digitization (Other Keyword)
1-22 (22 Records)
At the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University, recent projects have all implemented some form of 3D modeling of artifacts as part of the documentation process for either before treatment, after treatment, or both. The logistics of the implementation of 3D modeling as a standard documentation technique for every artifact in a collection can be daunting, especially when dealing with untreated waterlogged artifacts that must remain wet before conservation. This paper discusses...
Archival Digitization and Accessibility in a Small Island Nation: A Case Study (2017)
Archaeologists, anthropologists, researchers and educators are all aware of crucial role that archival documents play in the discovery process. Those who work in the Caribbean are painfully aware of the absence of accessible archived documents in many island nations. During the summer of 2016, through a grant with the British Library Endangered Archives Program (EAP914), the Zemi Foundation began working with the Turks and Caicos National Museum on the development of a National Archives. A...
Developing Photo Metadata (2019)
This handout, "Developing Photo Metadata," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. The focus of this guide is on creating metadata for photographic collections. While there are many metadata categories that can be included in describing photographic collections, choices about which ones to include in a metadata template must be made. Metadata categories you record should anticipate your needs and those of future users of a...
Digital Archaeology and the Curation Crisis: 3D Modeling as an Answer to the Problems of Collections Access and Use (2014)
The archaeological curation crisis has plagued repositories and archaeologists alike with a multitude of problems for several decades, most notably inaccessibility to collections. Archaeological artifacts continue to be curated in repositories with little prospect of ever being used by researchers to uncover new information about the past, rendering them essentially useless and removing much of the moral justification of archaeology itself. However, in creating digital 3D models of artifacts and...
Digital Curation In The Age of Covid: Using the FAIR Principles to Foster Preservation, Access, and Reuse (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Collections Management in the Age of COVID-19" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Cultural heritage managers continually face deadlines and milestones that digital resources help to meet them. Yet, many materials related to past assessments, surveys, or excavations are in hard-copy form only. They are difficult to access when SHPO offices, archives, or other hard-copy repositories are closed. In the current...
Erfahrungswissen Zwopunktnull. Eine Lanze für das Lexikon (2020)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the EXARC Bibliography, originally compiled by Roeland Paardekooper, and updated. Most of these records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us using the...
The Future of Zooarchaeological Collections in Twenty First-Century Scholarship (2015)
Zooarchaeological research is nearly impossible without comprehensive comparative collections that aid in the identification and analysis of archaeofauna. Throughout her career, Diane Gifford Gonzalez has been a strong proponent of developing and maintaining comparative research collections of modern and ancient vertebrate specimens. In this paper, I discuss the current state of zooarchaeological collections in twenty-first century scholarship. I highlight the William R. Adams Zooarchaeological...
A GIS-Based Digitization of Archaeological Field Survey Data from the Central Peruvian Andes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological survey began in the central Peruvian Andes in the mid-1960s through the 1970s but was brought to a halt in the 1980s due to political unrest. Investigations into some of the early highland sites continued in the 2000s; however, there are still areas that have yet to be systematically surveyed. Digitization of the existing field survey data...
How to Organize and Scan Photographic Collections (2019)
This handout, "How to Organize and Scan Photographic Collections," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. When working with photographic collections, it may come to you as a set of prints, negatives or slides. This handout provides a brief background on each medium and provides a recommended workflow for working with photographic collections. Helpful resources and practice questions are also included.
Laser Scanning as a Methodology for the Documentation and Interpretation of Archaeological Ships: A Case Study Using the 18th Century Ship from Alexandria, VA and the 18th Century Ship Found Below the World Trade Center in New York. (2018)
In January of 2016, the remains of an 18th century wooden ship were found during construction on the waterfront of Alexandria, VA. The ship was excavated and stored, and in June of 2017, the disarticulated timbers were shipped to the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University for documentation and conservation. To document the ship, each individual timber is laser-scanned, and the individual laser scans are being re-assembled in the nurbs 3-D modelling suite Rhinoceros 5. This...
Liquid Land: A Diasporic Market and the Making of Lahore (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant) (2020)
This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In the city of Lahore, Pakistan, plots of land are increasingly traded like stocks. Though land has long functioned as inherited wealth or a long-term investment, in recent years it has become liquid, or a good that can be quickly bought and sold as prices change. Across a diasporic market, plots of land circulate between local residents and overseas Pakistan living in the Middle East,...
Making Digital Copies of Photographic Prints (2018)
This handout, "Making Digital Copies of Photographic Prints," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. This guide walks you through the process of digitizing photographic prints from properly setting the scanner to creating archival and access copies. Best practices for file naming conventions and batch processing are also discussed.
Not-so-Set in Stone: An Investigation of Rock Art Digitization Methods and Scale of Applicability (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Around the world, rock art sites present significant preservation challenges due to their vulnerability to deterioration from natural weathering as well as human impacts. Various forms of digital recordation are frequently presented as a means to preserve rock art images at various sites. The goal is to preserve them as they are before they disappear...
Old Data, New Format: Digitizing to Increase the Accessibility of Mortuary Information at S'edav Va'aki, Phoenix, Arizona (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Digital databases are critical to archaeological data management, but our increasing use of them since the 1980s means that some of them have become artifacts in themselves. Cultural resource management (CRM) firms in particular rely on different databases to document mortuary features and associated funerary objects, but as many CRM collections have...
The Ontological Approach: Applying Social Theory to Physically Manifested Culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Reflections, Practice, and Ethics in Historical Archaeology" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The design, integration, and accessibility of digitized collections allows one to determine a "things" meaning for themselves, instead of having to accept or deny the preexisting representation applied to said "thing." This will create possibilities of expanded representation for objects, cultures, and meaning itself. The...
The Ontological Approach: Applying Social Theory to Physically Manifested Culture (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of collections management is changing with the ever-growing technology that is embedded in society today. The museum's visitor no longer receives information on an analog platform, or at least not the majority of it, so why is this the main form of communication between museums and patrons? This creates a necessity for museums to alter their...
Organization, Tracking, And Metadata: Bar Coding For Collections Management (2018)
Housing more than 15 million artifacts from over 8,000 archaeological sites, the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin has a significant need for high-functioning collections tracking systems. As part of our institutional digitization strategy, TARL has begun implementing a system of bar codes for collections, with the goal of facilitating artifact retrieval and replacement as our collections are used for research, education, and public outreach. The system...
Resources, Goals, and Standards: The Basics of Digitizing Archaeological Collections and Legacy Materials (2018)
Digitization, the conversion of an analog item and creation a digital surrogate, is an important collections management tool. Digitizing collection materials can provide engaging images for public outreach and education, improve knowledge of the collection and access. It also aids in the preservation of materials by creating digital surrogates of content. Digitizing material can rescue content from obsolete media, provide a way for researchers to view content while protecting fragile, physical...
Scanning from Slides and Film (2018)
This handout, "Scanning from Slides and Film," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. The digitization process for both film and slides are described along with the pros and cons of scanning these media compared to photographic prints.
Scanning to a Text File (2018)
This handout, "Scanning to a Text File," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. Although PDF is a convenient format for reading and sharing textual documents online, there are times when it is most useful to create a fully editable transcription of a document. This guide walks you through the steps on creating a Word document from a paper report. Anytime that you have a paper copy of a document, and you would like to have a digital,...
Scanning Unbound Documents (2018)
This handout, "Scanning Unbound Documents," is a part of the Improving African Futures Using Lessons from the Past (IAfF) Digital Resource Guides. Although it is possible to scan printed documents on a photo scanner, it is more convenient to purchase a document scanner if you are going to do a lot of this kind of material. A document scanner is optimized for scanning documents quickly, and it comes with optical character recognition software that can turn an image into editable text. This guide...
Skills For Culture: A Methodology for Community-Oriented Digital Archaeology Projects (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. African Digital Heritage (ADH) is a Nairobi-based nonprofit organization working to encourage a more critical, holistic, and knowledge-based approach to digital solutions within African heritage. Through this, we hope to cement the place of African culture in an era of rapidly changing technologies and endless frontiers. Our focus areas are...