Heritage And Archaeology In The Digital Age

This book examines how computer-based programs can be used to acquire ‘big’ digital cultural heritage data, curate, and disseminate it over the Internet and in 3D visualization platforms with the ultimate goal of creating long-lasting “digital heritage repositories.’ The organization of the book reflects the essence of new technologies applied to cultural heritage and archaeology. Each of these stages bring their own challenges and considerations that need to be dealt with. The authors in each section present case studies and overviews of how each of these aspects might be dealt with. While technology is rapidly changing, the principles laid out in these chapters should serve as a guide for many years to come. The influence of the digital world on archaeology and cultural heritage will continue to shape these disciplines as advances in these technologies facilitate new lines of research. serif">The book is divided into three sections covering acquisition, curation, and dissemination (the major life cycles of cultural heritage data). Acquisition is one of the fundamental challenges for practitioners in heritage and archaeology, and the chapters in this section provide a template that highlights the principles for present and future work that will provide sustainable models for digital documentation. Following acquisition, the next section highlights how equally important curation is as the future of digital documentation depends on it. Preservation of digital data requires preservation that can guarantee a future for generations to come. The final section focuses on dissemination as it is what pushes the data beyond the shelves of storage and allows the public to experience the past through these new technologies, but also opens new lines of investigation by giving access to these data to researchers around the globe. Digital technology promises significant changes in how we approach social sciences, cultural heritage, and archaeology. However, researchers must consider not only the acquisition and curation, but also the dissemination of these data to their colleagues and the public. Throughout the book, many of the authors have highlighted the usefulness of Structure from Motion (SfM) work for cultural heritage documentation; others the utility and excitement of crowdsourcing as a ‘citizen scientist’ tool to engage not only trained students and researchers, but also the public in the cyber-archaeology endeavor. Both innovative tools facilitate the curation of digital cultural heritage and its dissemination. Together with all the chapters in this volume, the authors will help archaeologists, researchers interested in the digital humanities and scholars who focus on digital cultural heritage to assess where the field is and where it is going.

Heritage is everywhere, and an understanding of our past is increasingly critical to the understanding of our contemporary cultural context and place in global society. Visual Heritage in the Digital Age presents the state-of-the-art in the application of digital technologies to heritage studies, with the chapters collectively demonstrating the ways in which current developments are liberating the study, conservation and management of the past. Digital approaches to heritage have developed significantly over recent decades in terms of both the quantity and range of applications. However, rather than merely improving and enriching the ways in which we understand and engage with the past, this technology is enabling us to do this in entirely new ways. The chapters contained within this volume present a broad range of technologies for capturing data (such as high-definition laser scanning survey and geophysical survey), modelling (including GIS, data fusion, agent-based modelling), and engaging with heritage through novel digital interfaces (mobile technologies and the use of multi-touch interfaces in public spaces). The case studies presented include sites, landscapes and buildings from across Europe, North and Central America, and collections relating to the ancient civilisations of the Middle East and North Africa. The chronological span is immense, extending from the end of the last ice age through to the twentieth century. These case studies reveal new ways of approaching heritage using digital tools, whether from the perspective of interrogating historical textual data, or through the applications of complexity theory and the modelling of agents and behaviours. Beyond the data itself, Visual Heritage in the Digital Age also presents fresh ways of thinking about digital heritage. It explores more theoretical perspectives concerning the role of digital data and the challenges that are presented in terms of its management and preservation.

Every part of archaeological practice is intimately tied to digital technologies, but how deeply do we really understand the ways these technologies impact the theoretical trends in archaeology, how these trends affect the adoption of these technologies, or how the use of technology alters our interactions with the human past? This volume suggests a critical approach to archaeology in a digital world, a purposeful and systematic application of digital tools in archaeology. This is a call to pay attention to your digital tools, to be explicit about how you are using them, and to understand how they work and impact your own practice. The chapters in this volume demonstrate how this critical, reflexive approach to archaeology in the digital age can be accomplished, touching on topics that include 3D data, predictive and procedural modelling, digital publishing, digital archiving, public and community engagement, ethics, and global sustainability. The scale and scope of this research demonstrates how necessary it is for all archaeological practitioners to approach this digital age with a critical perspective and to be purposeful in our use of digital technologies.

Exploring the use of digital methods in heritage studies and archaeological research The two volumes of Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice bring together archaeologists and heritage professionals from private, public, and academic sectors to discuss practical applications of digital and computational approaches to the field. Contributors thoughtfully explore the diverse and exciting ways in which digital methods are being deployed in archaeological interpretation and analysis, museum collections and archives, and community engagement, as well as the unique challenges that these approaches bring. This volume begins with discussions of digitization at museums and other heritage institutions, including ethical questions around access to archives associated with descendant communities and the use of metadata standards to preserve records for the future. Next, case studies provide several examples of public and community engagement with archaeology using digital tools. The volume concludes with information on ways archaeologists have taught digital methods to both students and professionals, addressing field school contexts and open source software for mapping and 3D imaging. Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice highlights the importance of community, generosity, and openness in the use of digital tools and technologies. Providing a purposeful counterweight to the idea that digital archaeology requires expensive infrastructure, proprietary software, complicated processes, and opaque workflows, these volumes privilege perspectives that embrace straightforward and transparent approaches as models for the future. Contributors: Lynne Goldstein | Ethan Watrall | Katie Kirakosian | Irene Gates | Elizabeth Galvin | Jennifer Wexler | Adam Rabinowitz | Elizabeth Minor | Paola Favela | McKenna Morris | Kalei Oliver | Georgia Oppenheim | Rachael Tao | Marta Lorenzon | Rick Bonnie | Suzie Thomas | Katherine Cook | Eero Hyvönen | Esko Ikkala | Mikko Koho | Jouni Tuominen | Anna Wessman | Ashley Peles | Alexis Pantos | Sara Perry | L. Meghan Dennis | Harald Fredheim | Shawn Graham | Stacey L. Camp | Benjamin Carter | Autumn Painter | Sarah M. Rowe | Katheryn Sampeck | Heather McKillop

In late August 2015, international media outlets and cultural institutions reported that the Islamic State beheaded the Syrian scholar Khaled al Asaad and destroyed the 1st-century CE Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Syria. The world was horrorstruck. Apart from the human tragedy, archaeologists and the international communities were shocked by the wanton destruction of ancient remains that had survived for millennia. However, warfare and ideological destruction contribute just a fraction of the ongoing devastation of our forebears' traces. This book brings attention to the magnitude of the silent loss of cultural heritage occurring worldwide and the even more insidious loss of knowledge due to the lack of publication and preservation of original data, notes, plans, and photographs of excavated archaeological sites. Highlighting a growing sense of urgency to intervene in whatever way possible, this book provides readers with a non-technical overview of how archaeologists and other stakeholders are increasingly turning to digital methods to mitigate some of the threats to at-risk cultural heritage. This volume is a gateway to enhancing the scale and reach of capturing, analyzing, managing, curating, and disseminating cultural heritage knowledge in sustainable ways and promoting collaboration among scholars and stakeholder communities.

A Companion to Heritage Studies BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY A Companion to Heritage Studies “This Companion provides a gateway to heritage studies for students and scholars alike. Taken together, the essays testify to how exciting and dynamic this field has become.” Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, University of Iceland “Interdisciplinary and international in scope, A Companion to Heritage Studies succeeds in bringing together critical and practical, historicizing and future-oriented scholarship on what has become an all-pervasive global interest and industry, passion and resource.” Regina F. Bendix, Göttingen University, Germany “A vast and complete overview of the contemporary challenges of heritage preservation and management. This is an important book for practitioners, planners, and policy makers. The Companion fills a gap and helps address many of the uncomfortable questions heritage preservation is facing today.” Francesco Bandarin, Special Advisor to UNESCO for Heritage and Professor, University Iuav of Venice A Companion to Heritage Studies is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey of the interdisciplinary study of cultural heritage. Featuring a substantial framework-setting essay by the editors, and contributions from an international array of scholars, including some with extensive experience in heritage practice through UNESCO, the World Heritage Centre, ICOMOS and national heritage systems, this Companion offers a cutting-edge guide to this emergent and increasingly important field that is global in scope, cross-cultural in focus, and critical in approach. The selected essays have been innovatively organized into three sections on the expansion, use and abuse, and the recasting of heritage. The Companion covers all of the key themes in research, including old and new outlooks on cultural heritage and its management, heritage as a form of cultural politics, the emergence of critical heritage studies, the role of heritage in times of rapid change and conflict, heritage in environmental protection, the rise of intangible heritage, museums and digital heritage, World Heritage and tourism, and heritage ethics and human rights. A Companion to Heritage Studies will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of anthropology, archeology, and cultural studies, as well as anyone interested in better understanding the historical, social, and political significance of heritage.

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals – all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.

Digital imaging techniques have been rapidly adopted within archaeology and cultural heritage practice for the accurate documentation of cultural artefacts. But what is a digital image, and how does it relate to digital photography? The authors of this book take a critical look at the practice and techniques of digital imaging from the stance of digital archaeologists, cultural heritage practitioners and digital artists. Borrowing from the feminist scholar Karen Barad, the authors ask what happens when we diffract the formal techniques of archaeological digital imaging through a different set of disciplinary concerns and practices. Diffracting exposes the differences between archaeologists, heritage practitioners and artists, and foregrounds how their differing practices and approaches enrich and inform each other. How might the digital imaging techniques used by archaeologists be adopted by digital artists, and what are the potentials associated with this adoption? Under the gaze of fine artists, what happens to the fidelity of the digital images made by archaeologists, and what new questions do we ask of the digital image? How can the critical approaches and practices of fine artists inform the future practice of digital imaging in archaeology and cultural heritage? Diffracting Digital Images will be of interest to students and scholars in archaeology, cultural heritage studies, anthropology, fine art, digital humanities, and media theory.