Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Whilst looking for something else entirely, I found some interesting items about the use of technology to assist archaeology - its a mixed batch, but I thought that it might be of interest.

Exploring virtual worlds
http://www.virtualworldproject.org/

Come take a virtual tour of ancient sites along the Eastern Mediterranean. Virtual Reality movies will bring the ancient world to you. Interactive maps will guide you through the sites. Accompanying descriptions will label the sites with the aid of supplementary images and drawings. This web site makes extensive use of multimedia technology. Apple QuickTime and Macromedia Flash must be installed on your computer in order to visit the ancient sites. See the requirements page for further details.

SHAPE
http://www.lems.brown.edu/shape/
http://www.lems.brown.edu/shape/main.html

An NSF ITR multidisciplinary project devoted to modeling, manipulation, analysis, and inferencing from data of 3-dimensional shape and its application to archaeology and art.


Global Egyptian Museum
http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.com/

At a rough estimate, over 2 million objects from ancient Egypt are kept in about 850 public collections, dispersed over 69 countries around the world. This website aims to collect them into a global virtual museum, which can be visited at any time, from any place. The Global Egyptian Museum is a long-term project, carried out under the aegis of the International Committee for Egyptology (CIPEG).

The NINCH Guide to Good Practicein the Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials
http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ninchguide/

Early developers of digital resources often had little thought for how their
projects might dovetail with others. Today many of these projects suffer from
this lack of forethought; they cannot be extended for broader use, they cannot
be built upon by others and the chances are slim that they will survive into the
future. More recently, the cultural community has begun to realize the
importance of applying technical and information standards intelligently and
consistently. The use of such standards not only adds longevity and scalability
to the project’s life cycle, but also enables an ever widening public to
discover and use its digital resources.

Vindolanda Tablets Online Database
http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/tablets/

The tablets database provides texts, translations (English), commentaries and new, large digital images of each tablet which can be examined close-up through a zooming viewer.’ To see an individual tablet, type its number in the box in the menu bar on the left of the screen and click ‘go’. To view all tablets in their published order, click the button in the same menu. Alternatively use Search and Browse to explore the database or see some highlights.