Cyber Archaeology And Grand Narratives

This volume asks how the current Information Technology Revolution influences archaeological interpretations of techno-social change. Does cyber-archaeology provide a way to breathe new life into grand narratives of technological revolution and culture change, or does it further challenge these high-level theoretical explanations? Do digital recording methods have the potential to create large, regional-scale databases to ease investigation of high-level theoretical issues, or have they simply exposed deeper issues of archaeological practice that prevent this? In short, this volume cuts beyond platitudes about the revolutionary potential of the Information Technology Revolution and instead critically engages both its possibilities and limitations. The contributions to this volume are drawn from long-term regional studies employing a cyber-archaeology framework, primarily in the southern Levant, a region with rich archaeological data sets spanning the Paleolithic to the present day. As such, contributors are uniquely placed to comment on the interface between digital methods and grand narratives of long-term techno-social change. Cyber-Archaeology and Grand Narratives provides a much-needed challenge to current approaches, and a first step toward integrating innovative digital methods with archaeological theory.

This volume presents a collection of studies by international experts on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society, economy, religion, language, culture, and history, synthesizing archaeological remains and integrating them with discussions of ancient Near Eastern and biblical texts. Driven by theoretically and methodologically informed discussions of the archaeology of the Iron Age Levant, the 47 chapters in The Ancient Israelite World provide foundational, accessible, and detailed studies in their respective topics. The volume considers the history of interpretation of ancient Israel, studies on various aspects of ancient Israel’s society and history, and avenues for present and future approaches to the ancient Israelite world. Accompanied by over 150 maps and figures, it allows the reader to gain an understanding of key issues that archaeologists, historians and biblical scholars have faced and are currently facing as they attempt to better understand ancient Israelite society. The Ancient Israelite World is an essential reference work for students and scholars of ancient Israel and its history, culture, and society, whether they are historians, archaeologists or biblical scholars.

The increasingly pervasive use of digital technology has catapulted society into an interconnected world where the natural boundaries between humankind and machine, virtual and real, individual and community have become less perceptible. As individuals interact with different digital technologies, they must build a digital intelligence, which must be further cultivated as it is a key competency for the future of school and work. Digital intelligence includes understanding the mutual strengths between people and technology, as well as developing an awareness in the use of digital tools in order to avoid common threats such as cyberbullying, addiction to video games, techno-stress, and more. As adolescents continue to engage with virtual reality and 3D virtual worlds where the online and offline overlap and coincide, it is important to build this intelligence as well as utilize these technologies to promote successful learning. The Handbook of Research on Teaching With Virtual Environments and AI explores the new personalized educational opportunities that are available with digital technology and virtual environments that can be used within education. This book focuses on the use of these tools and how to navigate the use of new technologies such as AI and virtual environments for educational practices. While highlighting topics such as virtual worlds, game-based learning, intelligent tutoring, augmented reality, and more, this book is ideal for teachers, administrators, technologists, educational software developers, IT specialists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how virtual environments and AI are being implemented in teaching practices.

This contributed volume book aims at discussing transdisciplinary approaches to address common problems. By working transdisciplinarily, researchers coming from different disciplines can work jointly using a shared conceptual framework bringing together disciplinary-specific theories and concepts. There are numerous barriers that can obstruct effective communication between different cultures, communities, religions and geographies. This book shows that through bringing together different disciplines, researchers not only can surpass these barriers but can effectively produce new venues of thought that can positively affect the development and evolution of research and education. The book discusses new and emerging applications of knowledge produced by transdisciplinary efforts and covers the interplay of many disciplines, including agriculture, economics, mathematics, engineering, industry, information technology, marketing, nanoscience, neuroscience, space exploration, human-animal relationships, among others. Consequently, it also covers the relationship between art and science, as one of the most remarkable transdisciplinary approaches that paves the way for new methods in engineering, design, architecture and many other fields.

This open-access book surveys how digital technology can contribute effectively to improving our understanding of the past, through a sensory engagement based on the evidence of material culture. In particular, it encourages specialists to consider senses and human agency as important factors in studying ancient space, while recognising the role played by digital tools in enhancing a human-centred form of analysis. Significant advances in archaeological computing, digital methods, and sensory approaches have led archaeologists to rethink strategies and methods for creating narratives of the past. Recent progress in data visualisation and implementation, as well as other nascent digital sensory methods, means that it is now easier to explore and experience ancient space from a multiscalar perspective, from the individual body or single building to the wider landscape. The chapters in Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies present innovative methods for representing an embodied experience of ancient space, simulating (but not recreating) ancient behaviours and social interaction. Chapters cover topics including the potentials and pitfalls of visualising, recreating, and re-enacting/experiencing the senses in Virtual Reality environments and also digital reconstructions and auralisations of ancient spaces to study sound sensory perception. Overall, the book demonstrates that multisensory approaches can give a new perspective on how ancient spaces were intended to be used by inhabitants to fulfil a series of purposes including conveying messages and regulating movement. This is an open-access book.

This volume of collected studies takes stock of most recent developments in Egyptology and the Digital Humanities, considering future directions for the application of new technologies in Egyptology. The book presents the results of an international conference held in 2019 at Indiana University – Bloomington, in which Egyptologists and digital humanists with interest in Egyptology gathered in 2019 to present current projects in 3D modeling, virtual and augmented reality, game technology, digital pedagogy, database projects, computational and corpus linguistics and E-publications. Those projects, along with a selection of others that were not presented in Bloomington, are now described and discussed in this volume.

This two-volume book presents cutting-edge archaeological research, primarily as practiced in the Eastern Mediterranean region. These volumes’ key foci are inspired by the work of Thomas E. Levy. Volume 1 provides an in-depth look at new archaeological research in the southern Levant (primarily in modern Israel and Jordan) inspired by Levy’s commitment to understanding social, political, and economic processes in a long-term or “deep time” perspective. Volume 2 focuses on new research in several key areas of 21st century anthropological archaeology and archaeological science. Volume 1 is organized around two major themes: 1) the later prehistory of the southern Levant, or the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age, and 2) new research in biblical archaeology, or the historical archaeology of the Iron Age. Each section contains a combination of new perspectives on key debates and studies introducing new research questions and directions. Volume 2 is organized around five major themes: 1) the archaeology of the Faynan copper ore district of southern Jordan, a key region for archaeometallurgical research in West Asia where Levy conducted field research for over a decade, 2) new research in archaeometallurgy beyond the Faynan region, 3) marine and maritime archaeology, focusing on issues of trade and environmental change, 4) cyber-archaeology, an important 21st century field Levy conceived as “the marriage of archaeology, engineering, computer science, and the natural sciences,” and 5) key issues in anthropological archaeological theory. In addition to presenting the reader with an up-to-date view of research in each of these areas, the volume also has chapters exploring the connections between these themes, e.g. the maritime trade of metals and cyber-/digital archaeological approaches to metallurgy. The work contains contributions from both up-and-coming early career researchers and key established figures in their fields. This book is an essential reference for archaeologists and scholars in related disciplines working in the southern Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Archaeological 3D GIS provides archaeologists with a guide to explore and understand the unprecedented opportunities for collecting, visualising, and analysing archaeological datasets in three dimensions. With platforms allowing archaeologists to link, query, and analyse in a virtual, georeferenced space information collected by different specialists, the book highlights how it is possible to re-think aspects of theory and practice which relate to GIS. It explores which questions can be addressed in such a new environment and how they are going to impact the way we interpret the past. By using material from several international case studies such as Pompeii, Çatalhöyük, as well as prehistoric and protohistoric sites in Southern Scandinavia, this book discusses the use of the third dimension in support of archaeological practice. This book will be essential for researchers and scholars who focus on archaeology and spatial analysis, and is designed and structured to serve as a textbook for GIS and digital archaeology courses. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.