Posts, stories and more

The Bronze Age Index (BAI)

December 29, 2022 Authors: Daniel Pett

There's something quite magical about the idea of an object that is still safely in our stores being given to a child to hold and experience so far away. Back in 2013, our team was awarded Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding to work on the MicroPasts project, which in part focused on the British Museum's locked away index cards that made up the inventory of Bronze Age implements…

The (Data) Science Behind Digital Heritage

December 12, 2017 Authors: Tullia Fraser

Digital engagement is beyond posting the odd picture of an artefact, as we learnt in our final practical session in Digital Heritage at Durham University. There is also a process of looking back and analyzing data, spotting trends and features to further improve whatever project you may be involved in. In this session, we utilized R software, an open-source software (and programming language). The…

Girdi-Bazar Square Bowl and Potter's Pivot Crowdsourced Photo-masking Project

November 24, 2017 Authors: Aris

Hello all, my name is Aris and I am currently a level 2 student in the Department of Archaeology in Durham University. I am taking the Advanced Skills in Digital Heritage course. Crowdsourcing is an area within Digital Heritage that allows engaging ‘members of the public’ (who do not necessarily have prior knowledge of Archaeology and History) with an archaeological project (like this one) or…

A new 3D Photo-masking project! Join Now!

November 24, 2017 Authors: Kei

Are you interested in the human past? Do you like using social media? Do you want to do some volunteer work? If your answer is ‘YES’, click and join us now. On 27th October 2017, a group of Durham University students launched a 3D photo-masking project. The project was launched on the MicroPasts crowdsourcing platform when we were doing a module called Digital Heritage taught by Dr. Chiara…

A beginner's step into crowdsourcing

November 24, 2017 Authors: Sarah

I learnt about crowdsourcing by the joining the Level 2 Advanced Skills ‘Digital Heritage’ module which I am taking at the Archaeology Department of Durham University. As a complete beginner, I stepped into the daunting world (for me) of informatics and technology, a risk I was willing to take for the sake of engaging a wide range of people into the heritage sector. Indeed, using archaeological…

Potter's Pivot and Square Bowl - A Crowdsourcing Effort

November 24, 2017 Authors: Tullia Fraser

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much”. I believe this sentence encapsulates the essence of the Level 2 Digital Heritage course I am currently taking at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University. The focus of this course is heritage crowdsourcing, where we utilize the knowledge and skillsets of different people around the world to contribute to the heritage sector. This…

Crowdsourcing an excavation project in Iraq

December 11, 2016 Authors: MicroPasts team

This summer, during the second fieldwork campaign at Gird i-Bazar, an archaeological site in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq dating to the Neo-Assyrian period (ca. 900-600 BCE), we had the pleasure to give a talk at SOFIA Café at Qaladze, the small town where our team is based. This very nice occasion prompted us to think about ways to make our work accessible to a wider audience – not just…

Quando un ippopotamo può salvarti

December 07, 2016 Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Questa statuetta (Museo Egizio, Torino, numero di inventario Cat.526, 40 x 17 x 21.5 cm), intagliata nel legno e dipinta a colori vivaci, raffigura una divinità femminile chiamata Taweret (“La grande” in egiziano antico) ed è databile al Nuovo Regno, probabilmente alla diciannovesima dinastia (1292-1190 a.C.). Parahotep, citato insieme a due suoi figli Pay e Ipuy nell’iscrizione posta sulla base…

Archeologia Pubblica e Crowdsourcing al Museo Egizio

June 14, 2016 Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Archeologia e Pubblico. Comprendere come la ricerca e i risultati da essa conseguiti divengono (o meno) parte del nostro vivere contemporaneo, studiare le implicazioni etiche, sociali, economiche, politiche derivanti dall’analisi archeologica della cultura materiale e dalla sua comunicazione e fruizione in senso più lato. Queste sono le tematiche affrontate dal settore dell’Archeologia Pubblica…

Morte e Rinascita nel Nuovo Regno

June 14, 2016 Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

A partire dalla XVIII dinastia (1550-1295 a. C.) e fino all’età tolemaica (332-30 a. C.) le statuette funerarie, note con il nome di ushabty, furono spesso disposte all’interno di cofanetti per la maggior parte di legno. Durante tutto il Nuovo Regno (1550-1069 a. C.) e l’inizio del Terzo Periodo Intermedio (1069-945 a.C.) essi assunsero la forma di cappelle cultuali in miniatura. Uno di questi è…

Naval heritage from the Mary Rose to HMS Hood

June 03, 2016 Authors: Alastair Miles Chiara Bonacchi

In March 2015, the team at the Mary Rose Trust met with Chiara, who introduced MicroPasts and the various projects that the MicroPasts team had been involved in. The Mary Rose Trust team were hugely impressed with the passion of the collaborators that had contributed to the online projects as well as the quality of the work that had been produced and the possibility of achieving a lot in a very…

Artefacts, Archives and Ancient Egypt: Crowd-sourcing the EES object card records

January 13, 2016 Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

In 2015 the Egypt Exploration Society expanded its annual archive volunteer programme and made digitization its primary goal. Though the Society had already scanned a large number of archival documents and images, the new referencing system developed for the archive during 2014 had to be implemented across its virtual collections. To this end, the Society’s collections of object cards were felt to…