What is the Aegean Digital Archaeological Atlas?
The Aegean Digital Archaeological Atlas (ADAA) is an international project that brings together experts in information technology including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the archaeology of the Aegean region. Using the power of spatial information systems such as Google Maps and Google Earth, GIS, the tens of thousands of recorded archaeological sites for the region - from the remote prehistoric periods to the time of Greek independence - will be entered into a comprehensive database along with site maps, photographs and artifacts. The historical and archaeological content for this project will be developed by a team of international scholars working in the region, helping to provide the data used to create the Atlas.
The atlas represents a cooperative project among the National Archive of Monuments of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) at the University of California, San Diego and the Geo-Archaeological Information Applications (GAIA) Lab at Arizona State University. This website and its content will be the second "knowledge node" of a more comprehensive Mediterranean Archaeological Network (MedArchNet). New developments in telecommunications and information technology are revolutionizing the fields of archaeology, history, and the social sciences. The control of time and space allow archaeologists to uncover and address the "big questions" of human history and social evolution. These include answering how and why the major technological revolutions of history occurred and influenced social and historical change in the Mediterranean. In broad strokes, the control of time and space are essential commodities in the construction of a heritage-based cyberinfrastructure, which come together for scholars and the general public in the ADAA. The atlas will harvest, analyze, and disseminate settlement patterns and new archaeological data for each key period of culture change in the Aegean, from the Lower Paleolithic over 2 million years ago to the end of the 18th century.
This prototype web site is organized around database search functions. The ADAA website will incorporate interactive Google Maps interfaces, with a drop-down list to let the user select any time period; a selection automatically loads text in the right side of the page that introduces the period, and queries the ADAA database to present the archaeological sites in the database that were contemporary with it. (The user must be zoomed in about halfway to see the site points). Each site point can be clicked to open a balloon with its name, and the name can be clicked to open a page in the atlas that can contain three groups of information: 1) the listing from the ADAA database, showing all the filled-in fields from the site table; 2) a listing of all the chapters or case studies in the ADAA website that discuss the site; 3) a detailed, verbal description of the site, which can be richly embedded with pictures, tables, and static maps.
How can I use the ADAA Website?
The ADAA will feature a variety of Google Maps interfaces that let you explore the region and the archaeological resources it contains. The link bar under the ADAA header provides access to the main functions currently available in the website. These include:
Archaeological Periods will organize over 18,000 sites in the ADAA database by time period from the Paleolithic, to the end of the 18th century. A Google Maps interface will let the user animate site clusters through time, and explore the distribution of archaeological sites in the Aegean during any of these periods. Short introductions to the time periods will be included as well.
About the Atlas will display information about the main research partners who are developing the atlas. They are the Directorate of the National Archive of Monuments of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) at the University of California, San Diego and the Geo-Archaeological Information Applications (GAIA) Lab at Arizona State University. Click the links at the bottom of the page to visit their web sites.
Database Search will open a page in the website where users can query the database by such things as site name, time period, site type, site conditions, etc. Queries will be submitted to the ADAA web server and the results will be returned to the user as dynamic kml, which will open on the user's computer in Google Earth. All sites displayed in the result sets will be "back linked" to the ADAA database, so they can be explored individually by following their links.
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Spatial Search link will open a page with in interactive Google Maps display. The user can draw an irregular region of interest on the map and perform a search for all the sites in the ADAA database that fall within one kilometer of the search region. Like the database search, results are displayed as points in Google Earth; the user can determine the point display style, and all search results are back-linked to the Atlas.
Download Paper Forms opens a page in the website where users can download each of the paper forms that feed the ADAA database. The forms are in .pdf format, so Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat is needed to open them; then you can print as many copies as you need. There are brief instructions on the page that explain how the forms should be used. After filling out the forms, mail them back to Dr. Phillip Betancourt at the address shown on the page. We appreciate your efforts to help us populate the ADAA database! Data contributors will be acknowledged on the site record for each site they contribute.
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Mediterranean Archaeological Network or MedArchNet is one of the first attempts to create 'Portal Science' for archaeologists and the interested public. Consequently, a major goal of MedArchNet is to make archaeological data from the Mediterranean lands accessible to various communities, including school teachers, tourists and travel agents, university students and professors, researchers, and public policy makers. MedArchNet taps into the fast-growing field of 'portal science' and will serve researchers and explorers as a platform for international collaboration, while also allowing the general public to share in the excitement of archaeology and discovery. This link takes you to the MedArchNet homepage.
