It is hard to believe that anybody that reads this blog doesn’t read Bill Caraher’s Archaeology of the Mediterranean World blog but in case you haven’t noticed he has a summary of his iPad experience at PKAP.

This past summer my excavation on Cyprus experimented with using iPads to document our excavations in the field. Since 2003, I have co-direct the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project with Prof. R. Scott Moore of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Prof. David K. Pettegrew of Messiah College. Over this time, the three of us designed our archaeological methods, in-field procedures, and data structure. During the 2012 season, we embraced the opportunity to test and refine a web application developed by Prof. Sam Fee at Washington and Jefferson College. Messiah College generously loaned us the iPads. Our trench supervisors and excavators embraced the experiment. And Sam was willing to work within with our existing data structure, databases, and ontologies.

Details of the app that they developed are described in Near Eastern Archaeology (link to JSTOR but I had to download it from another of my University’s resources).

Gregory Tucker is our CAD specialist at PARP:PS. He and I have written a brief article for the CSA Newsletter titled Rethinking CAD Data Structures – Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia.

Harrison Eiteljorg, the CSA Director, created the CSA Layer Naming Convention for  documenting complex architecture from archaeological sites. At PARP:PS we used his naming scheme, as well as the variations by Eiteljorg and Paul Blomerus but modified for a slightly different purpose. Eiteljorg and Blomerus were working with spatial data after both field work and analysis. Our article documents how we are working with the data during excavation and with an eye towards creating a data structure that is more easily communicable to the larger excavation team. With this CAD structure we hope to move the spatial data beyond the CAD specialist.

There is a contest being run by Anvil Academic, a new digital scholarly publisher. The deadline is December 31, 2013. Get your data going.

Anvil Academic and Dickinson College Commentaries announce the availability of a $1,000 prize for the best scholarly visualization of data in the field of classical studies submitted during 2013. Two runners-up will be awarded prizes of $500 each, and the three winning submissions will be published by Anvil. Submissions in any and all sub-fields of classical studies, including pedagogical approaches, are welcome from any individual or team. Submissions will be judged by our panel of scholars from Europe and North America:

• John Bodel, W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics and Professor of History, Brown University
• Alison Cooley, Reader & Deputy Head, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Warwick
• Gregory Crane, Professor of Computer Science, Tufts University, and Humboldt Professor, Universität Leipzig
• Lin Foxhall, Professor of Greek Archaeology and History, Head of School, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester
• Chris Francese, Professor of Classical Studies, Dickinson College
• Jonathan Hall, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History and Classics, University of Chicago
• Dominique Longrée, Professeur, Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, Université de Liège
• Andrew M. Riggsby, Professor of Classics and Art History, University of Texas at Austin
• Greg Woolf, Professor of Ancient History, University of St. Andrews

This post is a general call for information.

I am trying to gather enough information to create a current list of software available to archaeologists. This software can be commercial or free, but it should be distributable (that is, custom software written for national archaeological organizations that can’t be distributed won’t be listed here).

The programs can be written for either desktop or portable devices (smart phones, tablets, Palms, etc.) and I would be happy to include apps that are in progress with the intent to distribute as well as apps that are currently being distributed. I am sure that we would all like to share in your progress.

I have been aware of several apps in private development and have been offered the ability to test some of this software. Unless you give me permission to make it public, I won’t list those programs.

The organization and presentation of the material will depend upon the number of programs that I can find. So far I have decided to separate the device apps from the desktop apps. I might have a section on legacy apps (does anybody still use ArchEd or WinBASP (their website says that it is no longer supported but it seems to have been recently updated)?

If you know of any apps that others should hear about feel free to either leave a comment to this post or email me at john.wallrodt@uc.edu.

Thanks for your help.