Last month we organised a seminar on linked data and spatial networks in Southampton. Videos and slides of presentations of the seminar are now available on The Connected Past website. There are hours of footage and books-worth of slides on there for you to enjoy! This was only the first in a series of Hestia2 events. More info on Hestia2, future seminars and online resources can be found on our new website. Looking forward to seeing you at one of our future seminars!
Read More»
As the organiser of the Hestia2 seminar in Southampton I could write about our initial struggle to find a good format, my fight with the university to book a seminar room in a completely booked out campus, discussions with our financial support staff to figure out a balanced budget, the technical flaws with our livestream feed, and of course the many very human feelings like “no-one will turn up!?!” and “what shirt should I wear?”. But none of that would be very interesting to read, and all of these concerns are now firmly pushed to the back of my mind and replaced by the feeling that this seminar was a success!
Read More»
I’ve come into Hestia2 feeling like a bit of an interloper, asked by my former colleague Stefan Bouzarovski to join the original team in order to organise one of the workshops (which we’ll be holding in Birmingham in the new year). So it was with a little trepidation that I made my way down to Southampton for the inaugural meeting on a baking hot 18 July. Meeting Elton Barker and other members of the team for the first time further convinced me that I’m part of a really exciting project.
Read More»
Keith May (English Heritage)
Exploring the Use of Semantic Technologies for Cross-Search of Archaeological Grey Literature and Data
Work has been ongoing at English Heritage in the use and development of the CIDOC CRM ontology for modelling the archaeological processes, data and conceptual relationships involved in excavation recording and analysis. This modelling has been used to bring together a range of different archaeological datasets – originating from a number of separate organisations – so that they could be cross-searched using semantic technologies. This level of interoperability for otherwise unintegrated data is itself a valuable step. Further work in the Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources (STAR) project explored the possibilities of mapping elements of descriptive free text to the Conceptual Reference Model and thereby making aspects of the archaeological reports cross-searchable too, alongside the other datasets.
Read More»
Kate Byrne (University of Edinburgh)
Geoparsing and spatial network analysis in the GAP projects
This talk describes the spatial analysis of textual resources based on the results of two phases of a Google-funded project: Google Ancient Places (GAP) establishes the means of discovering and visualizing ancient place-names in texts, while the Geographic Annotation Platform (GAP2) extends the data capture to any text.
Read More»
Maximilian Schich (School of Arts and Humanities, The University of Texas at Dallas)
Topography and Topology: Towards common ground in archaeological research
Topographic space has been a dominant paradigm in archaeology for more than five centuries, ever since practitioners started to systematically document ancient remains in ground plans, elevations, perspectives, and maps. In the digital age, topographic records are accelerating exponentially, from simple lists of toponyms to sophisticated compounds, resulting in a multiplicity of opinion that is hard to reconcile into a single coherent picture with three spatial dimensions and one clear evolution over time. Instead we are confronted with a much more complex, multidimensional, hard to understand and frequently incoherent topological space of similarities, implicit dependencies, and relations to other dimensions, such as the social and conceptual.
This talk explores how the science of complex networks, computer science, physics and information design can help us better appreciate regularities and local deviations in this multidimensional topology.
Read More»
A report on the Hestia2 seminar in Southampton, 18 July 2013
Spatial relationships appear throughout our sources about the past: from the ancient roads that connect cities, or the political alliances between places identified by ancient authors, to the stratigraphic contexts archaeologists deal with in their fieldwork. Of course, spatial relationships are also important in contemporary documents and have a key role to play in urban planning and cultural heritage management. However, as the digital medium is increasingly used in recording information, datasets have become increasingly large, making spatial relationships ever more difficult to disentangle. The challenge is particularly acute when trying to extract spatial relationships from texts.
Read More»
Hestia2 is pleased to announce a free one-day seminar at the University of Southampton on spatial network analysis in archaeology, history, cultural heritage and commercial archaeology. Spatial relationships are everywhere in our sources about the past: from the ancient roads that connect cities, or ancient authors mentioning political alliances between places, to the stratigraphic contexts archaeologists deal with in their fieldwork. However, as datasets about the past become increasingly large, these spatial networks become ever more difficult to disentangle. Network techniques allow us to address such spatial relationships explicitly and directly through network visualisation and analysis. This seminar aims to explore the potential of such innovative techniques for research, public engagement and commercial purposes.
Read More»
