First International MedArchNet Workshop Paves the Way for Online Archaeological Community

Together with their counterparts abroad, archaeologists and computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego are one step closer to creating a seamless, highly detailed online network that links temporally diverse archaeological sites around the Mediterranean region.

CISA3 Associate Director Tom Levy, co-principal investigator on the project, says the most exciting aspect of MedArchNet is the prospect of creating 'portal science' for the archaeology community working in the southern Levant.

Representatives from 14 international universities and several non-governmental agencies held a recent workshop at the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to discuss the future of the Mediterranean Archaeology Network (MedArchNet). When complete, MedArchNet will serve as the most up-to-date source of data for Mediterranean archaeological sites dating from remote prehistory to the early 20th century.

The workshop brought together key researchers who control the archaeology settlement pattern datasets for Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula — the areas (along with Southern Lebanon and Syria) that comprise MedArchNet's first node, the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land (DAAHL). Funding for the workshop was provided by the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN), Equinox Publishing Ltd (London), the Cotsen Intitute of Archaeology at UCLA and the UCSD Judaic Studies Program.

Professor Tom Levy, associate director of Calit2's Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) and co-principal investigator on the project, says the most exciting aspect of MedArchNet is the prospect of creating "portal science" for the archaeology community working in the southern Levant.

"For us, this refers to establishing an online community of archaeological researchers who can share large datasets by being members of the cyberinfrastructure," he remarks. "For researchers working in the Mediterranean lands which have seen so much turmoil throughout history, ‘portal science’ allows us to transcend borders, work closely together, and examine large datasets such as ancient settlement information (including the whole range of artifact assemblages from pottery to coins) that would be impossible using traditional methods. What was most valuable about the workshop was that for the first time we were able to bring an international group of some of the best archaeologists working in Israel, Jordan and Palestine in one room — and for two solid days — who have all expressed willingness to in-put and share data in DAAHL.”

Collaborating with Levy as PIs on the project are Arizona State University Affiliated Professor Steven Savage, who is director of the Geo-Archaeological Information Applications (GAIA) Lab, and Chaitan Baru, division director of science research and development for UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer Center. Savage says the team plans to fashion DAAHL (which already contains 40,000 archaeological sites) as a "database without borders" that could eventually be expanded to include archaeological sites in Egypt and beyond.