
    a dbpedia:Religion, skos:Concept ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <dbpedia:Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)]> ;
    rdfs:label "imperial cult"@en .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id9773>
    ex:citesAsPrimarySource <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8935414> ;
    cito:citesAsAuthority <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8935414> ;
    a ex:Citation ;
    rdfs:label "<i>IvS</i> 697"^^rdf:XMLLiteral .

<http://example.org/ajn2006-smyrna.html#id4616>
    cito:citesAsAuthority <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53013513> ;
    a ex:Citation ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53013513> ;
    rdfs:label "Burrell 2004: 42-48"@en .

Some of these constructs deserve more comment but this post is getting long. The only thing to add is that fairly soon I will publish a javascript toolset that starts making use of these patterns.

Referring to People and Places << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:37:46 +0000

Another title for this post could be "How can I achieve something by doing nothing?"

Back in 2006 I published the article 'A Box Mirror Made from Two Antinous Medallions of Smyrna.' American Journal of Numismatics Second Series 18 (2006), 63-74. It contains the following sentences:

The reverse type on this piece is one of four images — showing either the female panther on this piece, a bull, a sheep, or a ship’s prow — that appear on a series of medallions struck at Smyrna in honor of Antinous and naming Polemon as issuer. These two individuals are both historical figures and their biographical information provides the framework for dating the issue. Antinous was the companion of the emperor Hadrian who drowned in the Nile in late AD 130.

I am currently thinking about how to represent links from the "named entities" embedded within texts such as this to well-known identifiers for those concepts. That's what I want to achieve. The "doing nothing" part of my alternate title is an off-hand way of indicating that I want to make as few choices as possible. To again rephrase, the bottom line is that I'm hoping to use pre-existing standards.

BTW, pictures of the mirror are at http://numismatics.org/collection/2005.19.1.

In terms of well-known identifiers, here's the "low hanging fruit" that I see in the sample text:

Smyrna: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550771. This is a Pleiades identifier for the ancient site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemon_of_Laodicea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian

We could get into dates and abstract concepts such as "emperor" but I'll save that for later.

You'll note that I'm using the English Wikipedia for most of my identifiers and Pleiades for Smyrna. There is a Wikipedia article for that ancient site, but I do want to situate myself within the discipline of ancient geography. I think using the Pleiades reference meets that goal. On a slightly different topic, I was tempted to use dbpedia references – as in http://dbpedia.org/resource/Polemon_of_Laodicea – but think it's probably better practice to give the Wiki URI and let harvestors, etc. derive the dbpedia URI if they want to. Is it a disadvantage to tie the URI to a particular language?

Moving along... how to embed these references in the text? That does require an initial choice: RDFa embedded in xhtml. Here's a possible snippet that links an implicit identity with the relevant unambiguous identifier:

Polemon

With this markup I am trying to say, "the characters 'Polemon' refer to a person and that person is the same as the person represented by the URI 'http://dbpedia.org/page/Polemon_of_Laodicea'."

Why do I think I've achieved that? If I point an RDF parser – I use rapper – at this text, I get the following triples:

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id7474>
  <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#type>
  <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/Person> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id7474>
  <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite>
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemon_of_Laodicea> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id7474>
  <http ://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#sameAs>
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemon_of_Laodicea> .

I think this represents progress towards using a well-known standard that allows a third-party tool to extract the semantic meaning in my text. Expanding the markup I'm using, here's the whole sample text with embedded RDF:

The reverse type on this piece is one of four images — showing either the female panther on this piece, a bull, a sheep, or a ship’s prow — that appear on a series of medallions struck at Smyrna in honor of Antinous and naming Polemon as issuer. These two individuals are both historical figures and their biographical information provides the framework for dating the issue. Antinous was the companion of the emperor Hadrian who drowned in the Nile in late AD 130.

Which produces the following RDF:

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id128979>
    a nm:mint, geonames:Feature ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550771> ;
    skos:sameAs <http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/550771> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id49178>
    a foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous> ;
    skos:sameAs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id7474>
    a foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemon_of_Laodicea> ;
    skos:sameAs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemon_of_Laodicea> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id876873>
    a foaf:Person ;
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://en.wikipedia.org/en/Hadrian> ;
    skos:sameAs <http://en.wikipedia.org/en/Hadrian> .

<http:/example.org/AJN2006-Heath.html#id5726>
    <http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml/vocab#cite> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile> ;
    skos:sameAs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nile> .

By way of a few observations, note that I type "Smyrna" – here id128979 - as a mint using the URI http://nomisma.org/id/mint, which is a reference to an incipient numismatic vocabulary. I don't type Hadrian as a Roman emperor. 'Smyrna' can be used in many ways so I want to be clear that I'm referring to it as a mint (in the broad numismatic sense). Hadrian's role as emperor is explicitly stated in the Wiki article and in its dbpedia equivalent. I don't think I need to repeat that here.

I'm also adding 'cite' to the rel attributes. 'cite' is one of the W3 sponsored relationships and I like how generic it is but also want to use the more specific 'skos:sameAs'.

This post is not a finished product and I don't mean to suggest that the above is the best way to achieve my goal. I welcome comments along the lines of "You should be using pre-existing standard http://...." or "What you suggest is sort of (barely?) OK but here's an improvement...". Is there a better RDFa pattern?

Electric Archaeology: 3 years in the Blogoverse << Shawn Graham (Electric Archaeology)

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:22:38 +0000

I just realized. I’ve been intermittently blogging now for three years, as of this December past. In that time, I think I’ve remained more or less true to the ‘mission’ of Electric Archaeology – to try out new techs, recount experiments, disseminate my research, in new media for archaeology and history. There have been times when I could post thoughtful, in-depth pieces; and times when I’ve merely passed on the interesting things that have turned up in my inbox. As of this morning according to WordPress, Electric Archaeology has had over 85,000 views, spread across 394 posts. There have been 329 comments made. I have 62 categories – clearly I need some rationalization there.

I sometimes toy with the idea of moving Electric Archaeology to my own space, so I can put some better analytics on it, but for whatever reason, that just doesn’t happen…

The all time most viewed posts on Electric Archaeology (the most recent posts of course are at the bottom, having had less chance to be viewed):

Title	Views
Home page	18,250
Civilization IV World Builder Manual	8,786
Game Mods	3,113
Moodle + WordPress = Online University	2,611
About Shawn Graham	1,609
Historical GIS and various Google Earth	1,495
History Channel – Roman Battle Game	1,458
Review: The First Jesus? Expedition Week	1,278
Language Switcher for WordPress	1,100
Publications & Conferences	1,081
Agent Models	979
Angel versus Moodle	975
Sketchup into Second Life	842
Review: EXPEDITION WEEK: ‘Search for the	823
Rubric for assessing historical scenario	689
Review: Unlocking the Great Pyramid, Nat	669
SketchLife – Sketchup plugin for exporti	650
When on Google Earth?	524
AutoCad into Unreal2	520
The most amazing game I’ve seen lately:	483
Multiverse & Sketchup : Doom of Seco	479
Review: Shipwreck! Captain Kidd, Nationa	470
Resistance is Futile: Facebook & Stu	463
Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great C	447
Review: Expedition Great White, Monday N	445
History Channel and Great Battles of Rom	432
Software Turns that Cheap Camera into a	428
Skype Can’t Hear Me Anymore	427
Ancient Civilizations Games- Competition	425
Greek and Roman Games in the Computer Ag	403
Cities & Centralities: A network app	396
Stone Age Online Game: Greenland	394
The Space Between: The Geography of Soci	389
The Glooper, Agent Based Modeling, and t	388
Path of the Elders: Game for teaching ab	386
Re-writing History: Battle of the Plains	380
Google Maps & Cultural Heritage	355
Archaeological Clutter & Dumpster Di	353
Archaeorama and the Amduat	352
Review: Lost Cities of the Amazon Nation	350
Omeka: a swahili word meaning ‘to displa	344
Review: Egypt Unwrapped: Alexander the G	330
Caesar IV and the Empire Online	324
Rome Reborn in Google Earth	318
FYI – Caesar IV tutorial	306
Review: Waking the Baby Mammoth	305
Simulations	304
Lulu.com and bypassing the publishers	302
PMOGing Internet Research Skills…	292
Digital Digging, a new version of Google	289
Going on an Expedition (National Geograp	280
Interactive Fiction (Text Adventure!) in	279
10th VAST International Symposium on Vir	279
YoYo Games Ancient Civilisations Game Ma	260
Archaeology in Second Life…. Where to	259
Planning archaeology in Second Life (2)	258
Open source virtual world: Croquet	243
CAA 2006 conference proceedings publishe	235
Sketchup + Augmented Reality	225
Historical Maps, GIS, and Second Life	222
Establishing Virtual Learning Worlds (fo	220
GIS & ABM in Netlogo	219
Forum Novum: a market in the Sabine Hill	219
Scenarios for Civilization IV	216
‘The Past Present: Augmented Historical	214
Magic (cyber)Carpet Ride	213
Life is a role-playing game: Weight Watc	212
Why computer games matter for history ed	206
So you’re interested in Alternate Realit	204
Masters and Doctoral Theses on Serious G	202
Roma Archaeology: Archaeological simulat	200
Forum Novum Scenario available	200
OnRez Viewer from Electric Sheep – Secon	199
Review: Herod’s Lost Tomb, National Geog	198
The Ancient Mediterranean Mod – Civiliza	195
Top 100 Learning Games, according to Ups	195
Serious Alternate Reality Game: Traces o	194
ANGEL LMS @ U Manitoba	191
Rome Total War: Battle of Cannae	190
Archaeology in, and archaeology of, Seco	186
Reading & Experiencing Space	185
Catalogue of Stamped Bricks from the Sou	185
Open Courseware	182
Civilization & Education	180
Learning from Las Vegas – Archaeology in	178
Northwest Rebellion – early stages work	177
Catal Hoyuk in Second Life	176
Sugata Mitra, Hole in the Wall, Self Org	172
Civ scenarios for teaching and learning	170
Archaeology, Data Mining, & Eureqa	162
Hampson Museum: Digital Curation, Digita	160
Learning to Write History with Video Gam	159
On Snow Crash, Sumer, and a Virtual Rape	159
Civ IV, some high school students, and s	155
Public Archaeology in Second Life – Remi	155
TravellerSim: Growing Settlement Structu	155
Tim Kohler on Agent Based Models in Arch	154
Visualising Word Links in Latin Inscript	152
Catalogue, XRF & XRD SES Brick Stamp	150
Excavating in Second Life (3)	149
Labour kills Educational Innovation	149
Library Research Skills Game from Carneg	145
JOLT: Best Practices for Integrating Gam	144
Dis Manibus RWU	142
Thinking Worlds: Rapid World Authoring	142
Interacting with Immersive Worlds II – C	142
Doing History or, ‘Where is Vinland?’	141
Game based learning and Latin Literacy	140
Vespasian Rocks. For 2000 Years.	140
International Digital Storytelling Confe	138
PMOG is now the Nethernet	138
Yahoo Pipes and the Pleiades Project	137
Horizon 2009 Report	133
Call for Papers: Chicago Digital Humanit	130
Federation of American Scientists, Games	129
The Role of the Governor General: Canadi	129
Using Natural Language Processing and So	128
Text-based virtual worlds: an archaeolog	125
Using Civilization IV in a University Cl	124
Omeka plugins: Contribute, Geolocation	123
The Grail Diary	122
TweetMapping Archaeology	122
Archaeology: Let’s Build Something New	121
Writing Archaeology and Writing Fiction	119
Map of Complexity Science	117
Serious Games Canada Summit, Montreal	112
PMOG Mission: “Awww Sir, how can I find	111
“Speculum Fantasia” and thoughts on othe	109
The Ancient History Encyclopedia	108
History Canada Game: Mod for Civ III	108
Review: The Mystery of the Screaming Man	108
Archaeometry Cluster Analysis, BSR Brick	106
Agent Modeling and the settlement of the	105
Excavating Second Life	104
ABM: The emergence of cities	104
“In the springtime of 51 BC, Ptolemy Aul	104
Omeka Live!	104
Conference: Trade, Commerce, and the Sta	103
Oblivion, London, and Archaeological VR:	102
Do games actually achieve curricular lea	102
Classics and MMORPGS: not classic mmorpg	100
Digital History Class at Indiana Univers	100
Myths about Serious Games & Improvin	100
Virtual Excavation Update 5	99
Immersive Worlds conference at Brock	98
Learning 2.0 – interview with Garrison	98
Shaking up the Textbook Market	96
Conference Announcement: Communities and	96
Learning with Digital Games – Nicola Whi	95
Teddy: 3d art from 3d drawing	92
SL_Archaeology (or, the virtual excavati	91
Interactive Fiction – bibliography and o	90
The Year of the Four Emperors mod for Ci	90
Tweeting Archaeology	88
Mashing the physical and the virtual: ‘t	88
MAGIS: Mediterranean Archaeology GIS	88
Visualisation in Archaeology	87
Dig Into History – game from the Orienta	85
Omeka Plugins	84
Archaeology in Second Life – WAC6	83
Teaching with Interactive Fiction	83
“Making Dead History Come Alive Through	82
Interacting with Immersive Worlds Confer	81
Pyla-Koutsopetria: archaeological site i	79
Google Earth, Politics, and Replacement	79
Niagara 1812 – Interactive Arts & Sc	79
VisitorSim: agent modeling for site mana	78
evolution of a wikipedia article	78
Journal of Virtual Worlds Research: Educ	76
XRD results of British School at Rome st	75
(some) Top Ten Tips for Online Instructo	74
What does Civilization Stand For? Moddin	74
Omeka & Archaeological Survey Projec	73
Virtual Excavation in Second Life Has Fo	72
Native Language and Culture through 3d G	71
Powerpointed Out? Try Flypaper Instead.	71
Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean	71
Immersive Learning Bibliograph 1	71
On Learning in Video Games	70
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CALL FOR PAPERS for ALT-J – Learning and	69
Interactive Fiction, Passively	69
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Web 2.0 is not a democracy (and some dis	67
Advocating for Public Archaeology: don’t	67
The Ecology of Games	66
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Secrets & Design – Lessons for Publi	64
Platial and Pleiades – rss feeds	61
Essays on History and New Media	61
Report on the Greek and Roman Games in t	61
Solipsis – another online world	61
Google WonderWheel and Me	61
Archaeology: Reverse Engineering World D	60
Discussion	60
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E-learning in Canada: Report	57
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Some Academic Online Worlds	57
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Canadian Historical Review – article on	57
Distance Learning with the NPS Archaeolo	56
The PDQ – a new journal bridging bloggin	56
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Neogeography, Gaming and Second Life	54
Archaeology, Art, and Abandoned Urban Pl	53
PatronWorld – Digital Death for Artifici	53
When on Google Earth: Now on Facebook	53
A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder	52
Archaeology & Computing – some recor	51
When the Brain Drain gets Clogged	51
SLOODLE v 0.4 available: educational too	50
A Text Book in Agent Based Modelling	50
Reconstructing Hadrian’s Wall in Second	49
Piccolo for dynamic Harris Matrices (amo	49
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Ramo Games	48
Don’t Knock the Aztecs: Civ for History,	48
TinyMap vs. Platial	46
Responding to “Is PDQ a good idea?”	46
“Everything They Ever Wanted”: A NetLogo	46
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EJA Review Piece, ‘Second Lives: Online	46
The archaeology of digital landscapes	45
Digital Media and Learning Competition:	45
“Burial Passage” – Remixing Catalhoyuk	45
Dual Reality: blended learning at Covent	45
On Caesar IV and the Ancient Economy	44
BiblioCartography	44
Some Agent Reading	44
Life on Site: PKAP and Podcasts	43
The Audio-Guide 2.0: location-triggered	43
Let’s write a textbook	43
Nabonidus & RWU Virtual Excavation	43
RPA Field School Scholarship	43
Digital Research Tools Wiki	43
Interactive Fiction Competition	42
Digital Zaraka	42
Archaeology Island in Second Life	42
Collective Dynamics Group	42
Of Chapels, Clutter, and Archaeological	42
The Virtual Via Flaminia	42
Archaeological Projects funded by the Ar	41
Civilization Revolution	41
Conference Call for Papers: NORTH AMERIC	41
Civilized Education	41
Canadians on the Nile	40
Electric Archaeology: Research Notes – w	40
Archaeoinformatics and Digging Digitally	40
University of Leicester – Designing in S	39
Open Context	39
Giving a presentation in Second Life	38
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Dryad and Simplifying World Design	38
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Interactive Fiction experiment continues	38
Ryerson & Facebook	37
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Archaeology and the Visual – a conversat	37
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Vespasian, Civ IV, and Intro to Roman Cu	37
Nethernet Puzzle Contest: I am the Champ	35
Simulating History Research Lab	35
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Some More Agent Based Modelling Readings	34
User Experience of Reality & Gaming	34
The Plan	33
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PD(Q) – first edition	32
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Deadline Approaches: LEAP II, Internet A	32
Interviews with Digital Historians &	32
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Online learning in SL & RWU	31
Space as a change agent	30
Dodging Bullets in Presentations	30
When on Google Earth: now in its 21st it	30
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Comment on More spacial analysis… by Ryan << Stoa Comments

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:38:50 +0000

Some low-hanging fruit I can see would be for someone to mash it up with Pleiades (http://pleiades.stoa.org/), which is already providing modern coordinates and other metadata for ancient place names. Beyond the “gee-whiz” factor, this could actually be quite useful for performing statistical analysis of the modern topographical features of certain classes of ancient locations (e.g. ancient bridges) which may have been selected for or had an impact upon their environment. One can then imagine reversing the analysis to look at the SRTM data to classify other regions which have those features.

Similar to the SRTM data, the USGS also makes some of its Lidar data freely available (mostly US datasets): http://lidar.cr.usgs.gov/

New URL Pattern at American Numismatic Society << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:44:17 +0000

At the ANS, we are currently assigning hierarchical categories to all the objects in the database. You might think this had already been done, but in the pre-web world, when most of our 550,000 records were entered, it wasn't really necessary. If you wanted to find Byzantine Seals or Contorniates, you just went to the right tray and there they were.

In a webbie world, we want users to be able to navigate by well-known numismatic categories in order to access individual records, examination of which can suggest searches that will help one find what one is looking for. Keeping that goal in mind, our categories need to be sensible and recognizable, but do not need to carry an undue interpretive burden. It's OK that a user might question how we've arranged things, so long as we've helped her find what she's looking for.

Some examples:

Notes:
'--' separates the components of a category.

The URL prefix is http://numismatics.org/search/category/ . We're trying to make these search-engine friendly. We do intend for these to be stable, but aren't quite making the guarantee that we do about URLs of the form http://numismatics.org/collection/1944.100.81154. Those should work for as long as the DNS/URL paradigm is around.

Appending "/images" to a URL will show only records with images.

In the future, I expect that extensions such as ".atom", ".json", ".kml" will also have the desired result.

Again, the reason we're doing this is to ease the user experience. See the description of the ANS Roman collection for a preliminary deployment of these links in the real world. We hope it's a convenience that our Italic coins, for example, will be one click away.

Interoperation with Pleiades << Horothesia (Tom Elliott)

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Elliott) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:08:10 +0000

I've had a few questions lately about how other web-based publications could be designed to support interoperation with Pleiades. Here's my working advice:

Any project that wants to lay the groundwork for geographic interoperability on the basis of Pleiades should:

1. Capture and manage Pleiades identifiers (stable URLs like http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/638753/) for each place one might want to cite.

2. Request membership in the Pleiades community and add/modify content therein as necessary in order to create new resources (and new URLs) for places that Pleiades doesn't yet document, but which are provably historical and relevant to content controlled by the external project.

3. Capture and manage stable URLs from Wikipedia or GeoNames that correspond to modern geographic entities that are relevant to the content controlled by the external project. Don't conflate modern and ancient locations, as this will eventually lead to heartbreak.

4. Emit paged web feeds in the Atom Syndication Format (RFC 4287) that also conform to the guidance documented (with in-the-wild, third-party examples) at:

http://www.atlantides.org/trac/concordia/wiki/ConcordiaAtomFeeds

and make use of the terms defined at

http://www.atlantides.org/trac/concordia/wiki/ConcordiaThesaurus

to indicate publicly relationships such as "findspot" and "original location" between the content controlled by the external project, Pleiades resources, Wikipedia resources, GeoNames resources and resources published by other third parties.

5. Alert us so we can include the entry-point URL for the feeds in the seeded search horizon list for the web crawler and search index service we are developing.

You can see how the Epigraphic Databank Heidelberg team has been thinking about how to accomplish this at:

http://www.atlantides.org/trac/concordia/wiki/PleiadesMoI

and

http://www.atlantides.org/trac/concordia/wiki/EDHgeographyTable

Museums Explain Their Databases << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:20:32 +0000

It's a good thing that museums are increasingly putting their curatorial databases online for public browsing and searching. A minor aspect of this trend is the language institutions use to explain the state of their data. This post collects some examples of the genre.

The Brooklyn Museum has the following on its opening search page:

The material presented here represents only a fraction of that rich collection. The Museum is committed to making its collections accessible to the widest possible audience, and this site is an important part of that process. It is, however, a work in progress. We intend to continue to expand the number of works of art included on the site and to update information currently posted. We are making every effort to ensure that the information provided about our collection is accurate and up-to-date, but the nature of scholarship is that there are sometimes changes in information and new discoveries. If you believe you have information we should have about any of the works you find here, we would be happy to hear from you.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston shows this to start:

Note that some of the electronic records indicate that they have not been reviewed recently by curatorial staff and might need revision; also, please note that a small percentage of the MFA’s collection is not presently searchable online.

The indicated MFA records have this:

This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the MFA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.

That text is essentially identical to what appears on the Yale Art Gallery site

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.

In turn, that's not so far off from the Harvard Art Museum text:

This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. Please contact the curatorial department listed above for more information.

[[Note that I don't give a link into the Harvard website. The (almost unbelievable) explanation is that if you click on http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/collection/detail.dot?objectid=289448 you get a blank page. I clicked on the link from a search results page and saw information about a sherd of Roman pottery. Is it really possible that Harvard is checking a session id or the referrer and only displaying the info as part of an existing visit to the site? If so, that's highly (highly!) lame.]]

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has the following:

Due to the extremely large number of objects in the Museum's permanent collection, not all artworks are currently available in the Collection Database. Furthermore, information contained in the database records is, in some cases, incomplete, and all information is subject to change according to ongoing research and new acquisitions.

The British Museum just puts "Noticed a mistake? Have some extra information about this object? Please contact us." on its individual object pages. That's in the same spirit as the more extended explanations from other institutions.

Overall, these texts represent a mode of sharing data that is welcome. Better to make slightly incorrect or outdated data available than to hold on tight to it. That's especially the case when there are images of the objects as well.

Mediterranean Ceramics Reference Stability Report, Number 8 << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:40:22 +0000

The MCRSR first appeared in October, 2007. This is the first new installment since April 2008.

As I noted then, the JSTOR link to number 2 takes me to a login page. I still find it odd that no indication of the title of the work is given. When I am logged into JSTOR via UPenn, the link works.

Number 10, which was the Perseus Project Vase Catalog, is now part of the Persues Project Art and Archaeology Artifact Browser. The old URI does not work on the main Perseus site.

No new references have been added.

I have seen that some of these resources have improved URIs, meaning they are shorter and with fewer '?','&' and '=' characters. That's a welcome development and I will update the addresses next time round.

1. Walters' Catalogue of the Roman Pottery in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum from Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=M2UEAAAAYAAJ

2. Robinson's Agora V from JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/i285178, previously http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1558-8610%281959%295%3C%3E1.0.CO%3B2-3 [noted April 2008].

3. Lattara 6: http://www.lattara.net/LATTARAPUB/PUBLAT/LATTARA6/lattara6.html

4. K. Greene's AJA article on Early Roman lead glazed pottery: http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/111.4/AJA1114_Greene.pdf

5. Heath and Tekkök, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Pottery at Ilion (Troia): http://classics.uc.edu/troy/grbpottery/

6. Vessel from Çatalhoyuk (via Flickr): http://www.flickr.com/photos/catalhoyuk/971964416/

7. A Late Minoan III Pyxis from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/03/eus/hod_1999.423.htm

8. An undocumented ARS Hayes 70 bowl from the dealer Classical Numismatics Group: http://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=86618

9. Fifteenth Century Mosque Lamp from Jerusalem now in the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/m/mosque_lamp.aspx

10. The Perseus Project Vase Catalog: now part of http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/artifactBrowser, previously http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0043 [noted December 2009].

11. Wikimedia Commons Image of a Greek Geometric Skyphos in the Louvre: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Skyphos_birds_Louvre_CA3822.jpg

12. Sagalassos from Pleiades: http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/639087

13. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (HTML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/iAph150353.html

14. Inscribed pot from Aphrodisias (XML): http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/iaph2007/xml/iAph150353.xml

15. Hellenistic lamp from Assos, Turkey at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: http://mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=199476&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=84%2E110&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=2&coll_sort_order=0&coll_view=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1

16. Open Context record for Halaf period jar from Domuztepe, Turkey: http://www.opencontext.org/database/space.php?item=14926_DT_Spatial

17. Abbasid Ceramics from the Museum With No Frontiers: http://www.discoverislamicart.org/exhibitions/ISL/the_abbasids/exhibition.php?theme=5

18. Roman Amphorae: a digital resource: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/resources.html?amphora2005

Aegean Amphora at Dura Europos << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:01:55 +0000

As a follow up to the last post, here's a 3rd to 5th century AD Middle Roman Amphora 7 from Dura, now at Yale. It's essentially uncataloged but there's no doubt about what it is.

Dura Europos Pottery at Yale << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:34:41 +0000

This is just a brief post to say that I've been enjoying looking at images of the pottery from Dura Europos that is now at the Yale University Art Gallery. At the time of writing, you can get to it by following this link. If that doesn't work try "Syrian, Dura-Europos" in the culture field and "Containers - Ceramic" in the classification field.

The Gallery's database is pretty nice. I'll give its URLs for addressing individual records a B+. Here's an example: http://ecatalogue.art.yale.edu/detail.htm?objectId=3432 . It would be better if that were something like http://art.yale.edu/objectid/3432 , but I'm a quibbler for good looking identifiers.

Sometimes the information is limited. For example, 1938.5011 is definitely Eastern Sigillata A, and 1938.4969 looks to be African Red Slip. I do hesitate to identify from images, but again 1938.4980 sure looks like ARS.

The above is not a complaint. Similarly to many online museum databases, Yale displays the following text with each record:

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.

It's great that museums aren't hiding their data just because it's incomplete or incorrect. It's more useful just to put it out there so interested folk like me can have fun browsing.

Bridging Institutional Repository and Bibliographic Management << Horothesia (Tom Elliott)

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Elliott) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:21:32 +0000

As an institution, ISAW has an interest in disseminating, preserving and promoting the research products and publications of its faculty, research staff, students, affiliates and collaborators. Our parent institution, NYU, has made a commitment to the persistent dissemination of such materials when voluntarily contributed to its Faculty Digital Archive (FDA). We'll use the FDA as a locus for materials that fit well into DSpace (with which the FDA is realized) and that aren't rights-constrained. But we also need mechanisms for developing and publishing the whole bibliographic story of a particular faculty member, research group, project or conference with links from the individual entries to digital copies wherever they may be (e.g., the FDA, JSTOR, Internet Archive, Google Books). For this function, we like Zotero. Atop Zotero's robust and ubiquitous feed documents, we can build interoperability with our website and other tools and venues in a way that is also completely visible to commercial and third-party search and discovery tools.

There will be a number of iterations necessary to reach a fully robust solution, but we're already taking some of the first steps.

As an early experiment with the FDA, we had a student assistant input all of my boss's articles in PDF format, along with descriptive metadata (see: Roger Bagnall's Publications). The default metadata schema in the FDA wasn't a perfect fit for journal article citations, but the FDA staff is now working with us to extend the schema to meet our needs. We're using the Zotero data model as a guide.

Given that the metadata in this collection is the only structured dataset around for Roger's articles, I wanted to be able to get it all back out to use for other things. The FDA does provide web feeds, but (unlike Zotero) these aren't comprehensive for a given context and don't incorporate all the metadata fields. But we can use FDA's OAI-PMH interface to get the full metadata with a query like:

http://archive.nyu.edu/request?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=hdl_2451_28115

where "hdl_2451_28115" is the identifier for the "Roger Bagnall's Publications" container I linked to above. (Special thanks to Ekaterina Pechekhonova on the NYU Digital Library team, who helped me with syntax).

As a further experiment, I wrote an XSL transform to convert the OAI-PMH XML document into the RDF XML Zotero can import. There are a couple of inelegant hacks in the transform (mainly to get at substrings within single fields), but I'm still happy with the results. The import into Zotero went smoothly:

http://www.zotero.org/paregorios/items/collection/1505597

Next steps: move this to a shared Zotero library so Roger, a student assistant and members of our digital projects team can collaborate to enter the rest of the publications (books, book sections, etc.) and fix any errors in the article records. Then we'll look at the process for using that metadata (via another transform) to help us populate the FDA. We'll also start working on parsing and aggregating Zotero's feeds for use on our website (in Roger's online profile and aggregated with other affiliates' feeds to provide a "recent publications" section).

We're also experimenting with Zotero for the bibliography of our Pleiades project (a collaborative online gazetteer of the Greek and Roman world), and as a component in a potential replacement for the Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets. On a more personal level, I've taken to doing all my bookmarking with Zotero and have set up a folder in my library (with associated feed) so that colleagues can following what I'm citing on a daily basis.

Protecting Archaeology in Italy, Now by Email << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:25:05 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the upcoming Nov. 13th meeting of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee. I am now getting reports that people have sent in their letters by fax. This is great. I have also heard that messages sent by regular mail will take weeks to arrive. That makes e-mail a good alternative. The address is culprop@state.gov. Attaching a word document to that address is a good idea. Or the fax number is (202) 632–6300 .

Some relevant links.

In 2001 the US and Italy signed a Memorandum of Understanding. You can read that here as a PDF:
http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop/itfact/pdfs/it2001mou.pdf

Article II of the MoU was amended in 2006. Here's a link:
http://culturalheritage.state.gov/it06agr.html

And as a pdf:
http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop/itfact/pdfs/it2006mouext.pdf

Here's the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affair's (ECA) page for the agreement with Italy:
http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop/itfact.html

And, finally, the page for the Cultural Property Advisory Committee:
http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop/committee.html

If you're interested in the topic, it is worthwhile to poke around the ECA site. There is lots of good information there.

But to emphasize my main point, please write a letter. The deadline is Monday, November 2nd so that the culprop@state.gov may be the best way to communicate. If you have letterhead and no fax machine, make a scan at 8-bit 100 dpi and attach that. Here's the e-mail again: culprop@state.gov .

Protecting Archaeology in Italy, Nov. 2nd Deadline << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:58:36 +0000

The primary US mechanism for regulating the trade in illegally excavated antiquities is a series of agreements with other countries that specify what can be imported and how the two countries are going to co-operate to promote the preservation of cultural patrimony.

On Nov. 13th, the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, which helps draft and review such agreements, is meeting in Washington, D.C. to consider the Memorandum of Understanding with Italy.

The full-text of the agreement can be found here
http://culturalheritage.state.gov/it06agr.html.

The call for the meeting is here:
http://culturalheritage.state.gov/whatsnew.html. Follow the link at
the top right for more specifics.

The announcement of the meeting includes the following:

"With respect to comments on the interim review of the Memorandum of Understanding Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Italy Concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Archaeological Material Representing the Pre-Classical, Classical and Imperial Roman Periods of Italy, concluded on
January 19, 2001, and extended in 2006, oral comments must be limited to Article II of this MOU."

Article II concerns actions that both the US and Italy are supposed to take to implement the MoU. I am writing now to encourage readers either to write a letter to CPAC commenting on Italy's actions under Article II.

Letters that address specific actions by Italy that fall under Article II and which benefit or affect the writer are the most useful. But the bar is low, so to speak. If you excavate in Italy, have conducted research there, have seen Italian material on loan to American museums, or have used such material in your teaching, that counts.

Discussion of loans is particularly important. Museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Getty Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Princteton University Art Museum, the Morgan Library in NYC, the Meadow Museum at Southern Methodist University and others have Italian material on loan. If you have seen these objects and enjoyed them, please write.

Letters do not need to be long. Without meaning to provide too much unnecessary advice: the opening sentence should say you're writing about the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and the Republic of Italy. Give a brief introduction (I am a teacher/professor/student/archaeologist/member of the public), and then a few examples of personal impact. End with a call for continued co-operation between the two countries.

DEADLINES: letters need to be received on Nov. 2. They can be faxed to (202) 632–6300 or sent to

Cultural Heritage Center,
SA–5, Fifth Floor,
Department of State, Washington,
DC 20522–0505.

Every letter counts so please write if you can.

Imported map directories 7, 8 << Pleiades Site News

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:20:37 +0000

Map directories 7 and 8 have been imported.

Imported map directory 77 << Pleiades Site News

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:54:19 +0000

Map directory 77 has been imported

Anglican Options in the UK << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:57:40 +0000

The continuing echo of late antiquity in the modern world is of interest to me. This comes to mind in light of the announcement from the Vatican that it will allow Anglicans to convert while "preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage". I note that there is an alternative that looks back further than the reformation.

The document British Orthodox Heritage Resurgance starts with the paragraph:

For a thousand years, from AD37-45 to AD1054-66, the people living in the British Isles believed and worshipped God as an integral part of the undivided Orthodox Church. That Church was governed world wide by five Patriarchs, those of Constantinople (the Ecumenical Patriarch), Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. The Church in the British Isles was a local expression of the common Christian Faith held throughout the world. The great saints of the British Isles such as Saint Aidan, Saint David, Saint Patrick, Saint Alban, Saint Chad, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Boniface, Saint Dunstan etc., were all members of that Orthodox Catholic Church in the British Isles which continued for a thousand years.

AD 1054 is, of course, the year of the so-called Great Schism, one of a series of events that lead to the remarkable variety of christian liturgy and doctrine that exists today. While I don't mean to comment on the historicity of the document, I do like the living offering of the pentarchy as a model for modern church government and self-description. Can't we just go back to the Middle Ages?

Brief Thoughts on EPUB Books at Google << Sebastian Heath (Mediterranean Ceramics)

noreply@blogger.com (Sebastian Heath) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:11:47 +0000

I've been playing with downloading epub books from Google. EPUB is a format for digital publication targeted to portable readers. That's not what I care about right now. It is cool that it uses plain old xhtml and standard image formats to represent the contents of a book. That means if you can unpack an EPUB file, which is very easy, you have access to text and images in readily consumable form.

I'm not the first to point this out. See Greg Crane What do you do with a Million Books for early thinking on the large scale implications of Google's work.

In terms of playing, here's what's fun. If you go to the G Books page for H. Chase's Catalogue of Arretine pottery from the MFA, you'll see a link to download the "EPUB" version.

Once you've downloaded that file, it's easy to unpack. I'm a Mac/Linux user. If you are too, and you like the command line, 'unzip Catalogue_of_Arretine_pottery.epub' will do the trick. Otherwise, change the extension to ".zip" and double-click on the file. I'm sure something similar will work in Windows.

Once unpacked, you have two directories, 'OEBPS' and 'META-INF'. The first is the one with all the goodies in it. Open 'OEBPS/images' and you'll see the plates from the book. Those files aren't hi-res, but better than nothing.

The text is the in 'Content-###.xml' files. These can be opened in a browser directly.

As people like Greg have noted, cool things will happen when communities, such as scholars/enthusiasts of the ancient Mediterranean world, take these files and add value to them. In the meantime, I like being able to get at the images, and to have the text on my hard-drive so its available for searching. On the Mac, Spotlight does a good job of indexing the Content files. It also indexes the compressed archives when their extensions are ".zip". It seems to ignore the ".epub" files but I bet that will change soon enough.

Imported map directories 72, 86-87 << Pleiades Site News

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:35:16 +0000

Map directories 72, 86, and 87 have been imported