Crowd Sourcing archaeological and palaeontological survey

Summary

Fossilfinder.org is a citizen science project that enables the public to engage directly with palaeo/archaeological research. Data, in the form of images, was collected from research areas to the east of Lake Turkana. The regions studied are those well known as fossil bearing regions dating to periods of interest in human evolution studies (up to 4 million years old in parts). In the first two seasons of research 1 million images of the ground surface were captured at a resolution of 30 pixels per cm (on the ground). Images were collected using two methods, 1) rectangular areas in predefined locations, and 2) transects cutting across varying geological exposures. This resolution was selected to correspond with normal visual acuity for standing or partially crouched position. The images were presented through an interactive website and users were encouraged to answer a series of questions about each image. These questions were aimed to produce data pertinent to the localised geological variation and specific locations where fossils were eroding. This paper presents the first five months of data collected through this citizen science project and discusses how those findings have influenced our data collection methods and how they can assist with palaeo/archaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage