Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology

This project brings together pioneers in the field during a two-day workshop to discuss the use, creation, and implementation of mobile tablet technology to advance paperless archaeology. Session themes will facilitate presentation, demonstration, and discussion on how archaeologists around the world use tablets or other digital tools in the field and lab and how best practices can be implemented across projects. The workshop will highlight the advantages and future of mobile computing and its challenges and limitations. The workshop will consist of formal paper sessions and opportunities for informal discussion of the issues and themes at moderated discussions, demonstrations, round tables, and speaker meals. The workshop's goal is to synthesize current practices and establish a blueprint for creating best practices and moving forward with mobile tablets in archaeology. The data generated will be made available through a website to promote ongoing discussion and information sharing

(Re)Constructing Antiquity : 3D Modeling the Terracotta Figurines from Athienou-Malloura, Cyprus

The Athienou Archaeological Project has been investigating long-term cultural change at the site of Athienou-Malloura and the surrounding region since 1990 through systematic excavation and pedestrian survey. The site was occupied for nearly 3,000 years, beginning in the early first millennium BCE. Our investigations have unearthed domestic, religious, and funerary contexts, with an impressive assemblage of material remains. The focus of excavations for the last decade has been the extra-urb..

0.2. Mobile Computing in Archaeology: Exploring and Interpreting Current Practices

Since 2010, a range of mobile and internet-connected tablet computing devices (e.g., iPads) have been integrated into archaeological practice, with projects experimenting with new approaches to documenting, interpreting, and publishing material culture. The rapid pace of this change has led to a tension in the discipline as archaeologists have begun to realize how creating and manipulating born-digital data could fundamentally alter archaeological knowledge production. We are thus at a critical time for archaeology as it moves from a paper-based discipline to an increasingly digital one. There is a growing sense that the change is good, but that it must be critically and reflexively embraced to prevent the discipline from losing what has made it so vital to social discourse: its ability to shed light on the human past. This contribution outlines the debates surrounding digital archaeologies while laying the groundwork for their reflexive and ethical application. As the introductory chapter to Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future, it draws on over twenty studies of contemporary digital archaeological practices to suggest that the transition to paperless workflows is an ongoing process that has the potential to improve archaeological interpretations. This review of current practices engages with the collection, manipulation, interpretation, and dissemination of archaeological data as it passes through the digital filter from trench side to the digital repository and examines what is being gained, lost, or changed through such processes. This overview not only presents a concise and informative introduction to the timely themes explored in the volume, but also offers a cumulative, informed, and critical perspective on how digital technologies are transforming archaeology and what it can tell us about the past.https://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1001/thumbnail.jp

Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future : The Potential of Digital Archaeology

Mobilizing the Past is a collection of 20 articles that explore the use and impact of mobile digital technology in archaeological field practice. The detailed case studies present in this volume range from drones in the Andes to iPads at Pompeii, digital workflows in the American Southwest, and examples of how bespoke, DIY, and commercial software provide solutions and craft novel challenges for field archaeologists. The range of projects and contexts ensures that Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future is far more than a state-of-the-field manual or technical handbook. Instead, the contributors embrace the growing spirit of critique present in digital archaeology. This critical edge, backed by real projects, systems, and experiences, gives the book lasting value as both a glimpse into present practices as well as the anxieties and enthusiasm associated with the most recent generation of mobile digital tools. This book emerged from a workshop funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities held in 2015 at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. The workshop brought together over 20 leading practitioners of digital archaeology in the U.S. for a weekend of conversation. The papers in this volume reflect the discussions at this workshop with significant additional content. Starting with an expansive introduction and concluding with a series of reflective papers, this volume illustrates how tablets, connectivity, sophisticated software, and powerful computers have transformed field practices and offer potential for a radically transformed discipline.https://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1000/thumbnail.jp

0.2. Mobile Computing in Archaeology: Exploring and Interpreting Current Practices

Since 2010, a range of mobile and internet-connected tablet computing devices (e.g., iPads) have been integrated into archaeological practice, with projects experimenting with new approaches to documenting, interpreting, and publishing material culture. The rapid pace of this change has led to a tension in the discipline as archaeologists have begun to realize how creating and manipulating born-digital data could fundamentally alter archaeological knowledge production. We are thus at a critical time for archaeology as it moves from a paper-based discipline to an increasingly digital one. There is a growing sense that the change is good, but that it must be critically and reflexively embraced to prevent the discipline from losing what has made it so vital to social discourse: its ability to shed light on the human past. This contribution outlines the debates surrounding digital archaeologies while laying the groundwork for their reflexive and ethical application. As the introductory chapter to Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future, it draws on over twenty studies of contemporary digital archaeological practices to suggest that the transition to paperless workflows is an ongoing process that has the potential to improve archaeological interpretations. This review of current practices engages with the collection, manipulation, interpretation, and dissemination of archaeological data as it passes through the digital filter from trench side to the digital repository and examines what is being gained, lost, or changed through such processes. This overview not only presents a concise and informative introduction to the timely themes explored in the volume, but also offers a cumulative, informed, and critical perspective on how digital technologies are transforming archaeology and what it can tell us about the past.https://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1001/thumbnail.jp

1.4. DIY Digital Workflows on the Athienou Archaeological Project, Cyprus

For the last 25 years, the Athienou Archaeological Project (AAP) has conducted pedestrian survey and excavations of domestic, religious, and funerary sites in the Malloura Valley on Cyprus. To enhance the project’s research goals, excavation methods, and pedagogical mission, AAP has recognized the utility of thoughtfully integrating emergent technologies into the excavation process and has acknowledged the importance of acquainting students with such technologies. Indeed, AAP has participated in the transition from handwritten notebooks to born-digital, tablet-based recording. In 2011 AAP was among the earliest projects to embrace the “paperless” archaeology revolution that is quickly becoming standard in field archaeology. This chapter describes AAP’s transition to a do-it-yourself (DIY) hybrid archaeological recording system that integrates both born-digital and tablet-based on-site methods with existing paper-based modes of field recording. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of system implementation and consider the impact of born-digital data recording on project workflows, research, and teaching.https://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/1005/thumbnail.jp

Art and religion in the Cypriote Mesaoria. The view from Athienou-Malloura

La sculpture votive constitue une documentation particulièrement intéressante dans le cadre d'une approche régionale de l'archéologie de Chypre. Les nombreuses sculptures de calcaire et de terre cuite témoignent d'un intense mouvement d'idées religieuses et artistiques qui offrent des indices sur les échanges intra-régionaux. Un des meilleurs endroits pour étudier ces échanges est le paysage religieux de la Mesaoria, parsemée de sanctuaires regroupés autour des centres urbains importants (Kition, Salamine, Golgoi, Idalion, Tamassos). À partir des fouilles d'Athienou-Malloura, j'examine les thymiateria en calcaire portant l'image d'une divinité à cornes de bélier généralement appelée Zeus-Ammon, qui, dans au moins cinq sanctuaires, faisait partie d'une triade avec les types divins dits «Héraklès chypriote » et «Pan » : ils révèlent des parallèles iconographiques et des attributs mettant en avant leur rôle de «potnios theron » (maître des animaux). On a jusqu'ici souligné plutôt les différences entre les images divines : je démontre que ces attributs représentent une construction idéologique commune dans le cadre d'un culte régional, et sont différentes manifestations d'une même divinité principale. Un modèle d'assimilation divine met en évidence l'existence d'une koine religieuse dans la Mesaoria aux périodes archaïque, classique et hellénistique, et rend compte des similarités stylistiques et typologiques évoquées plus haut.Counts Derek. Art and religion in the Cypriote Mesaoria. The view from Athienou-Malloura. In: Cahiers du Centre d'Etudes Chypriotes. Volume 34, 2004. pp. 173-190

Prolegomena to the study of Cypriote sculpture

Counts Derek. Prolegomena to the study of Cypriote sculpture. In: Cahiers du Centre d'Etudes Chypriotes. Volume 31, 2001. pp. 129-181

Hybridity and Representation in an Ancient Mediterranean Context: The Cultures In-Between Cypriote Culture

This working paper examines the art, culture, and religion of ancient Cyprus in order to study the ancient Mediterranean in the context of a global community

Artemis at Athienou-Malloura

Les fouilles récentes sur le site de Malloura de la mission archéologique d'Athiénou (en activité depuis 1990) ont mis au jour une tête féminine qui présente une ressemblance frappante avec des représentations de la déesse Artémis trouvées à Chypre. Cette tête s'ajoute à deux autres statuettes d'Artémis, conservées au Louvre, qui ont été trouvées à Malloura dans les fouilles effectuées par Vogiié, Waddington et Duthoit en 1862. Cette découverte suscite un regain d'intérêt pour la présence de la déesse dans le sanctuaire au Ve s. av. J.-C.Counts Derek, Toumazou Michael K. Artemis at Athienou-Malloura. In: Cahiers du Centre d'Etudes Chypriotes. Volume 33, 2003. pp. 237-251