27 posts tagged with "Crowd Sourcing"

The Bronze Age Index (BAI)

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…

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…

Hello MicroPasts, thrilled to meet you!

Authors: Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert

My name is Adi, and I’m a research associate at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. Earlier this month I joined the MicroPasts team – and I’m especially excited about this project as it feeds into my background and interests in so many ways. Before coming to London I was an archaeologist and academic back home in Israel. A few years ago, I created the West Bank and East Jerusalem Archaeological…

MicroPasts goes to Paris

Authors: Daniel Pett

Hi all, last week we had the opportunity to introduce the MicroPasts project at two international conferences: the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in Austin, and the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference in Paris. In Paris, we discussed our experience of developing the MicroPasts platforms so far, our aims, the challenges we have…

Online Transcription

Authors: Jennifer Wexler

How can it be useful? Letters, documents and literary works are useful for several different kinds of research into the human past. For example, transcribing old excavation records can make them more amenable to spatial and quantitative analysis, whilst transcribing historical documents from past literate societies can be compared and contrasted with the evidence from contemporary objects. Other…

MicroPasts at Digital Humanities 2014, Lausanne

Authors: Daniel Pett

The project has just been represented at the Digital Humanities 2014 conference in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In the Lens: George and Agnes Horsfield’s Photographs

Authors: Amara Thornton

Amara Thornton (British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCL Institute of Archaeology) My life has been so lonely – until I met you – dear Comrade … my extraordinary friendship with you – which I gradually found was absorbing the whole of my life – I did not in the least understand – you stood as pure intellect to me. – George Horsfield to Agnes Conway, c. November 1931 Everyone loves a love…

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…

Later Bronze Age Ornaments

Authors: Alex Davies

Bronze Age ornaments form a major category of metal artefact. Those made of gold are some of the most captivating prehistoric objects known to us. They are probably the most personal objects surviving as they were worn on the body and, as is still true today, were a daily and ever-present signaller of identity, status and an individual’s personality. The term ornament is rather cumbersome and old…

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…

Crowdsourced

Authors: Lisa Cardy

I’ve been a MicroPasts contributor for around two months now, a good time to write this post about why I wanted to be one of the ‘sourced’ crowd and what I’ve got out of it so far. To begin with, here’s my brief summary of MicroPasts: it’s a web-based collection of archaeological projects that anyone can get involved with. The MicroPasts site hosts lots of content, some of which I’ll return to…

Initial reflections on the MicroPasts Knowledge Exchange Workshop

Authors: James Doeser

How do we use crowd-based methods? What benefits do they generate? Where do they fall short? How can we sustain them? And how do they support the work of organisations in a heritage ecology? These were the questions addressed at a knowledge exchange workshop hosted by the UCL Institute of Archaeology on 23 September. It builds upon the MicroPasts project, which has put nearly £400,000 of Arts and…

‘I was made in the year 1510’

Authors: The Mary Rose Trust

The Mary Rose Trust are very excited to be working with Micropasts again. This time, we will be working towards the production of a 3D model of the Mary Rose bell, one of the most iconic items to have been raised from the wreck site. The bell recovered from the Mary Rose was one of the last items to be recovered from the wreck site (it was found under the ship below the starboard side). It was…

A Hollow Human Head of Bronze

Authors: Jennifer Wexler

This September we were lucky enough to have a visit from a group of Egyptian scholars organised by the Egypt Exploration Society (http://ees.ac.uk/news/index/322.html). The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) has been one of main crowd-sourcing collaborators, asking MicroPasts’ contributors to transcribe early 20th century excavation records from Amarna West and Amara, and we have now done 18 crowd…

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…

Wonders of the Deep: Bronze Age Finds from the River Thames in the Bronze Age Index

Authors: Jennifer Wexler

Our penultimate Bronze Age Index project focuses on Bronze Age swords from the River Thames. Finds from the Thames and other watery locations in Britain and Northern Europe have fascinated scholars for many years, and recent excavations at Must Farm and Flag Fen show the incredible importance of riverine environments to prehistoric peoples. In a sense, Thames finds have been central to the study…

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…

Crowdsourcing an excavation project in Iraq

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…