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Internet Archaeology - web publication for the 21st century

July 16, 2003

The electronic journal Internet Archaeology has just published 'Excavations at Cricklade, 1975'. The article features a series of innovative interactive plans and sections that have been digitised from the original inked-up field recordings. Web publication would never have been heard of when the excavations took place, so journal staff had their work cut out in determining just how to transform and publish the hard-copy record of the excavation online.

Judith Winters, editor of Internet Archaeology explained "Archaeologists are technologically very capable and modern excavation records are usually made up of data that is born digital. In 1975 however the excavation record was created on paper and published in print, so large plans and sections would usually have been included as fold-outs in a journal or book and would have been prohibitively expensive if considered."

'Excavations at Cricklade' posed a particular problem for Internet Archaeology. Created in 1975 and intended for print, some of the section drawings were almost 3 metres long, representing trenches that covered over 20 metres on the ground. Yet how to present such long archaeological section drawings in an online environment is still a difficult issue.
"Scanning large section drawings is physically tricky without access to very large scanners, which most archaeologists don't have. And even if scanned, the resulting images would have to be very large to contain all the information recorded. This in turn makes such images too large to download and view online, and in the end are not very usable" said Judith Winters. "Since any archaeological excavation is a one-off, unrepeatable experiment, then the published record is of crucial importance so I wanted to see if there was another way to present this information effectively".

The Cricklade publication was grant-aided by English Heritage, and realising that this was an opportunity to tackle some of the difficulties in digitally publishing long section drawings, Judith Winters enlisted the help of Guy Hopkinson who digitised the hard-copy transparencies. It took several weeks, but now with the help of a browser plugin, readers can interact with a series of sections and plans, select specific features to view, zoom in without losing clarity, customise and even add their own notes and sketches to the images.

Dr Mike Heyworth from the Council for British Archaeology said "The publication of the Cricklade excavations in Internet Archaeology is a further excellent example of the potential of digital publication in archaeology. The interactive sections and plans are particularly significant as they provide opportunities to explore the data in ways that are simply not possible in print journals."

Dr William Kilbride from the Archaeology Data Service enthused "Internet Archaeology has always been at the forefront of archaeological publishing. The Cricklade report shows what can be achieved when longstanding research methods are distributed with the latest technology. This article works because complex archaeological sequences are communicated effortlessly with deceptive simplicity."

York, University of