CAA2015 Siena

3DHOP (3D Heritage Online Presenter) is an open-source tool for the creation of multimedia interactive Web presentations of digital cultural artifacts. 3DHOP target audience range from the museum curators with some IT experience to the experienced Web designers who wants to embed 3D contents in their creations. Based on WebGL, works on almost all platforms, without plugin or a dedicated server, directly inside HTML pages and is capable of streaming multiresolution 3D meshes over HTTP, supporting the exploration of huge 3D models on commodity computers and standard internet connections.

The workshop will present the tool, its components and capabilities, and various examples of 3D web visualization created with it. Then, in a hands-on tutorial, the participants will be guided through the setup of a 3D web visualization, going from a simple example to a more complex multiple-object active-spots animated 3D-HTML page.

The participants will receive documentation material, how-to and web templates, and all the 3D/2D data used in the hands-on tutorial (to start experimenting with the tool).

Research and practice in archaeology often generates, and needs to manage, a large amount of information, which exhibits complex relationships and categorisation phenomena. The quality of the conceptual models that we use when gathering, organising, processing and reporting this information determines, to a large extent, the quality of our work. Creating explicit, high-quality conceptual models is a crucial task in any information-intensive endeavour, and especially in those where the complexity of the information means that intuition alone is not sufficient.

This workshop will provide an exhaustive, hands-on introduction to conceptual modelling in archaeology, by using two related technologies. First of all, the workshop will introduce CHARM (Cultural Heritage Abstract Reference Model, www.charminfo.org), an abstract and wide representation of the basic concepts that we can use to compose models of the archaeological record and related information. CHARM will be used to introduce attendees to a formalised way of thinking about archaeological entities and the valorizations that we make about them, using their own terminology and conceptualizations, but without losing the ability to interoperate and share information with one another. Special attention will be paid to issues such as how to represent material and performative entities as well as agents, valorizations and representations.

Secondly, and at the same time that CHARM models are developed, the discipline of conceptual modelling, often seen as pertaining to the engineering world, will be introduced to attendees. This introduction will be achieved by experimenting with ConML (www.conml.org), the language in which CHARM is expressed, rather than through theoretical explanations. ConML is a simple, high-level, affordable, powerful modelling language specifically designed with the humanities and social sciences in mind. In addition to supporting most of the object-oriented structural modelling constructs, ConML extends them with concerns that are rarely seen in industry-standard approaches but which are extremely important in archaeology, such as the ability to express temporality and subjectivity in conceptual models.

The workshop will assume no previous knowledge of conceptual modelling, although it will assume familiarity with archaeological concepts and practice. Participants will be asked to undertake an extensive array of exercises and practical cases in the archaeological domain, either individually or in small groups, throughout the workshop. The maximum number of participants is estimated at 20.

The workshop organisers have carried out similar experiences in the form of postgraduate courses at CSIC and as workshops at various editions of the CAA conference over the past few years, with excellent results in all cases; archaeologists, historians and architects with no previous exposure to conceptual modelling were capable of creating good-quality models after a few hours of practice. The organizers have extensive experience in using conceptual modelling in archaeological domains for over 15 years.

Network science techniques offer archaeologists the ability to manage, visualise, and analyse network data. Within different archaeological research contexts, network data can be used to represent hypothesised past social networks, geographically embedded networks like roads and rivers, the similarity of site assemblages, and much more.

A large number of software programs is available to work with network data. Visone is one of them and offers a number of advantages:

Free to use for research purposes
A user-friendly interactive graphical user interface
Innovative network visualisations
Exporting publication-quality raster and vector files
The incorporation of statistical modelling techniques

This workshop introduces the basics of network data management, visualisation and analysis with Visone through practical examples using archaeological research questions and datasets. The workshop is aimed at archaeologists with no required previous experience with network science.

Participants should bring a laptop with Visone installed

Maximum 20 participants.

In the past decade, significant effort has been directed toward the development of robust methodologies and supporting technology for enabling and populating specialized repositories of digitized cultural heritage (CH) artefacts, including best practice guides and large-scale digitization projects. Furthermore, a systematic effort has been focused on the process of indexing and annotation of digital collections, enabling meaningful interpretations in a multitude of application scenaria such as on-line digital repositories and virtual reconstructions.

Up to now, digitized data have been exploited in their existing form in numerous CH application scenaria. The rapidly increasing digitized CH content however, can be used to provide feedback for the generation of new information itself. Based on the experience and on-going efforts within the PRESIOUS EU-funded project, this workshop attempts to present existing and on-going research in technologies and practical applications that augment the geometric data of digital CH objects by predictive generative processes guided by geometry processing, analysis and shape matching methods for 3D objects. The primary directions of the discussion will be: technologies for automatic scan completion, erosion simulation and prediction for stone monuments, and automatic object reassembly and repair of damaged and fractured CH objects. We will also touch upon approaches to evaluate the developed new techniques from the algorithmic and archaeology-application domain.

The Workshop will consist of a number of presentations accompanied by software demonstrations, each of which will last 1-1.5 hrs. A discussion session will follow.

Communicating archaeology is a complex operation that should never be separated from the processes of research, because sites and museums are ‘distant’ places, traces of something that is difficult to narrate without the support of researchers. The very distance that makes the relationship between user and heritage magical and unrepeatable, is also the main reason for this difficulty: it is not easy to tell an interesting story using only clues and traces.

Nowadays the possibilities offered by computer technologies invite us to imagine new forms of interaction, but we need to develop a communication strategy, including the choice of appropriate languages to narrate the space “between clues and imagination”, in which the archaeologist operates, and where his/her methods find their true and deepest meaning.

In other words the new space opening up is the synergy between technology, culture and creativity that tends to innovate contents and modes of delivery of cultural resources within a new cultural model, which gathers together the most innovative languages and the enormous expressive potential of the knowledge domain. This space is waiting to be filled by a pact between the various actors who today operate in a disconnected and autonomous way: trainers, researchers and professionals.

I therefore propose a workshop session in which we can discuss about the possibile characteristics of an innovative model, starting from some starting consideration: an innovative approach has to be both attractive and deeply tied to the scientific domain.

The starting points for a discussion could be:

the use of digital storytelling techniques to create attractive narratives and more profound interactions, through a real reworking of scientific knowledge;
the use of specific languages, deeply rooted into the knowledge domain, but fully intelligible to all audiences;
the use of the most up to date technologies;
the active involvement of different kinds of stakeholders (users, contributors, prosumers and so on) in the creation of new services and products.

This approach could be the right solution to improve the overall quality of communication products in the heritage sector, helping to integrate different perspectives already in the design phase, and to get a result that would be both scientifically correct and attractive, avoiding what has been called the disneyfication of cultural heritage, but also the ‘coldness’ of a simple application of technologies.

The goal of the workshop will be to define patterns of communication aimed at the innovation of languages, not neglecting, but rather enhancing, the prerogatives of the knowledge domain, obtaining in this way accurate content, which is interesting and innovative at the same time. This result could represent a contribution to define a new paradigm of communication that would take into account the immense (and largely unused) narrative potential of research methodologies and that would define a new role for archaeologists: not only guarantors of the scientific accuracy of the content, but rather the hub of the whole process of research–interpretation–dissemination, as the only element that can make cultural heritage fascinating and attractive.

The MAP research team is involved since more than 10 years in unmanned flight and advanced image analysis protocols able to provide robust computer-based workflows for architecture and historical heritage digital reconstruction. This opportunity raised within a collaborative partnership between three leading french research teams: the CNRS MAP itself, specialist in spatial data surveying and gathering, the MATIS laboratory, part of the french national geographic institute and SURVEY COPTER, another french subsidiary company, world leader in the domain of UAV’s design and production.

Aerial surveying is, in the domain of archeology and architecture, an exponential field of application and interest. Beyond the increasing flying capabilities and skills of existing UAV, the operational potentiality of such aircraft oversteps the imagination of their own creators. Initially conceived for robotic civilian and military surveying applications, recent experiments have tested autonomous flight, self decision-making and multi-agent convergent tasks.

On the other hand, existing image-based open source tools are today widely available on the web. User friendly interfaces allow to upload a set of un-oriented images which are often cloud-processed within a few minutes. These tools are mainly based upon classical computer-vision methods with a resulting low reliability of the underlying procedure and a poor dimensional accuracy in the final result. Although the visual appeal of these scenes and the easy-access of such technologies for non-expert users grant their increasing popularity, they are frequently unable to derive precise and reliable 3D reconstructions within an accurate metric context. On the other hand, range sensors (mainly laser scanners) are able to quickly produce dense and precise 3D clouds but often with a poor texture appearance and the need of a heavy 3D post-treatment to reconstruct surface geometry.

Preliminary Program:

The upcoming workshop should provide an interesting theoretical background based upon very different experiences in different domains:

unmanned flight, light surveying aircraft
remote sensing, active and passive payloads
data processing software and algorithms
spatial data gathering: scientific approaches for workflow optimization, cartography, cultural heritage, environment, time-lapse surveying…
airworthiness and conformity of present and upcoming aerial unmanned configurations,risk management
…


Practical approaches:
Case histories introducing the most interesting and challenging experiments held by MAP and ICONEM
Live Workshop if possible, a live workshop with a simple image capture session and a simple correlation processing programs
Outdoor Demos submitted to meteorological conditions

3DHOP (3D Heritage Online Presenter) is an open-source tool for the creation of multimedia interactive Web presentations of digital cultural artifacts. 3DHOP target audience range from the museum curators with some IT experience to the experienced Web designers who wants to embed 3D contents in their creations. Based on WebGL, works on almost all platforms, without plugin or a dedicated server, directly inside HTML pages and is capable of streaming multiresolution 3D meshes over HTTP, supporting the exploration of huge 3D models on commodity computers and standard internet connections.

The workshop will present the tool, its components and capabilities, and various examples of 3D web visualization created with it. Then, in a hands-on tutorial, the participants will be guided through the setup of a 3D web visualization, going from a simple example to a more complex multiple-object active-spots animated 3D-HTML page.

The participants will receive documentation material, how-to and web templates, and all the 3D/2D data used in the hands-on tutorial (to start experimenting with the tool).

Research and practice in archaeology often generates, and needs to manage, a large amount of information, which exhibits complex relationships and categorisation phenomena. The quality of the conceptual models that we use when gathering, organising, processing and reporting this information determines, to a large extent, the quality of our work. Creating explicit, high-quality conceptual models is a crucial task in any information-intensive endeavour, and especially in those where the complexity of the information means that intuition alone is not sufficient.

This workshop will provide an exhaustive, hands-on introduction to conceptual modelling in archaeology, by using two related technologies. First of all, the workshop will introduce CHARM (Cultural Heritage Abstract Reference Model, www.charminfo.org), an abstract and wide representation of the basic concepts that we can use to compose models of the archaeological record and related information. CHARM will be used to introduce attendees to a formalised way of thinking about archaeological entities and the valorizations that we make about them, using their own terminology and conceptualizations, but without losing the ability to interoperate and share information with one another. Special attention will be paid to issues such as how to represent material and performative entities as well as agents, valorizations and representations.

Secondly, and at the same time that CHARM models are developed, the discipline of conceptual modelling, often seen as pertaining to the engineering world, will be introduced to attendees. This introduction will be achieved by experimenting with ConML (www.conml.org), the language in which CHARM is expressed, rather than through theoretical explanations. ConML is a simple, high-level, affordable, powerful modelling language specifically designed with the humanities and social sciences in mind. In addition to supporting most of the object-oriented structural modelling constructs, ConML extends them with concerns that are rarely seen in industry-standard approaches but which are extremely important in archaeology, such as the ability to express temporality and subjectivity in conceptual models.

The workshop will assume no previous knowledge of conceptual modelling, although it will assume familiarity with archaeological concepts and practice. Participants will be asked to undertake an extensive array of exercises and practical cases in the archaeological domain, either individually or in small groups, throughout the workshop. The maximum number of participants is estimated at 20.

The workshop organisers have carried out similar experiences in the form of postgraduate courses at CSIC and as workshops at various editions of the CAA conference over the past few years, with excellent results in all cases; archaeologists, historians and architects with no previous exposure to conceptual modelling were capable of creating good-quality models after a few hours of practice. The organizers have extensive experience in using conceptual modelling in archaeological domains for over 15 years.

Network science techniques offer archaeologists the ability to manage, visualise, and analyse network data. Within different archaeological research contexts, network data can be used to represent hypothesised past social networks, geographically embedded networks like roads and rivers, the similarity of site assemblages, and much more.

A large number of software programs is available to work with network data. Visone is one of them and offers a number of advantages:

Free to use for research purposes
A user-friendly interactive graphical user interface
Innovative network visualisations
Exporting publication-quality raster and vector files
The incorporation of statistical modelling techniques

This workshop introduces the basics of network data management, visualisation and analysis with Visone through practical examples using archaeological research questions and datasets. The workshop is aimed at archaeologists with no required previous experience with network science.

Participants should bring a laptop with Visone installed

Maximum 20 participants.

In the past decade, significant effort has been directed toward the development of robust methodologies and supporting technology for enabling and populating specialized repositories of digitized cultural heritage (CH) artefacts, including best practice guides and large-scale digitization projects. Furthermore, a systematic effort has been focused on the process of indexing and annotation of digital collections, enabling meaningful interpretations in a multitude of application scenaria such as on-line digital repositories and virtual reconstructions.

Up to now, digitized data have been exploited in their existing form in numerous CH application scenaria. The rapidly increasing digitized CH content however, can be used to provide feedback for the generation of new information itself. Based on the experience and on-going efforts within the PRESIOUS EU-funded project, this workshop attempts to present existing and on-going research in technologies and practical applications that augment the geometric data of digital CH objects by predictive generative processes guided by geometry processing, analysis and shape matching methods for 3D objects. The primary directions of the discussion will be: technologies for automatic scan completion, erosion simulation and prediction for stone monuments, and automatic object reassembly and repair of damaged and fractured CH objects. We will also touch upon approaches to evaluate the developed new techniques from the algorithmic and archaeology-application domain.

The Workshop will consist of a number of presentations accompanied by software demonstrations, each of which will last 1-1.5 hrs. A discussion session will follow.

Communicating archaeology is a complex operation that should never be separated from the processes of research, because sites and museums are ‘distant’ places, traces of something that is difficult to narrate without the support of researchers. The very distance that makes the relationship between user and heritage magical and unrepeatable, is also the main reason for this difficulty: it is not easy to tell an interesting story using only clues and traces.

Nowadays the possibilities offered by computer technologies invite us to imagine new forms of interaction, but we need to develop a communication strategy, including the choice of appropriate languages to narrate the space “between clues and imagination”, in which the archaeologist operates, and where his/her methods find their true and deepest meaning.

In other words the new space opening up is the synergy between technology, culture and creativity that tends to innovate contents and modes of delivery of cultural resources within a new cultural model, which gathers together the most innovative languages and the enormous expressive potential of the knowledge domain. This space is waiting to be filled by a pact between the various actors who today operate in a disconnected and autonomous way: trainers, researchers and professionals.

I therefore propose a workshop session in which we can discuss about the possibile characteristics of an innovative model, starting from some starting consideration: an innovative approach has to be both attractive and deeply tied to the scientific domain.

The starting points for a discussion could be:

the use of digital storytelling techniques to create attractive narratives and more profound interactions, through a real reworking of scientific knowledge;
the use of specific languages, deeply rooted into the knowledge domain, but fully intelligible to all audiences;
the use of the most up to date technologies;
the active involvement of different kinds of stakeholders (users, contributors, prosumers and so on) in the creation of new services and products.

This approach could be the right solution to improve the overall quality of communication products in the heritage sector, helping to integrate different perspectives already in the design phase, and to get a result that would be both scientifically correct and attractive, avoiding what has been called the disneyfication of cultural heritage, but also the ‘coldness’ of a simple application of technologies.

The goal of the workshop will be to define patterns of communication aimed at the innovation of languages, not neglecting, but rather enhancing, the prerogatives of the knowledge domain, obtaining in this way accurate content, which is interesting and innovative at the same time. This result could represent a contribution to define a new paradigm of communication that would take into account the immense (and largely unused) narrative potential of research methodologies and that would define a new role for archaeologists: not only guarantors of the scientific accuracy of the content, but rather the hub of the whole process of research–interpretation–dissemination, as the only element that can make cultural heritage fascinating and attractive.

The MAP research team is involved since more than 10 years in unmanned flight and advanced image analysis protocols able to provide robust computer-based workflows for architecture and historical heritage digital reconstruction. This opportunity raised within a collaborative partnership between three leading french research teams: the CNRS MAP itself, specialist in spatial data surveying and gathering, the MATIS laboratory, part of the french national geographic institute and SURVEY COPTER, another french subsidiary company, world leader in the domain of UAV’s design and production.

Aerial surveying is, in the domain of archeology and architecture, an exponential field of application and interest. Beyond the increasing flying capabilities and skills of existing UAV, the operational potentiality of such aircraft oversteps the imagination of their own creators. Initially conceived for robotic civilian and military surveying applications, recent experiments have tested autonomous flight, self decision-making and multi-agent convergent tasks.

On the other hand, existing image-based open source tools are today widely available on the web. User friendly interfaces allow to upload a set of un-oriented images which are often cloud-processed within a few minutes. These tools are mainly based upon classical computer-vision methods with a resulting low reliability of the underlying procedure and a poor dimensional accuracy in the final result. Although the visual appeal of these scenes and the easy-access of such technologies for non-expert users grant their increasing popularity, they are frequently unable to derive precise and reliable 3D reconstructions within an accurate metric context. On the other hand, range sensors (mainly laser scanners) are able to quickly produce dense and precise 3D clouds but often with a poor texture appearance and the need of a heavy 3D post-treatment to reconstruct surface geometry.

Preliminary Program:

The upcoming workshop should provide an interesting theoretical background based upon very different experiences in different domains:



unmanned flight, light surveying aircraft
remote sensing, active and passive payloads
data processing software and algorithms
spatial data gathering: scientific approaches for workflow optimization, cartography, cultural heritage, environment, time-lapse surveying…
airworthiness and conformity of present and upcoming aerial unmanned configurations,risk management
…



Practical approaches:

Case histories introducing the most interesting and challenging experiments held by MAP and ICONEM
Live Workshop if possible, a live workshop with a simple image capture session and a simple correlation processing programs
Outdoor Demos submitted to meteorological conditions

This session is devoted to the updated geological and geophysical methods developed to study the characterization, the protection and the valorisation of archaeological and historical sites, contained in the urban territories of major cities or small historical centres. As known geophyical prospection can give a lot of a-priori information over potential archaeological sites and historical buildings. These non-destructive approaches have been widely used by archaeologists and geophysicists since about 60 years. This session will address advances in new and novel approaches to acquisition, instrumentation, processing, interpretation, including high-resolution tomographic techniiques. Case histories are also sought, particularly those demostrating the role of geological and geophysical studies in improving the effectiveness of a comprehensive archaeological and historical problems.

Following the success of the simulation workshops at CAA2012 in Perth and CAA2013 in Paris we would like to continue the beginner course in NetLogo – a platform for building agent-based models. The user-friendly interface, simple coding language and a vast library of model examples makes it the perfect tool for anyone who wants to give simulation a try. The first part of the workshop will be devoted to demonstrating the basics of modelling with NetLogo. It should give each participant enough skills and confidence to tackle the next task, i.e. building an archaeologically inspired simulation in a small group. Finally, the last two hours will consist of a ‘drop-in’ clinic for anyone who would like to discuss their idea for a simulation, needs help with a half developed model or is not sure what resources for modellers are out there.

No prior knowledge of coding is required but we will ask the participants to bring their own laptop and install NetLogo beforehand.

This workshop is promoted by the MAPPA Lab of the University of Pisa; the Lab manages the archaeological open data repository MOD and organises the Open School of Archaeological Data, a free school to foster open data literacy in archaeology.

In this workshop we want to encourage a civic hacking approach to archaeology, an open data approach that we define as ha(r)ckeology. Hacking is a tricky term which it’s difficult to find a single widely accepted definition for. To most of the population, hacking is still associated solely with the acts of breaking into security systems. To those near the technology world, hacking means attempting to solve problems more quickly or creatively than before, and it’s about using new ideas and approaches to improve the status quo. In the context of ha(r)ckeology, we’re clearly more interested in the problem-solving definition of hacking. Using Mark Zuckerberg’s definition: hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. A definition with no explicit mention of technology: hacking is conceived more as a process than as a specific toolset. Therefore, ha(r)ckeology is the act, conducted by archaeologists, of quickly improving the processes and systems of archaeology with new tools or approaches, or more simply ha(r)ckeology means archaeologists working together quickly and creatively to improve archaeology. For reaching such a goal, the first step is to educate a new generation of archaeologists, a sharing generation able to work with a trowel, and to share and manipulate data, a generation that is aware that archaeological data must be open because they are public, they are expensive to produce, and they must be reused.

The workshop has a talking and making approach and want to introduce in a practical manner in how to find, to download, to use, to reuse, and to publish data in open formats. We will explain how to transform data from native formats to more useful formats, for example using Tabula for liberating tables locked inside .pdf files, or making web data extraction easily with software like Import.io . After the data mining, we will work with OpenRefine, a powerful tool for working with messy data: is there someone that thinks that archaeological data aren’t messy? We will clean and transform them from one format into another; we will geocode tabular data starting from a simple address and analyse the spatial properties of archaeological data. Using qGIS we’ll explore the spatial properties of archaeological data, and we’ll apply to them statistical, geostatistical and mathematical models. Archaeologists are open data user, but also open data producer. We will work with metadata and licenses: the ethical and legal aspects connected with the opening of the archaeological data are of fundamental importance.

We don’t want to teach, but to share our experience.

Especially for early-career researchers, presenting a paper at an international conference like CAA can be very challenging. Effectively communicating a piece of research in an oral presentation, even to interested peers, is never easy. Personal style, selection of subject matter, choice of presentation material, language barrier and differences in academic culture can all stand in the way of getting the message across. And unfortunately, constructive feedback is often very difficult to obtain.

In this workshop, the CAA Steering Committee wants to offer presenters at CAA the opportunity to practice their paper and receive targeted feedback on their presentation in a 30 minute session. Participants will first present their papers to eachother, and to a small group of experienced presenters. These will then give feedback on the quality of the presentation, and where necessary provide guidelines for improvement, in a supportive atmosphere. Drinks will be arranged afterwards.

Participation is limited to 12 persons; preference will be given to first-time presenters and young researchers.

The reconstruction of ancient landscape is a simulation process which requires the work of different professionals coming from different fields. Typically archaeologists, paleo-botanists, geologists, environmental experts, 3d modelers, photogrammetrists, historians, etc. needs to work together in the same shared digital space. This digital space has certain requirements, such as the geospatial and 3d dimensions. In the past, several pilot projects and studies have explored the potentiality of cooperative environments for research, teaching and communication purposes. In this session we aim at presenting and discussing about on line cooperative environments, from two different perspectives:

1. applications developed on this topic (the question will be: what has been done and experimented recently in the field of on line cooperative environments and cloud services?). Examples of on line collaborative creation of 3d territories, connected with digital libraries, will be demonstrated.

2. analysis from a cognitive and social perspective of the needs and requirements (the question in this case will be: in order to reach an effective research and reconstruction work, what researchers do, what do they need? to reach an effective knowledge increase which are best strategies to follow?

In the last decade archaeological documentation strategies have been considerably improved by the use of advanced 3D acquisition systems. The systematic use of Laser scanning, photogrammetry and computer vision, in support of intra-site archaeological investigation, provides archaeologists with new opportunities to document and analyse archaeological sites. Moreover, the possibility to visualize and manage 3D texturized models into a GIS platform have procured the opportunity to reconstruct and visualize, in three dimensions, the spatial and temporal relations between the different data acquired during the field investigation process.

During this workshop different workflows of data development and implementation will be presented. In specific, different strategies to generate, geo-reference and analyze 3D models will be discussed through the review of some case studies. Finally the inclusion of high-resolution models, new mechanism of interaction for navigation and annotation will be discussed.

This session is devoted to the updated geological and geophysical methods developed to study the characterization, the protection and the valorisation of archaeological and historical sites, contained in the urban territories of major cities or small historical centres. As known geophyical prospection can give a lot of a-priori information over potential archaeological sites and historical buildings. These non-destructive approaches have been widely used by archaeologists and geophysicists since about 60 years. This session will address advances in new and novel approaches to acquisition, instrumentation, processing, interpretation, including high-resolution tomographic techniiques. Case histories are also sought, particularly those demostrating the role of geological and geophysical studies in improving the effectiveness of a comprehensive archaeological and historical problems.

Following the success of the simulation workshops at CAA2012 in Perth and CAA2013 in Paris we would like to continue the beginner course in NetLogo – a platform for building agent-based models. The user-friendly interface, simple coding language and a vast library of model examples makes it the perfect tool for anyone who wants to give simulation a try. The first part of the workshop will be devoted to demonstrating the basics of modelling with NetLogo. It should give each participant enough skills and confidence to tackle the next task, i.e. building an archaeologically inspired simulation in a small group. Finally, the last two hours will consist of a ‘drop-in’ clinic for anyone who would like to discuss their idea for a simulation, needs help with a half developed model or is not sure what resources for modellers are out there.

No prior knowledge of coding is required but we will ask the participants to bring their own laptop and install NetLogo beforehand.

This workshop is promoted by the MAPPA Lab of the University of Pisa; the Lab manages the archaeological open data repository MOD and organises the Open School of Archaeological Data, a free school to foster open data literacy in archaeology.

In this workshop we want to encourage a civic hacking approach to archaeology, an open data approach that we define as ha(r)ckeology. Hacking is a tricky term which it’s difficult to find a single widely accepted definition for. To most of the population, hacking is still associated solely with the acts of breaking into security systems. To those near the technology world, hacking means attempting to solve problems more quickly or creatively than before, and it’s about using new ideas and approaches to improve the status quo. In the context of ha(r)ckeology, we’re clearly more interested in the problem-solving definition of hacking. Using Mark Zuckerberg’s definition: hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. A definition with no explicit mention of technology: hacking is conceived more as a process than as a specific toolset. Therefore, ha(r)ckeology is the act, conducted by archaeologists, of quickly improving the processes and systems of archaeology with new tools or approaches, or more simply ha(r)ckeology means archaeologists working together quickly and creatively to improve archaeology. For reaching such a goal, the first step is to educate a new generation of archaeologists, a sharing generation able to work with a trowel, and to share and manipulate data, a generation that is aware that archaeological data must be open because they are public, they are expensive to produce, and they must be reused.

The workshop has a talking and making approach and want to introduce in a practical manner in how to find, to download, to use, to reuse, and to publish data in open formats. We will explain how to transform data from native formats to more useful formats, for example using Tabula for liberating tables locked inside .pdf files, or making web data extraction easily with software like Import.io . After the data mining, we will work with OpenRefine, a powerful tool for working with messy data: is there someone that thinks that archaeological data aren’t messy? We will clean and transform them from one format into another; we will geocode tabular data starting from a simple address and analyse the spatial properties of archaeological data. Using qGIS we’ll explore the spatial properties of archaeological data, and we’ll apply to them statistical, geostatistical and mathematical models. Archaeologists are open data user, but also open data producer. We will work with metadata and licenses: the ethical and legal aspects connected with the opening of the archaeological data are of fundamental importance.

We don’t want to teach, but to share our experience.

Especially for early-career researchers, presenting a paper at an international conference like CAA can be very challenging. Effectively communicating a piece of research in an oral presentation, even to interested peers, is never easy. Personal style, selection of subject matter, choice of presentation material, language barrier and differences in academic culture can all stand in the way of getting the message across. And unfortunately, constructive feedback is often very difficult to obtain.

In this workshop, the CAA Steering Committee wants to offer presenters at CAA the opportunity to practice their paper and receive targeted feedback on their presentation in a 30 minute session. Participants will first present their papers to eachother, and to a small group of experienced presenters. These will then give feedback on the quality of the presentation, and where necessary provide guidelines for improvement, in a supportive atmosphere. Drinks will be arranged afterwards.

Participation is limited to 12 persons; preference will be given to first-time presenters and young researchers.

The reconstruction of ancient landscape is a simulation process which requires the work of different professionals coming from different fields. Typically archaeologists, paleo-botanists, geologists, environmental experts, 3d modelers, photogrammetrists, historians, etc. needs to work together in the same shared digital space. This digital space has certain requirements, such as the geospatial and 3d dimensions. In the past, several pilot projects and studies have explored the potentiality of cooperative environments for research, teaching and communication purposes. In this session we aim at presenting and discussing about on line cooperative environments, from two different perspectives:

1. applications developed on this topic (the question will be: what has been done and experimented recently in the field of on line cooperative environments and cloud services?). Examples of on line collaborative creation of 3d territories, connected with digital libraries, will be demonstrated.

2. analysis from a cognitive and social perspective of the needs and requirements (the question in this case will be: in order to reach an effective research and reconstruction work, what researchers do, what do they need? to reach an effective knowledge increase which are best strategies to follow?

In the last decade archaeological documentation strategies have been considerably improved by the use of advanced 3D acquisition systems. The systematic use of Laser scanning, photogrammetry and computer vision, in support of intra-site archaeological investigation, provides archaeologists with new opportunities to document and analyse archaeological sites. Moreover, the possibility to visualize and manage 3D texturized models into a GIS platform have procured the opportunity to reconstruct and visualize, in three dimensions, the spatial and temporal relations between the different data acquired during the field investigation process.

During this workshop different workflows of data development and implementation will be presented. In specific, different strategies to generate, geo-reference and analyze 3D models will be discussed through the review of some case studies. Finally the inclusion of high-resolution models, new mechanism of interaction for navigation and annotation will be discussed.