Microarchaeology: Seeing More Than What Meets the Eye
By: Michael B. Toffolo, Tel Aviv University If you worked on an archaeological excavation in Israel as a volunteer, at some point you probably saw people collecting dirt into little plastic vials from a blue-tagged section that were then brought to a folding table with scientific instruments and a laptop. These days this is the […]
A Look into Our Past
October is a busy month for the world of Archaeology. There’s the International Archaeology Day (IAD) on October 19th, Archaeological Institute of America’s (AIA) Archaeology Day Fair at the Museum of Science in Boston, and over 300 archaeology events throughout the month in various parts of the world. October also kicks off Archives Month here […]
Follow up: The Archaeology of WWI in Palestine
By: Jeffrey A. Blakely This post is a reply to comments on Jeff Blakely’s previous post The Archaeology of World War I in Palestine and the Beginning of the Modern Middle East. Robert Merrillees praised the post but asked why Australian records had not been mentioned. I greatly appreciate the comments of Ambassador Merrillees and […]
That’s a Wrap
This month we focused on archaeology in the Digital Age, featuring seven posts on new issues arising in the field such as open access in academic publishing and incorporating new technology into fieldwork and research. Check out the articles below and let us know what you think in the comments. Have you tried going paperless […]
Turning Dirt into Pixels
By: Colleen Morgan CLEAN * PHOTOGRAPH * DRAW * LEVEL * RECORD * SAMPLE * DIG * SORT ARTIFACTS * REPEAT In archaeological field work it is easy to become entranced. We have a cyclical mode of work, and it is this work that field archaeologists like the best, the kind that happens when the […]
Legacy Excavations and Linked Open Data: A Virtual Vision of Sir Leonard Woolley’s Ur
By: W.B. Hafford, University of Pennsylvania Digital data plays an ever increasing role in archaeology. Archaeologists use computers for virtually every task, from artifact recording to site mapping, and the amount of data we gather is staggering. This is a good thing, but proper management and archiving of the data can overwhelm a dig crew. […]
Living in the Golden Age of Open Access Archaeology
By: Mitch Allen, Left Coast Press, Inc. & Mills College Arguments over open access in scholarly publishing have crossed the radar of every scholar, publisher, or librarian not suffering from terminal senility. Open access would represent a global shift of control of scholarly publications from largely (but not exclusively) the private sector’s group of publishing […]
Augmented Reality, a New Horizon in Archaeology
By: Stuart Eve, University College London and L - P : Archaeology Firstly, I would like to thank Jen Fitzgerald for asking me to contribute a guest post to the ASOR Blog. I am currently undertaking a doctoral thesis at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London - researching the middle ground between phenomenological, in […]
The Virtual World Project: Touring The Ancient World
By: Ronald A. Simkins and Nicolae Roddy, Creighton University There is nothing quite like teaching at an archaeological site, where ancient remains almost speak out to students as witnesses of the past. Both authors have led study tours in Israel, taking students to archaeological sites like Tel Dan, Bethsaida, Megiddo, Arad, Beer-sheba, and others, lecturing […]
iPads in the Field and Reflections on Archaeology’s Digital Future
By: William Caraher, University of North Dakota This past summer my excavation on Cyprus experimented with using iPads to document our excavations in the field. Since, I have co-directed the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project with Prof. R. Scott Moore of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Prof. David K. Pettegrew of Messiah College. Over this time, […]
Sustainability at Any Price is not Sustainable: Open Access and Archaeology
By: Eric Kansa, UC Berkeley and This blog post looks at the open access debate, and notes how sustainability is as much of an ideological and political question as it is a financial issue. It is intended to follow up on previous blog posts (first, second, third) that discuss how the Aaron Swartz prosecution […]
Ethics, Archaeology, and Open Access
By: Eric Kansa The issue of open access to scholarly works recently gained renewed attention following the tragic suicide of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist charged with felony computer and intellectual property crimes involving the mass download of articles from JSTOR. ASOR uses JSTOR as a repository for the Bulletin of the American Schools of […]
Team Discovers Lost Color on the Arch of Titus’ Menorah
From June 5 to 7 an international team of scholars led by the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies in partnership with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma undertook a pilot study of the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, the ancient civic center of Rome, Italy. The focus of attention was the Menorah […]
ASOR Benefits Boston University Students
Each semester ASOR hires several students to work in the office through the Boston University work study program. This is the personal account of one student who has enjoyed working for ASOR.
NSF Points to Open Context for Publishing Project Data
The National Science Foundation’s Archaeology Program links to Open Context as an option for grant seekers to archive and disseminate archaeological research data. See here for an example. The NSF also links to Digital Antiquity’s tDAR project, a related effort with greater emphasis on North American archaeology. Earlier this year, the NSF announced […]
Secrets of The Bible’s Buried Secrets
Contributed by Tristan Barako, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Providence Pictures When The Bible’s Buried Secrets premiered on PBS this past November, it was NOVA’s most watched show in the past five years, attesting to the enduring interest that biblical archaeology holds for the general public. The two-hour special was produced by Providence Pictures, where I now […]
Creating a Digital Archaeology Community around the Mediterranean
Contributed by Thomas E. Levy, Stephen Savage and Chaitan Baru Over the past five years, there has been a synergy of archaeological research that focuses on the application of information and digital technologies for advancing research and public outreach. One of the centers of this confluence of archaeology and computer science is researchers working in […]