18 posts authored by Chiara Bonacchi

About the project

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

This project will be using the MicroPasts platform and crowd-sourcing methods to allow traditional academics and other communities in archaeology to co-produce innovative open datasets, and thereafter pioneers a novel participatory model in which these same groups co-design and micro-fund follow-up research. Archaeology has long been successful in piquing the interest of ‘professional…

Data Centre

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Welcome to MicroPasts’ Data Centre. Here we aim to encourage public access to high quality, open-licensed data that has been used or produced by MicroPasts crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding projects. First, we should stress that this is not a permanent digital data repository, unlike the following excellent institutional, national and/or international examples: UK Archaeology Data Service UK Data…

People

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Project team Andrew Bevan, UCL Institute of Archaeology Principal investigator Daniel Pett, The British Museum Co-investigator Rachael Sparks, UCL Institute of Archaeology Co-investigator Chiara Bonacchi, UCL Institute of Archaeology Research Associate Adi Keinan-Schoobaert, UCL Institute of Archaeology Research Associate Ian Carroll, UCL Institute of Archaeology Archival Collections Liaison Neil…

Crowd-sourcing, crowd-funding and archaeology

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi Daniel Pett

Hello! We are a team of researchers from University College London and the British Museum. In the past few years, we have been looking into the new opportunities provided by digital technologies for public engagement in archaeology, through several seminar series and a recent edited volume on the topic. We are now lucky enough to have funds from the AHRC to work on a project entitled Crowd and…

Communities, engagement experiences and value

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Hello, In my previous post, I drew attention to the importance of assessing the value of using crowd-sourcing for joined-up research into the human past, but how to go about it? How can value be understood in this context? Value for whom? Here is some initial thinking… I am interested in studying the value resulting from experiences of engaging with crowd-sourcing through time, for different…

What value is there in crowdsourcing archaeological research?

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Hello, This is Chiara. I am a researcher on the AHRC-funded project Crowd and Community-fuelled Archaeological Research, at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. As part of my role, I am currently working on the development of a methodology for assessing the value of using crowdsourcing and crowd-funding to engage online communities with archaeology and the human past. In doing so, I am building on…

Public Archaeology in response to the crisis

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Hello, I am just back from Public Archaeology in a time of crisis a brilliant conference organised at the Valley of the Temples, in Agrigento (Italy), where I was invited as speaker along with other Italian, Greek, Spanish and UK delegates. Organisers asked: how should archaeology change not only to survive the economic crisis, but to improve through it? The answer, I believe, lies in projects…

Welcoming "crowds" into communities

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Hello, This is Chiara. Before looking into methods for assessing the value/s of crowd-sourcing using the framework that I briefly outlined in my previous post, I think it important to introduce our proposed model of engagement. As the title suggests, Crowd and Community-fuelled Archaeological Research looks to engage the public through crowd-sourcing by consolidating and gradually enlarging…

Crowd-sourcing, crowd-funding; the collaborative management of archaeological heritage

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

A presentation given by Chiara Bonacchi at the 20th annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Istanbul, 10-14 September 2014. Chiara

MicroPasts Crowd-funding

Authors: Daniel Pett Chiara Bonacchi

Hello! We’ve just launched the latest part of the MicroPasts project: a crowd-funding website. Have a look and see if you can help. Through this website, it is possible to raise up to £5,000 to fund archaeological or historical research projects that have been developed and will be undertaken collaboratively by professionals with institutional links (e.g. working in universities, museums…

The MicroPasts conference on YouTube

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

If you missed the MicroPasts conference on ‘Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding our Human Past’, on 31 March 2015, you can now catch-up! We have published the videos of the presentations given on the day on our MicroPasts YouTube channel. Have a look and let us know any thoughts or questions! Chiara

MicroPasts Knowledge Exchange Workshops

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

Two back-to-back workshops were held on 23 September at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. The aim of the MicroPasts Knowledge Exchanges workshops was to share the practices, shortcomings and achievements experienced by the MicroPasts project and use these as fodder for wider discussion about the use and evaluation of both crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding within a broader heritage ‘ecology’. Below…

The Mary Rose & MicroPasts Collaboration, Week 1

Authors: Chiara Bonacchi

On Friday 22nd May, the Mary Rose Trust and MicroPasts teams launched a collaborative 3D photo-masking pilot project on the MicroPasts crowdsourcing platform. The aim is to create 3D models for three of the museum’s artefacts. We are really grateful to MicroPasts collaborators for helping complete 37% of the application already (as of 29th May)! It is exciting to see people engaging with the…

Naval heritage from the Mary Rose to HMS Hood

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…

Archeologia Pubblica e Crowdsourcing al Museo Egizio

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

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…

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

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…

Quando un ippopotamo può salvarti

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…