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Tehmina Goskar 8:25 am on 17 July, 2009 Permalink | Reply

Museums as sacred spaces series

I have had in mind for a while to write a series of articles exploring ideas, quite freeform, of museums and galleries as sacred spaces. This concept has interested me for a number of years, since I started working in the sector and remember seeing outside a provincial art gallery a sign which went something along the lines of ‘come in for quiet contemplation and meditation’. I found that both alluring and inviting in an otherwise smelly, noisy and raucous city.

We surround ourselves with noise these days, either to mask out other people’s uninvited noise or because we find the silence too difficult to deal with. I use ‘we’ in the loosest sense here. I want civic spaces which are deliberately quiet, still and, I suppose temple-like or at least sanctuary-like.

Another way in which I have thought about museums as sacred spaces is related to the debate about the display of human remains. Entire volumes can be written about all the arguments about what we should do with archaeologically-recovered human remains, some of which I will go through in time in subsequent posts, but I want to offer a new framework. Can we ever perceive the museum to be a new temple of the deceased? Isn’t this where we go to learn about the past? And haven’t humans for all time looked to their ancestors for knowledge and wisdom? Whether you have a spirituality or not, there is no doubting that we can and do learn a lot from the remains of our (the broad humanity ‘our’) ancestors.

And so it will be on these two subjects that I will begin.

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Tehmina Goskar 9:43 pm on 2 July, 2008 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Blogs (3), communication, Conservation (3), culture (2), Heritage, historic environment, world heritage
Conservation and communication

Recently Tom blogged about the prospect of the National Trust’s massive investment into digital technologies, including the web. Electric Acorns is a great new blog started by a an NT employee and devoted to peeling back some of the layers of the great institution in an effort to allow the public and fellow professionals a better insight into all the work the Trust does (see his comment below).

Institutions involved with promoting, undertaking or advising on the conservation of historic environments and artefacts are not great at communicating their work. I often wonder, if they were, whether the tensions between access and preservation could be better ‘managed’ (to use a phrase en vogue) but at the very least, better understood by the wider public, and whether funders and politicians would regard conservation as being a cultural activity of the highest value to society and therefore less willing to withdraw or withold support (see my post on the Textile Conservation Centre’s closure).

Interest in history, the past and the environment has never been more keen than it is now. Neither has it been more easy to have your say in front of a global audience with the internet revolution. Why aren’t more institutions involved with conservation adopting open and honest communication with the public through the web in the form of blogs, web forums, podcasts and more? Matthew of Electric Acorns is taking a step forward for his organisation (I do hope they appreciate it). What is everyone else doing? Here’s a short survey. (More …)
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New International Heritage and Conservation News blog at Past Thinking is discussing. Toggle Comments
Tehmina Goskar 10:39 pm on 12 March, 2008 Permalink | Reply
Why close the Textile Conservation Centre?

Conservation has been high in my thoughts recently. Largely through my current work with ICOMOS-UK (International Council on Monuments and Sites UK) I have been exposed to the vicissitudes that affect the preservation and interpretation of our heritage, whether they are the result of inappropriate development, lack of funds or lack of collective and political will to stand up for cultural heritage as a fundamental part of modern society.

However, most upsetting, shocking, and all those things has been the news that the University of Southampton has decided to close down the Textile Conservation Centre at its Winchester Campus in late 2009 only a decade after it moved here from Hampton Court Palace. The reason given is financial, in short, that the University expects all its schools to fund themselves and the TCC, it was deemed, was not able to do this. I do not want to go into all the reasons given here. You can read up on it from the links below. A quick Google search will also show the coverage of the closure in the national press.

Read the University of Southampton’s statement
Read ICON’s statement
Save the Textile Conservation Centre blog

The whole business is personally distasteful to me. I am currently undertaking freelance work for the university, it is my alma mater. I therefore feel deeply embarrassed. I was a graduate of the Textile Conservation Centre in 2001 (MA Museum Studies) and maintain that my time there was intellectually the most stimulating experience of my life. Following this, my work on their research project on deliberately concealed garments produced one of the early attempts at getting collections online – and lit my passion for using the web to communicate our heritage. It has taken me a while to gather my thoughts – even now it seems daft to be writing about this. I could be writing about the government’s decision to close the British Museum or a local authority’s decision to level an ancient monument to make way for houses or offices. The feelings such things conjour are much the same. The futility of it all. Value for money, after all, is what exactly? After the anger and astonishment, the profound sadness.

As conservation (in the sense we understand it in heritage) is in every sense about ‘past thinking’ it seemed a good idea to talk about this here. Whatever the financial case made for the TCC’s closure, what is very clear is that this was certainly not a purely financial decision. The university was not itself going to go under because the TCC was using slightly more than it was contributing in monetary terms at least. Where there is a will there is a way. Sadly, Southampton had no will to continue to support one of its own ‘key distinctors’. Neither does it have the wisdom to realise the consequences of this action. The loss is not just Southampton’s or the UK’s, but the world’s. Organisations across the globe sent their people to the TCC to gain requisite skills in textile conservation and in museology, and take them back home. The combination was unique and they produced uniquely skilled graduates, the majority of whom have found very fulfilling careers in heritage, culture and conservation.

Here is a clear case of not taking responsibility, of not listening, of mis-judging and of being dishonourable. Universities ought to exist to further the bounds of human knowledge. It perplexes me to try and understand what has gone so wrong at Southampton. The one major source of funding for the TCC was the History of Art and Design degree. With its dissolution, it lost its link with Winchester School of Art which it formed part until last year. What, therefore, was the Centre able to do? Rugs (pardon the metaphor) pulled out from under them.

The world will only realise the impact of this in many years and decades to come when the skills required to preserve deteriorating garments, upholstery and other materials are no longer readily available. What is more, the extensive research and experimentation that is required to pioneer new techniques (something that the TCC excels at by a distance) will have not been undertaken. Just as we are realising this is happening in other parts of the conservation world (look out for ICOMOS-UK’s Action on Skills conference at the Prince’s Foundation on 29-30 April) why is this happening?

I look forward to reading 10 Downing Street’s response to a petition that was set up for the government to intervene. It closes on 6 May and already has over 3200 signatures. Please sign.
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Vidi « Archaeoastronomy, and fleur fulcher are discussing. Toggle Comments
- fleur fulcher 4:57 pm on 28 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  hello, i found this site through a google search as i am currently writing about the TCC’s closure as part of my major project at university (i am doing a journalism degree), would you mind if i quoted you in it?
  my email address is fleurfulcher@h*** (removed by the editor)
Tom Goskar 2:24 pm on 22 August, 2007 Permalink | Reply
Another theory about how Stonehenge was built

A colleague pointed me at the BBC homepage today, which was featuring a nice slideshow displaying images of Stonehenge. The photos linked through to a story entitled “Stonehenge building riddle tackled“.

It’s always fun to suggest how the great sarsen lintels might have been raised on top of the upright stones, and there have been some novel suggestions. Today’s idea comes from Bristol engineer Nick Weegenaar:

“The lintels were rolled in the wheel until they were above the uprights, and then lowered down.

“The wheel would have been on a track, with counterweights to act as ballast.”
Quoted from the story on the BBC website

Basically, the lintel is put into a huge wheel, which is on a track. As the wheel is rolled, the lintel is lifted up into the air and deposited neatly on top of the upright stones. The wheel passes between the uprights while it does this.

There is an animation at the foot of the BBC story, that shows how this might all work. The first thing that struck me about this idea, is that many of the trilithons don’t have a large enough gap between the uprights to allow a huge wheel to pass between. I’ll let this image illustrate my point:

The image is a mix of one of my photos and the demonstration on the BBC website.

English Heritage’s Dave Batchelor, Head of Metric Survey, hit the nail on the head:

“This level of infrastructure is very likely to have left some traces and none have yet been found.”

He also queries whether the wheel was in use in Britain in 2300BC. I’d add that I’m not sure if railways, let alone wheels, were in use at the time…

..unless the Amesbury Archer was some kind of Isambard Kingdom Brunel…

It is fascinating to speculate on how the lintels might have been raised (amongst other engineering that took place), and long may healthy speculation continue. However, we must consider how easy it is to impose modern thinking upon the past. The old “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” adage aside, I don’t buy this new approach, novel as it is.

Weegenaar’s approach would only work on some of the trilithons, and there is no evidence for complex wheels at this point in the Bronze Age in Britain. It is easy to project our modern engineering knowledge of wheels and counterweights into the past.

But there is also no published archaeological evidence from the various excavations at Stonehenge in the last century that supports the use wooden ramps or tracks that I, nor others I have asked, can think of.

Another example of engineering ignores archaeology? Perhaps.

What’s wrong with shed loads of people, a lot of rope, big mounds of earth, and tree trunk rollers? :-)

Here’s to the next idea!
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Edie, Paul, wroland and 14 others are discussing. Toggle Comments
- JCA 2:43 am on 30 August, 2007 Permalink
  
  Henges – Engineering in Prehistoty
  
  Stonehenge was a crane working with nutating gear technology.
- Tom 8:04 am on 30 August, 2007 Permalink
  
  Again, fitting modern ideas neatly onto the past…
- Henrik 7:42 pm on 31 August, 2007 Permalink
  
  They did it with mirrors! ;-)
- JCA 3:18 pm on 5 September, 2007 Permalink
  
  There are some who fit their intelligence and religiousity to the past…
- Lonny Richardson 4:19 pm on 10 November, 2007 Permalink
  
  I have never heard the building of Stonehenge the way I would have done it if I had no machines, but did have ample man power. I would use dirt. first, I would bring in soil from the surrounding area then slide the large cut stones on top of it, then I would remove the dirt to get the stones in place. I would do the same to place the horizontal stones on top of the vertical stones. It would be the easiest of all very difficult possibilities. It would be fun to test this theory and to try to ditermine if that what was done at Stonehenge. Anyone up to trying?
- DrewR 5:37 am on 15 November, 2007 Permalink
  
  The nutating gear theory would be plausible if and only if you ignore the fact that the middle of stonehenge has the giant horse shoe of trilithons to get in the way of any support beams running through the diameter of the wooden gear. I seriously doubt people of that time could create a huge wooden circle that is stable enough to be used as a giant gear WITHOUT having some sort of support beams. Without the spokes on a wheel, that wheel will break under pressure.
  
  As getting those lintels up there, I personally find using a dirt ramp and heaving it up with manpower very plausible. All other theories I’ve heard of seem too unlikely for the people of those times because most involve the wheel which probably wasn’t very well known to the locals of England at that period. Log rollers, sure, wheels, not so much.
- JCA 11:38 pm on 18 November, 2007 Permalink
  
  Stonehenge – Engineering in Prehistory
  
  The wheel, or wooden circle would never be subjected to radial forces as current common wheels (such as bikes or car wheels), in fact it could be built in a flexible wooden material, whithout radial support beams. The wheel was subjected to high tangential forces (imagine bended tree logs under longitudinal traction or compression). The gearing spikes would need to be well connected to the wheel, and for better force distribution they would gear to inside and outside stone circles. So there is no need to use the middle of stonehenge. More, if you tie several ropes arround the wooden wheel, you can pull them alternatly from the top of the lintels creating a nutating motion, while others walked above the wheel in the oposite radial direction.
  
  JCaeiroAntunes
- N G Weegenaar 7:15 pm on 8 December, 2007 Permalink
  
  It is not a wheel, it must be realized that 180 dergrees of the litholift is not used to roll on, and can be eliminated if the device was scaled up and replaced with ballast boxes{not round} attached to the now half round structure.Quite frankly I think that English Heritage is a stuffy organisation with equally stuffy points of view when confronted with new ideas, and have failed to understand that its the principal that the model displays, the actual device will not be round. Finally, of course they had trackways{not to be confused with railways} and the large trilithons can also be placed/erected using the same principle but in a different configuration . I wonder if Enlish Heritage will accept the existence of the half wheel? it was strong small diameter axels that the neoliths did not have.because the larger the axel the less leverage imparted to the wheel and the rolling resistance is therefore increased, so the roller is just a deep section neolithic wheel, compared to the neolithic builders we dont know much about lifting heavy objects, using inteligence, experience, inovation and geometry, they certainly were not primitive in thought, and originalty, which is hardly surprising as they were MODERN MAN a mere 180 generations ago, NGW.
- sam 7:31 pm on 18 December, 2007 Permalink
  
  modern people,especially engineers arrogantly assume we are smarter than bronze age peoples.If this really were the case then we would know how they done it.They could have had any amount of machines and technology that we hove found nothing of.Evolution has been against us for thousands of years,as it is no longer the smart or the strong who get to breed.”There is someone for everyone” will be the end of us all.
- sam 3:04 pm on 21 December, 2007 Permalink
  
  The easiest way to get the lintels up would be dog-leg leavers.Set at about 10 past eleven,they would be solid oak with bronze struts and bearings.Working in pairs between the uprights for the outer circle,a large basket(for want of a better word)would be hung from the short 11 arm.This would be filled with ballast to raise the lintel.On the horseshoe,as there is no space between the uprights and the stones are heavier,i would put a pair of leavers at each outer end.
  Although there would be a fair amount of weight in this machinery it would be portable enough for the small distances it would have to be moved within the site.
  As for us finding remains of any machine we have to consider that they weren’t building the Channel Tunnel and oak and bronze are valuable materials and as such would be recycled.
- Dean Talboys 4:21 am on 23 January, 2008 Permalink
  
  Sorry guys, but the script reads “anything but a wheel”. Honestly, you can use levers, counterweights, any amount of rope, dirt, a-frames, but sadly no wheels (or pulleys for that matter). Basically the builders had no concept of “round” except for that perfectly formed set of stone lintels – Doh!
- sam 8:18 pm on 2 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  Since when was a dog-leg lever a wheel? It’s an angled lever,plain and simple. Just because the arms are best described as a time doesn’t make it a clock.Meanwhile, in the time of the inner circles wheels were very much in use and could well have been used at the site for any number of reasons. As for these people, who studied the cosmos and used applied mathematics in their building(which is still here) to think they had no concept of round is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. That includes “ape”ing someone else’s catchphrase in a pop culture, Monkey see Monkey do.
- Bruce Bedlam 10:19 pm on 4 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  Hi
  
  Have a look at http://www.stonehenge.tv It has a Stonehenge Animation made by Bournemouth University and a Meridian TV Report linked to the site.
  
  It challenges the old school of thinking
  
  Thanks in advance
  
  Bruce Bedlam
  Intelligence Director,
  Stonehenge Ltd.
- Tom Goskar 8:20 pm on 15 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  A nice idea, Bruce, but how does your model get around the chronology of Stonehenge? And given the solsticial alignments, why put a roof over it?
- wroland 2:19 am on 18 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  It’s not lifting the stones that astounds the wrabbit, its the astonishing accuracy with which they set up…see http://www.solvingstonehenge.co.uk
- Dave 12:01 am on 23 March, 2008 Permalink
  
  Just my two cents, but I think the wheel theory almost has to be rubbish. It’s very clever, but it’s impractical considering what others have said about engineering methods at the time as well as the fact that Stonehenge was built over a 500 year period. I think the mistake engineers and others are making is that they’re figuring out how they would have done it – and they’re used to modern time constraints, where buildings/structures are put together in the shortest time span possible.
  
  When you’re talking about a time spawn of 500 years, I find the idea of simply building big dirt ramps up to the pillars much more plausible. If the people who built Stonehenge would have realized the full extent and use of the wheel for engineering purposes (including transportation of the stones), we’d probably be talking about a 50 year building span, not 500.
- tope 8:29 pm on 3 April, 2008 Permalink
  
  it says using wooden logs but because of the special blue granite
  which is extremely heavy it will break the logs
- Paul 7:08 am on 14 April, 2008 Permalink
  
  The obvious answer that will leave no signs is snow and ice.
  Years ago the weather was rougher so all they had to do is during the summer bring a sarson stone to the site then when winter came make a huge embankment of snow/ice and slide the stones up in place.
  If the weather was mild that year then it did not matter.
  When the snow melted in the summer, no trace is left of how they did it.
  They could have even used snow/ice to help move the stones from where they quarried. It would take years but they had time on their hands plus they wouldn’t need hundreds taking part.
  This is how a lot of stones were moved to make the stone circles up and down the length of the country.
- Ric 6:27 pm on 22 May, 2008 Permalink
  
  The aliens built the Stonehenge most probably by their vehicles lifting the stones. Eat that!
- jodie 6:17 pm on 8 June, 2008 Permalink
  
  the way it was constructed was they dug holes to erect the posts the easy part the harder part was accomplished by filling the entire area with fill to the top of the posts then bring the lentils in and put them in place and remove the fill.
- Dean Talboys 8:04 pm on 15 June, 2008 Permalink
  
  All research is aimed at proving the site built in the late Neolithic, which it most certainly was not. R. J. C. Atkinson unwittingly stumbled upon a feature that will prove the site to be much older than anticipated (yes, ‘anticipated’ because you can’t date a site on the fragile evidence of two bits of bone spaced 2,000 years apart or the cremated remains of a person who didn’t burn to death in situ).
- Eric 7:46 pm on 5 August, 2008 Permalink
  
  So…
  ‘All research is aimed at proving the site built in the late Neolithic’.
  What on earth does that mean? Archaeological research is about seeking the correct answers not about trying ‘to prove’ anything, unlike the comment above. What evidence does Dean Talboys have that the current series of radiocarbon dates published in Cleal’s ‘Stonehenge in its Landscape’ (1995) are wrong, and that the Late Neolithic date is incorrect? Stonehenge is NOT dated on ‘the fragile evidence of two bits of bone spaced 2,000 years apart or the cremated remains of a person who didn’t burn to death in situ’, what utter nonsense.
- Paul 3:40 pm on 12 October, 2008 Permalink
  
  It would be far to difficult for humans to build Stonehenge, It was most likely built by giants of the time. We know from archaeologist evidence that we have found human bones calculating to giants of 49 ft. The stone masons may also of used occult magic in order to contact the spirts for assistants. I don’t think aliens had a part to play in this construction but they were certainly involved in building the pyramids.
Tom Goskar 2:49 pm on 13 February, 2007 Permalink | Reply
National Museums Liverpool Blog

A superb example of how blogging can work for a museum (or any heritage organisation), is exemplified by the National Museums Liverpool blog.

I visited it a while ago, when it was first set up, hoping that it would be successful. I’m always pleased to see bold experiments with technology in the heritage sector. I couldn’t remember exactly when the blog started (March 2006), so I flicked back in time using the calendar at the top right of the page. Days where content was posted are coloured orange, and I was very impressed to see that this was at worst one post per week. Some weeks went by with a post every day. Great work!

I had a quick look at their blog rank in Technorati, and they’re doing rather well at 148,150, with 269 inbound links from 26 blogs. That’s soon to be slightly increased after I post this..

They even have an account on Flickr.

I wonder when they will become bold enough to enable comments though?

Links: National Museums Liverpool Blog, National Museums Liverpool Flickr Photos
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- Alex S 8:02 pm on 22 February, 2008 Permalink
  
  I found the blog very useful myself.
  
  While it is not one of the easiest to use blogs (personally I do not like its format), it is a very useful one. It is at utmost importance for museums to have up to date information, especially this year when Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture.
  
  Alex
Tom Goskar 4:42 pm on 8 January, 2007 Permalink | Reply
Arun Visualisation image featured by E-On Software

One of the stills I produced as part of the Arun Visualisation has been used by E-On Software to showcase their excellent EcoSystems Generation II instancing feature. Vue was used extensively for the animation, as well as 3ds Max, AutoCAD, XFrog, and numerous GIS and imaging packages.

It’s one of my favourite images, and I couldn’t quite believe the quality of it when the render finally finished. It’s nice to see it being used for more than just archaeology!
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Tom Goskar 9:18 pm on 1 December, 2006 Permalink | Reply
Visualising the past

One of the 3D animations I’ve been working on at Wessex Archaeology is now available online with an introduction to the project. It’s been along time in the making, and like any archaeological reconstruction/visualisation, it’ll never be perfect.

So click the movie above (hosted on the rather excellent blip.tv) and delve back in time 8000 years ago into a Mesolithic landscape that’s now 8 miles off the southern coast of the UK, and up to 30 metres under the sea.

Link: Visualising the past in 3D: The River Arun (Wessex Archaeology)
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- Kelvin Wilson 8:10 pm on 17 December, 2006 Permalink
  
  I saw a preview over a year ago, at a conference in Amsterdam I helped organise, and then- already- knew this was the one, well, ’step forward’ to watch out for…
  It is not mean feat, I can tell, how you have made this, Tom- and no mean feat, I’ll tell you, to have impressed mé so much.
  
  Very, very good indeed :-)
  
  Best wishes– Kelvin Wilson, archaeological reconstruction artist working in the Netherlands
- Tom 9:49 pm on 17 December, 2006 Permalink
  
  Thankyou Kelvin! It’s an accolade indeed coming from a reconstruction artist of your caliber :-)
  
  If you would like to know any precise details, please do email me.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Tom
- Henrik 10:53 am on 5 January, 2007 Permalink
  
  Hi Tom
  Lot’s of nice ‘hidden’ details there, the fowl, berries; a furry pig and most notably the different kinds of plants. It is nice for once to see that someone has actually taken the pain to get the trees and plants right. Bet it’s been a lot of hours modelling the woods, eh? I like the way the commentary makes the thing come alive and I very much enjoyed the film!
Tom Goskar 1:11 pm on 20 April, 2006 Permalink | Reply
Map Mobbing

A group from OpenStreetMap are gathering en-masse (well, 15 of them) to make a map of all roads and footpaths on the Isle of Wight, UK, which they will then make freely available.

MAPPING REVOLUTION TARGETS THE ISLE OF WIGHT

This weekend, 5th – 7th May, the Isle of Wight becomes the center of a global mapping revolution. Contributors to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project are meeting on the Island with the aim of mapping as many of the roads and footpaths as possible.

The OSM project aims to create free geographic data, such as street maps, to anyone who wants it. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive or unexpected ways.

OSM contributors, including one travelling from Germany, will be driving, cyling, and wandering the Island with GPS (Global Positioning Sytem) Units recording the route of as many of the roads and footpaths as possible.

Further information can be found on the project web site http://www.openstreetmap.org/

In the UK, most current mapping is all privately owned (by the Ordnance Survey – despite being a government department, and a number of others). Using it can be either expensive, or you tread dodgy ground by trying to make your own derivatives from it (including digitising their aerial photographs).

With the rising interest in location-based stuff on the internet, such as geotagging, geocaching etc, in the name of the freedom of spatial information, there’s an “open source” mapping movement, which I applaud. It also sounds like quite good fun.

Related Link (blog): OpenGeoData
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eCache » Blog Archive » GeoCarnival #4, and Alligator Descartes are discussing. Toggle Comments
- Alligator Descartes 10:40 am on 22 April, 2006 Permalink
  
  I had a similar thought last week regarding height data and handheld GPS devices. It’d be good to be able to derive decent ( /-5-10m accurate) height data at a better resolution than that supplied by the SRTM datasets. They’re pretty good (for free), but not detailed enough at the city level. I hope the OSM guys put out the full 3D data and not just derived 2D plans…
  
  That said, anything’s good at this stage…
  
  Another decent dataset worth looking at is the georeferenced Landsat imagery. It’s quite detailed, but I’m not sure if it’s good enough for city mapping again…
  
  A.
Tom Goskar 5:39 pm on 12 March, 2006 Permalink | Reply
Tags: 3D (4), archaeologist, Archaeology (13), Computing (2), databases, gis, survey, surveying, systemsdevelopment, visualisation
“I’ve always wanted to meet an archaeologist”

When people ask what I do, and I reply “I’m an archaeologist”, the reaction is generally one of surprise and interest, and occasionally one of disbelief. I’m not wearing a hat. There are no boulders chasing after me. And I don’t have leather patches on my jacket. OK, so I’ve got long hair, but we’ll ignore that for now (trust me, there are a lot of stereotypical remarks about an archaeologist’s appearance).

At last year’s Mac Expo in London, I was wearing a name badge which contained the name of my employers (hint: it contains the word “Archaeology”), giving the game away about what I do for a living.

A man came up to me whilst I was browsing a stand, and he asked if he could shake my hand. In apprehensive disbelief, I shook his hand. I think my reaction was simple: “Err, of course. Why?”, whilst looking rather puzzled. He replied that he’s watched archaeology on TV and read books about it for years, and always wanted to meet a real archaeologist. We chatted for a bit, and he was doubly amazed that I was an archaeologist who specialised in compter applications. The concept that archaeologists gathered an awful lot of data just hadn’t occurred, and that we might need computers to quantify, query and interpret, and disseminate that information.

Archaeology is pointless if we don’t publish what we find.

I encountered a lot of people at the Expo who asked me about my profession, and all of them were amazed that archaeology uses a lot of modern technology to help us in just about every stage of our work. The same reactions were found at the PodcastconUK conference in September 2005.

A recent discussion with friends about the awareness of technology use in archaeology reminded me of my meetings at Mac Expo and PodcastconUK, so I thought I’d list some of the things we do in the world of archaeological computing. These are basic introductions, a paragraph or two long, as each topic could be a book in its own right.

(More …)
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teflonjedi, and David J. Knight are discussing. Toggle Comments
- David J. Knight 4:10 pm on 14 March, 2006 Permalink
  
  Yes, it is interesting the various stereotypes about archaeologists. Back in 1982 I certainly had my own idea of what an archaeologist looked like, usually muddy, sun-scorched and knowledgable. Ah, the days before hi-visual clothing, hard-hats and protective footwear! In those days it was shaved head, shorts and very worn Brogues!
  It’s completely understandable and good that we all have hi-vi and hard-hats and steel-toed boots now, but I’m convinced that the general public is even less aware of our presence now. In any city you walk by a building site and it takes some awareness to recognize that those people in hard-hats over there are actually dealing with archaeology while those other people over there are actually pouring concrete. I wonder if this development in what we wear has increased our status among city councils but lowered it in the eyes of the general public?
- teflonjedi 3:15 am on 16 May, 2006 Permalink
  
  That’s better than the reaction I get, sometimes, when I’m introduced as a physicist…sigh…
Tom Goskar 4:17 pm on 2 February, 2006 Permalink | Reply
Visitors and Moving

It looks as if Past Thinking is becoming rather well visited. In January, this site received over 10,000 visits, which to me is rather impressive. Thank you to all who come here to read my occasional missives!

Ironically, the rest of this post is really only of interest to people who know us.

I haven’t had much time to write on here, as Tehmina and I are busy packing up our house in Southampton. We’ve been living there on and off since 1996, and it’s time for pastures new. We’re moving to the medieval city of Salisbury, into a location that’s rather fitting for an archaeologist and an historian!

To those who know us in Southampton – we’ll still be about quite often!
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Paul Brooker, David St. Hubbins, and Rowan are discussing. Toggle Comments
- Rowan 8:13 pm on 2 February, 2006 Permalink
  
  I’m slightly disappointed that yet more friends are moving away but congratulations and good luck for your move anyway!
- David St. Hubbins 11:51 pm on 2 February, 2006 Permalink
  
  All the best with the move! If we’re ever on tour in Salisbury, we’ll make sure you are on the guest list.
- Paul Brooker 4:07 pm on 3 February, 2006 Permalink
  
  Good luck with the move Tom, hope all goes well.