Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration


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Series: Cotsen Digital Archaeology Series 1
ISBN: 978-1-931745-85-7
Publication Date: Nov 2011
Price: Pb $39.95
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Eric C. Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall

How is the Web transforming the professional practice of archaeology? And as archaeologists accustomed to dealing with “deep time,” how can we best understand the possibilities and limitations of the Web in meeting the specialized needs of professionals in this field? These are among the many questions posed Archaeology 2.0and addressed in Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration, edited by Eric Kansa, Sarah Whitcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall. With contributions from a range of experts in archaeology and technology, this volume is organized around four key topics that illuminate how the revolution in communications technology reverberates across the discipline: Archaeology 2.0approaches to information retrieval and information access; practical and theoretical concerns inherent in design choices for archaeology’s computing infrastructure; collaboration through the development of new technologies that connect field-based researchers and specialists within an international archaeological community; and scholarly communications issues, with an emphasis on concerns over sustainability and preservation imperatives. This book not only describes practices that attempt to mitigate some of the problems associated with the Web, such as information overload and disinformation, it also presents compelling case studies of actual digital projects—many of which are rich in structured data and multimedia content or focused on generating content from the field “in real time,” and all of which demonstrate how the Web can and is being used to transform archaeological communications into forms that are more open, inclusive, and participatory. Above all, this volume aims to share these experiences to provide useful guidance for other researchers interested in applying technology to archaeology.

Table of Contents
  • INTRODUCTION: New Directions for the Digital Past by Eric C. Kansa

SECTION I: A Web of Archaeological Data: Infrastructure, Services, and Interoperability

  • Ch. 01: The Archaeology Data Service and the Archaeotools Project: Faceted Classification and Natural Language Processing by Julian Richards, Stuart Jeffrey, Stewart Waller, Fabio Ciravegna, Sam Chapman, and Ziqi Zhang
  • Ch. 02: Toward a Do-It-Yourself Cyberinfrastructure: Open Data, Incentives, and Reducing Costs and Complexities of Data Sharing by Eric C. Kansa and Sarah Whitcher Kansa

SECTION II: The Technical and Theoretical Context of Archaeology on the Web

  • Ch. 03: Poor Relatives or Favorite Uncles? Cyberinfrastructure and Web 2.0: A Critical Comparison for Archaeological Research by Stuart Dunn
  • Ch. 04: Archaeological Knowledge Production and Dissemination in the Digital Age by Robin Boast and Peter Biehl

SECTION III: Archaeological Data Management and Collaboration

  • Ch. 05: Creating a Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology by Michael Rains
  • Ch. 06: iAKS: A Web 2.0 Archaeological Knowledge Management System by Ethan Watrall
  • Ch. 07: User-Generated Content in Zooarchaeology: Exploring the “Middle Space” of Scholarly Communication by Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Francis Deblauwe

SECTION IV: Sustainability, Quality, and Access

  • Ch. 08: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Archaeological Data, and Web 2.0 by Willeke Wendrich
  • Ch. 09: Open Access for Archaeological Literature: A Manager’s Perspective by Jingfeng Xia
  • Ch. 10: What Are Our Critical Data-Preservation Needs? by Harrison Eiteljorg
  • CONCLUSION: Web 2.0 and Beyond, or On the Web, Nobody Knows You’re an Archaeologist by W. Fredrick Limp