Issue 91

November/December 2006

Contents

news

New finds 30 years on from the drought of 76

Houses near Stonehenge astonish archaeologists

Roman pool may be for early Christian baptism

Logboat's last voyage launches new journey

In Brief

features

English landscape: lovely, isn't it? It's dead
Cider with trunk roads - Trevor Rowley casts an archaeological eye on the last century

Final proof of ancient UK contact with Sicily?
Salcombe and Dover - Bronze age wrecked cargoes in Devon and Kent

Science: evidence for ancient dairying
Neolithic farmers milked their animals in 4000BC

on the web

Recommended websites

letters

Views and responses

CBA news

Headlines from the CBA office

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

on the web

Archaeology in the news

Caroline Wickham-Jones finds ways to keep ahead of the gossip.

Archaeology is part of modern culture. Heritage is valued, though for reasons not all as pure as simple respect for the past. This is not just about site visits or participation: archaeological stories are frequently among the headlines, often to lighten an otherwise darkening load, but occasionally for their own importance. How to find such news on the web?

My first port of call, the Council for British Archaeology newsfeed (www.britarch.ac.uk/newsfeed) links to a multitude of stories across Britain and Ireland, and is automatically updated every five minutes. It also links to Bloglines Archaeonews (www.bloglines.com/public/archaeology) with worldwide coverage. The British Archaeological Jobs Resource provides a comprehensive listing of sources (www.bajr.org/bajrnews) including a weekly news podcast, in conjunction with Stone Pages, for those who prefer their information on the run. Stone Pages itself (www.stonepages.com/news) contains wide ranging coverage in a variety of ways: website, email newsletter, RSS feed and a podcast.

Some news is specialised: World Heritage Alert (www.worldheritagealert.org/Pages/news) publicises threats to sites, including the depredations of modern warfare and cultural conflict as well as the pressures of roads, industry and erosion.

In contrast to finding news on webpages, you can subscribe to Explorator, an email listing of links compiled by David Meadows (groups.yahoo.com/group/Explorator).

Plenty of sites link to archaeological news written by others, but few archaeologists research detailed material. Stories are often based on press releases with little comment. While many are aware of the need to get a press release "right", they are necessarily brief, and the resultant coverage tends to be duplicated, with superlatives over-exploited in the desire to attract attention. Perhaps we need to give more consideration to this.

What do we find in the broadcast media? The bbc has 500 pages of archaeology on their website and covers archaeological news as it breaks, (news.bbc.co.uk). In contrast, archaeology hardly features on itv, (www.itv.com/news), and though similarly absent from Channel 4 news, (www.channel4.com/news), they do have serious coverage in their history section.

And the papers? In general archaeology is present only where it has broken cover as a headline. A rapid trawl of uk websites suggests that while recent archaeological news stories are recovered by search facilities, there are few dedicated sections. A welcome exception lies in the Scotsman online whose Heritage and Culture website currently stands alone (heritage.scotsman.com).

This is a great illustration of heritage encompassing everything from earliest times to yesterday's graffiti. From straightforward material to the whackier (but perhaps more popular) theories, it is all here and the site is constantly growing. It is carefully researched by in-house and commissioned writers and the more interesting ideas are tempered by comment. An email newsletter keeps you up to date with new material, and the readership (and feedback) is worldwide and enthusiastic.

For professional archaeologists this site should act as an indication of archaeology as popular culture – we ignore it at our peril, it is not going to go away and we should be thinking how best to join forces.

Websites that round up archaeological news

• Scotsman Heritage and Culture – heritage.scotsman.com
  • A rich mix of news, information and theory, not just for those whose roots lie north of the border.
• Stone Pages – www.stonepages.com/news
  • Varied news, clear pages, a mix of ways to receive this. Useful for those who do not spend every morning trawling the net.
• Archaeology News – www.archaeologynews.org
  • Eclectic archaeology stories from around the world with some useful links.
• Archaeology in Europe – www.archaeology.eu.com/weblog
  • News from around Europe collected by archaeologist David Beard on a rather cluttered site, but with much information. Older news links do not always work.
• Council for British Archaeology Newsfeed – www.britarch.ac.uk/newsfeed
  • Straightforward links to enough stories from Britain and Ireland to keep anyone happy. A simple, but effective site updated every five minutes.

Excavating the digital mountain

If you have not yet visited the Archaeology Data Service's websites, you have a surprise in store. Stuart Jeffrey attempts to summarise this astonishing resource in one page.

The final results of most archaeological projects are usually available from journals, articles and books. But have you ever wondered what happens to all the digital material they generated? Where are all those original documents, databases, spreeadsheets, digital images and maps?

For 10 years now the Archaeology Data Service (ads.ahds.ac.uk), based at the University of York, has been gathering and preserving this material and making it available to researchers. The ADS's primary focus, and funding, is in the higher education sector, where it hosts the Arts and Humanities Data Service's archaeology subject centre: but the collections and archives from all sectors are freely available to all.

From a handful of collections gathered together in 1996 the ADS has grown to be the UK's foremost digital archaeological archive. It holds thousands of documents and images, hundreds of digital objects such as databases and over one million index records. The material is highly varied. It includes the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and CBA research reports; archives for major excavations such as at Sutton Hoo; and reference resources on topics such as Roman coins and handaxe technology.

Almost the entire body of material held by the ADS is available, either on screen or as downloads, via its website, which now receives over half a million visits a month. An increasing number of collections can be queried directly online, making the material more accessible and easier to use. One such resource is the online database for the CBA's Defence of Britain project (ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/resources.html?dob). This allows sophisticated searching of the data and returns results that include images and details of sites from pill-boxes to barracks.

Interactive map-based interfaces (GIS) are also increasingly used. The Mapping Medieval Townscapes project, for example (ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/resources.html?atlas_ahrb_2005), exploits the latest developments in Webgis to present interactive and queryable maps online without the need for the user to buy expensive GIS software. The Whittlewood project on mediaeval settlement (ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/whittlewood_ahrb_2006) highlights another recent innovation, linking archaeological data directly to publications based on it. Subscribers to the journal Internet Archaeology can move between a published article, a WebGIS and the source data held in the project archive by the ADS.

One of the ADS's most significant contributions to helping people find the material they need has been the development of the ArchSearch research tool (ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/index.cfm). ArchSearch is a searchable online database containing index entries to over a million archaeological records. These are drawn partly from the collections held by the ads. Other databases include the monument records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, English Heritage and Cadw, as well as many historic environment records, excavation indexes and the ADS's own grey literature library.

Many results from an ArchSearch query, which can be map, keyword or theme based, link directly to further online resources, providing a uniquely valuable tool for researchers. The ADS is also the home of the ARENA project (ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/index.html). This aims to extend an ArchSearch-like facility to other European countries.

If you have never visited the ADS website, but wonder what happened to all that digital data from your favourite excavation, the ADS is the first place to look. Our RSS news feeds will keep you up to date with the latest collections as they are made available, and the latest training opportunities and good practice guides offered by the ADS.

Stuart Jeffrey is user services manager at the ADS, with a special interest in three dimensional modelling applications.

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