Author Archives: paul

About paul

Founder and Principal Consultant at Archaeogeomancy Postgraduate Research Student at University of Glamorgan Member of Archaeological Computing Research Group, University of Southampton Member of Forum on Information Standards in Heritage (FISH) Contributor to FISH-Technical group Member of CIDOC Archaeological Sites Working Group (CIDOC ASWG) Member of Avebury Archaeological and Historical Research Group (AAHRG) Moderator of Antiquist

Digital Heritage Services – progress

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16mm Newsarchive by DRs Kulturarvsprojekt

16mm Newsarchive by DRs Kulturarvsprojekt

Archaeogeomancy are pleased to be entering the third month of offering a range of digital heritage and geomatics services.

Focussing on consultancy and building on over a decade of experience and expertise, services now available are aimed at highly specialist digital heritage and archaeological geomatics requirements, skills which even the largest and best resourced of heritage and environmental service providers may not retain in house. Continue reading →

HESTIA2: Exploring spatial networks through ancient sources

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Herodotus

Herodotus

The Hestia2 project is described as “a public engagement project that aims to cross boundaries between the academic, commercial and educational sectors“.

As part of this, a free one-day seminar is taking place on 18th July organised by Elton Barker, Stefan Bouzarovski, Leif Isaksen and Tom Brughmans and in collaboration with The Connected Past. Continue reading →

Exploring the Agency of Landscape

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Foggy November

Foggy November English landscape – animals graze with trees and hedges, historic features of the English landscape, overlooked by those modern icons, the National Grid power lines

The symposium

The second symposium organised by the EngLaID project will be held on Wednesday 12th June at Keble College Oxford. The call for paper for this symposium is open till May 3rd with abstracts to be sent Dr Laura Morley.

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3D Laser Scanning: Seeking a New Standard in Documentation

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Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) are organising a workshop to look at the preservation of laser scan data.

The event is described thus:

The Digital Preservation Coalition and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland invite you to join them at a workshop to explore the preservation of 3d laser scan data.

Current best practice guidance for the long term preservation of 3D laser scan data, in particular the required metadata is found to be onerous by data creators. This workshop will bring together leading practitioners from the archaeological community, alongside leading data archivists and software suppliers in the UK and Ireland to work towards agreeing a new metadata standard to facilitate preservation.

This event will allow for communication between archivists, creators and purveyors of software and hardware for laser scanning, as well as equipment manufacturers.  The aim is to ensure that the export of metadata is much simpler and more convenient for users. Continue reading →

Geosemantics; the story so far

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Semantic Web Rubik's Cube by dullhunk

Semantic Web Rubik’s Cube by dullhunk

Into the second month of the PhD now and things are starting to coalesce and take shape. A framework for development, testing and deployment of proposed demonstrators is emerging and I’m making good headway demystifying the world of geosemantics (at least, it’s becoming clearer in my head!).

So, as well as continuing with the literature review, I’m knitting together a whole bunch of tools:

  • Java Development Kit (JDK) – the programming language at the heart of it all
  • Maven - a project management and comprehension tool
  • Eclipse - open development platform
  • Jena – a Java framework for building Semantic Web applications
  • Oracle 11g - relational Database Management System (RDBMS) with Spatial and Semantic components
  • AllegroGraph - a graph database
  • Prolog - logic programming
  • Protégé - ontology editor and knowledge-base framework
  • GeoSPARQL – query language for geospatial data stored as RDF
  • ArcGIS - Geographic Information System for data preparation, processing, etc
  • GeoServer – open source GIS server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data.

I’ll be posting more along the journey. Next steps will be to complete the literature review, submit stage reports and use some real archaeological data. Exciting stuff!

BRITARCH RIP. Long live BRITARCH…?

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Grave monuments

Grave monuments

The BRITARCH mailing list has long been a place where one could ask a question and some friendly, helpful person would either know the answer or know someone who does or just offer some friendly advice or tips from their own experience. Ideas could be kicked around, there was a whole load of people willing to help and get involved in things. The community was diverse, including folks from all walks of life and this was one of its strengths. The list is described thus:

For the circulation of information, queries and general discussion of issues relating to archaeology in the United Kingdom. This list will be used by the Council for British Archaeology information service to announce relevant items of news or information.

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Valuing the Profession

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Archaeology in action

Archaeology in action

Archaeology as a profession is a tough place to work, with pay and conditions well below standard. The feeling that archaeologists do their job as a vocation and are not interested in the money is, in some ways, a sound point; I don’t know any archaeologists who entered the profession to make a fortune but I know plenty, myself included, who anticipated things like career progression, pay rises and earning enough to live on, perhaps even settle down, buy a house and start a family.

The IfA recently made an interesting decision to scrap the requirement for registered organisations to meet specified minimum salaries. At the time, I thought this was a horrendous decision being driven by commercial units in an attempt to cut costs further and stay in business. The IfA have now announced their follow up to this, which will take the form of an open meeting with contributions from IfA Council, FAME and Prospect. So here is a chance to get involved in the process through an open meeting to be held after the conference. Continue reading →

So long and thanks for all the fish… Hello G-STAR!

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So long and thanks for all the fish...

So long and thanks for all the fish…

After over five years as the Geomatics Manager for Wessex Archaeology, I have now left to start a PhD in computer science, investigating geosemantic tools for archaeological research (G-STAR) based in the Hypermedia Research Unit at the University of Glamorgan with input from the Geographical Information Systems Research Unit. Continue reading →

GIS software for the Digital Humanities: A free two-day workshop

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Spatial Humanities at Lancaster

Spatial Humanities at Lancaster

Following on from their previous event, the good folks at Lancaster University are running another seminar in April.

Such opportunities are few and far between and GIS training can be costly so I would thoroughly recommend taking advantage of this if at all possible. Continue reading →