With apologies for cross postings.
Submissions are invited for the session, Digging with words: e-text
and e-archaeology, at Computer Applications and Archaeology 2011,
Beijing, April 12th-16th 2011. For further details, including author
guidelines and submission information, please go to http://www.caa2011.org/#home|default.
Deadline is 15th November 2011.
Digging with words: e-text and e-archaeology
Keywords:
text, digital libraries, text mining, grey literature
Abstract:
There are many complex ways in which archaeology is written about.
Formal publications in journals, books, site reports, so-called
'grey literature', field notes, excavation daybooks, diaries and,
latterly, websites and blogs, all contain a collective written
discourse about the past, and how it is discovered. Added to this
may be historical sources about sites and artefacts: if excavating a
site of the Classical period in Greece for example, it is likely
that the excavator will wish to consult Classical authors such as
Strabo or Thucydides. Furthermore, evidence from text bearing
objects such as inscriptions will heavily influence the
interpretation of any site at which it is found. Hitherto, an
excavator is likely to have accessed most secondary documentary
evidence via institutional libraries and catalogues, or via
booksellers or publishers. However, the relatively recent provision
on a large scale of such documentary evidence digitally --- the
Perseus library at Tufts, and online inscriptions corpora such as
the Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica and Inscriptions of Aphrodisias
are good examples --- combined with increasingly sophisticated
techniques for interrogating that content, and extracting
information automatically, prompts us to rethink the very nature of
the evidence with which we can form interpretations about the past.
Once distinctions between text and artefact, history (or philology)
and archaeology were clear. Now however (for example) texts can be
parsed for formal units of information and databases of entities
built, which can then be used to underpin new knowledge or enhance
resource discovery. On the other hand, the bases of comparanda for
assessing archaeological data are becoming more widely available in
digital form, along with digital representations of those artefacts,
allowing deeper comparison and (textual) annotation. This prompts
questions as to how the digital medium can be used in their
interpretation. This session will seek to explore these distinctions
by bringing together archaeologists with interests in textual
evidence, textual scholars, historians and philologists. Themes will
include, but are not limited to:
* Theoretical considerations of the nature of textual and
archaeological evidence
* The use of standards and mark-up schemas in digitized archaeology
texts
* Text mining and parsing (especially including geoparsing), and
automatic entity extraction
* Linking textual evidence with archaeological evidence using linked
data and semantic web technologies
* Provision for non-Latin texts in digital libraries for
archaeology, with an emphasis on Chinese and other Asian scripts
particularly encouraged
--
Dr Stuart Dunn
Research Fellow
Centre for e-Research
King's College London
www.ahessc.ac.uk/stuart-dunn
Tel +44 (0)207 848 2709
Fax +44 (0)207 848 1989
stuart.dunn@kcl.ac.uk
Centre for e-Research
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL
UK
Geohash: http://geohash.org/gcpvj1zm7yp1