Archive for January, 2008

Wiltshire SMR goes online

Published by
Tom Goskar
at 25 January, 2008 in Mapping and Archaeology. 2 Comments

If you’re interested in the archaeology of the county of Wiltshire, you can now access the Wiltshire Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) online, complete with a map interface.

Wiltshire SMR map interface showing Old Sarum

It takes a bit of getting used to the interface, but to have this information publicly available is a step in the right direction.

Tip: find the area you are interested on the map. Click the pushpin on or near a feature that you are interested in. Then click the “In the area” tab. Select “Sites and Monuments Record” on the left. You will then see features nearest the pin. Click the name of the feature you’re interested in, and a new window with details pops up. From the details page you can view the feature exactly on a map, or on Google Maps. It will open endless new windows, but that’s a small price to pay for having this information freely available.

This is of course a boon for all the Stonehenge buffs out there, as you’ll be able to explore the surrounding landscape and get a better appreciation for what’s below the soil as well as above it.

Link: Wiltshire SMR, LocalView map interface

[Update] The map doesn’t seem to work in Firefox or any other Mozilla-based browser (such as Flock). It does work in Internet Explorer on a PC, and Safari on a Mac, however.

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Historic Photos and Folksonomies

Published by
Tom Goskar
at 17 January, 2008 in Photography and Heritage. 2 Comments

I’ve long been an advocate of folksonomies. It allows the wider community to add knowledge to resources through tags and comments, ultimately making things easier to find. A number of institutions have allowed free tagging of certain resources for a while now, such as the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the collective STEVE museum, and of course, Wessex Archaeology’s photos on Flickr.

It seems that this idea is slowly taking off. Flickr have just announced “The Commons” project. Flickr’s blog post about this project is entitled “Many hands make light work“, which just about sums it up, really. I urge you to read it.

Flickr: The Commons (photo by George - www.flickr.com/photos/george/ )

The Library of Congress in the USA have teamed up with Flickr to put a selection (currently about 3,000 photos from their collection of 14+ million) online. If you have a free Flickr account, you will be able to tag these photos and comment on them. The images are also being geotagged by the LoC staff. The idea of a temporal map view comes to mind…

There are two main aims to The Commons project, starting with the pilot: firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.

This could be amazing. I’ll re-quote this snippet from Flickr’s blog:

“..the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.”

This will ultimately benefit not just users of Flickr, but any user of the LoC catalogue. It won’t replace the knowledge of their expert cataloguers, but complement it. This is a great example of how this approach can work both ways to benefit everyone. Read the Library of Congress‘ take on the project.

After all, it’s everyone’s past, isn’t it?

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Opening up a Roman Coffin

Published by
Tom Goskar
at 16 January, 2008 in Video and Archaeology. 1 Comment

It’s not every day that you get a phone call from an excited colleague saying “we’ve found a Roman sarcophagus - can you grab your video camera and come out?”.

This short film (hosted by the fabulous Vimeo) shows just how exciting archaeology can be!


Opening a Roman Coffin from Wessex Archaeology on Vimeo.

There is a shortened (10 minute) version on YouTube for the masses. But Vimeo wins hands down for video quality.

For the more technically inclined reader, the film was made with a Sony DCR-TRV50E MiniDV camcorder without a tripod (the tripod head went walkies), and was edited in iMovie ‘08 on a Mac.

More information about the burial can be found at Wessex Archaeology.

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A new window into our past?

Published by
Tom Goskar
at 10 January, 2008 in Technology. 1 Comment

Sorry about the cryptic title, but I’ve just stumbled upon a very interesting video by Johnny Lee demonstrating how a Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) can be used to perform ‘head tracking’. It allows one person to use a screen as a ‘window’ onto a much larger image. If you get close to the screen you can see more of the image, for example. Think of looking out of a normal window, and you’re not far off what this can do. You can also look at 3D content, and look ‘behind’ objects.

Enough explaining; watch the video below, as Johnny explains all.

After watching this video all kinds of ideas popped into my head. In a museum context this could prove to be quite a compelling way of interpreting the past. Look out of a window into Victorian London, look at a reconstruction of a room and see behind objects… My brain hurts at how this kind of technology could be used.

Best of all, Johnny is giving away the software and tips on how to actually do this. Any adventurous folks out there with a Nintendo Wii fancy giving it a go?

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