Issue 112

May / Jun 2010

news

Rare prehistoric finds at major Carlisle dig

Hammerwich hoard "saved" – but who for?

Mary Rose studies query science of tracing migration

Surprising age of new-found stone row on Dartmoor

in brief & phase 2

features

University archaeology

THE BIG DIG: Discovering Bosworth

The Buried Gods of Gogmagog

Three Men and a (Leaky) Boat

on the web

Caroline Wickham-Jones investigates the archaeological value of encyclopaedic websites and Stuart Jeffrey describes the Grey Lierature Library

science

A child's gift to science, the human remains debate

letters

Your views and responses

CBA Correspondent

Mike Heyworth explores the great rewards and challenges of undersea archaeology

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

on the web

What you get is what you give

Wikis may be quick, but can they be trusted? Caroline Wickham-Jones investigates the archaeological value of encyclopaedic websites.

The internet has revolutionised access to information in ways that were unthinkable 10 years ago, but quantity is not always quality, as the compilers of Bad Archaeology remind us (James Doeser, former CBA Placement in Communicating Archaeology, present CBA London secretary, now a Researcher for the Arts Council; and Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Archaeology Officer for North Hertfordshire). How accurate are the principal information sources?

Wikis, websites with software that allows users to add to or alter content with ease, are now at the heart of data on the web. Specialised archaeological wikis do exist (archaeologists moderate and write WikiArc, for example), but the web is dominated by the original, all purpose Wikipedia. This encyclopaedia was set up under an open ethos ("communal knowledge building"). Anyone could contribute, there would be no censorship or editing, and in this way the biases and strictures of academia would disappear (or so they hoped). In practice, as the site notes, other biases have arisen among those who contribute and (now) edit, and a style guide has been found necessary.

Content disputes at Wikipedia are supposedly quickly resolved by repeated editing which reaches a consensus. There is no shortage of studies trying to assess accuracy, but a simple way to test it for yourself is to look up something you know. A student reading the short page on the Heart Of Neolithic Orkney world heritage site, for example, would not be misinformed, but would miss a great deal if this was their only source of information: there is much more to the place than five sites, and references to the research agenda or the UNESCO entry (both available online) and other similar data are absent. There is a vast amount on Wikipedia about Stonehenge. Much of it is reliable, but in the detail there are many omissions or errors. There is an entry for the Norfolk village of Happisburgh (and another for its lighthouse), but no mention at all of the archaeological remains, arguably amongst the most significant in the UK. Perhaps the key constraint of Wikipedia is the time (and inclination) of those of us who "know": we, after all, should be the ones filling the gaps.

Heritage Key, by contrast, is driven by news and entertainment. It is not a wiki, rather it is apparently written by enthusiastic would-be journalists, but comments are encouraged and it contains serious content among the razzamatazz. Do not be put off by the idea of creating an avatar to explore your own virtual heritage. The company behind this, Rezzable Productions sees it as a means to engage the younger generation in a different form of education – and sell advertising.

Stone Pages and Megalithic Portal round up archaeological information, press releases and other people's stories. Whereas Stone Pages is largely the creation of one archaeologically-aware couple, Megalithic Portal relies on outside contributions, moderated by a "team of voluntary editors and site administrators".

You can of course just Google "What is the mesolithic?", which resulted in links that included Wikipedia itself. And there are other search engines: Wolfram|Alpha offered a not bad time span and brief sentence. WikiAnswers provides succinct definitions and related links. Ask Jeeves provides more links.

You must not assume information on the web to be correct, any more than you should naively trust books (not least encyclopaedias). Wikipedia is controversial. Try asking whether people use it as a source of information and stand back! Whether lover or hater, no one is neutral. The keys to sifting web-information are multiple sources, double checking and a critical intelligence. But do not complain if the web is wrong: unlike books the tools are there for you to make it right.

Information-Checking on the Web

• Wikipedia – en.wikipedia.org
  • Redefines the meaning of peer review
• WikiArc – wikiarc.org
  • A new and potentially exciting development with some useful information already
• Stone Pages – stonepages.com
  • True devotion to archaeology can be rewarding as long as you know what you are doing
• Megalithic Portal – megalithic.co.uk
  • Imaginative, interactive archaeology for all tastes
• Archaeology Expert – archaeologyexpert.co.uk
  • All sorts of useful information (though not on the mesolithic question above)

Caroline Wickham-Jones teaches archaeology at the University of Aberdeen

A rosy future for grey reports

"Grey literature" is typically a record of fieldwork conducted as part of the development control process. It may sound as exciting as a broken bucket, but as Stuart Jeffrey describes, all life is there.

There has been much discussion about archaeological grey literature. Grey reports are not issued for public sale or distribution, and are typically difficult to find and access. But this is no indication of their public value. On the contrary, researchers are now realising that the many thousands of such reports could change the face of British archaeology.

Unfortunately, no-one knows exactly how many there are. Where paper copies are known to exist they are often in planning offices or archives with little or restricted public access. A partnership of archaeological bodies decided to look for a better way of reporting what fieldwork has actually taken place in the UK, and make the results available to all.

The result is OASIS, an online archaeological event recording system, and its associated Library of Unpublished Fieldwork Reports, known colloquially as the Grey Literature Library. Both these services are hosted at the Archaeology Data Service, and are entirely open access and free for readers. OASIS welcomes reports from all archaeologists: commercial, academic, community and volunteer-based. Indeed local authority archaeologists almost universally insist that OASIS is used for work that it is their statutory responsibility to monitor. As events are reported the organisation responsible is offered the opportunity to upload its reports. This has the immediate benefit of ensuring they are accessioned into a digital archive – the raison d'être of the ADS. But it also ensures that the report is easily discoverable, by criteria such as place, period and organisation, and is then available for direct download.

The Grey Literature Library is now the largest collection of online archaeological reports in the UK. Some 4,650 have already been released, and the library acquires around 200 per month. They cover a truly amazing range of archaeological work. The geographical scope is nationwide, from Taunton to Aberdeen, and work originates not only from large contracting units like Wessex Archaeology and Oxford Archaeology, but also from a plethora of smaller field units, universities, council services, trusts and societies.

The archaeology ranges through every era, from the palaeolithic to our recent industrial and architectural heritage; sites include mesolithic middens and medieval castles. Slowly but surely the potential of this previously hard-to-reach material is being realised. It would be very surprising if in the next few years such improved access and the opportunity it offers to formulate new research questions, did not yield major advances in our understanding of the past.

Archaeologists of all kinds are already taking advantage of these reports. The library is sustaining hundreds of thousands of hits and tens of thousands of actual downloads per quarter. While already high, this level of usage is set to increase as the library search mechanisms benefit from the imminent relaunch of the ADS website, with improved map search facilities. In fact the OASIS system itself, now 10 years old, is scheduled for a major review and programme of enhancements.

As more organisations become aware of the challenges of digital archiving and data sharing, the ADS Grey Literature Library is unlikely to remain the only such trusted repository. However, it is hoped that each archive will adhere to the kind of general standards that would make grey literature cross-searchable, discoverable, accessible and sustainable, irrespective of where it is held. But what about work produced before these systems were in place?

The ADS has just completed a joint project with the Natural Language Processing Group at the University of Sheffield, which has demonstrated the potential of using information extraction techniques developed by computer scientists, to index archaeological grey literature and other documents. For the backlog of reports prepared in pre-OASIS days, but available as computer-readable texts, this may provide a solution. Ultimately by integrating access to both old and new reports through the library the ADS hopes to continue to offer ever greater resources to all archaeologists.

Stuart Jeffrey is the Archaeology Data Service's user services manager at the Department of Archaeology, University of York.

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