Grand Designs: reflections on archaeology, the historic environment and the E-science programme Dr William Kilbride E-science? Eh? Collaboration? Data processing Can archaeology use these tools?

Co-ordinated problem solving Resource sharing Virtual organisations Access to scientific instruments Grid: data, access, computation Hype? Mystery? Is E-science different?

Gartner’s Hype Cycle: Helping William understand the E-science programme

Jargon is power! Helping William understand the E-science programme Exclusive language Not always clear what projects are doing Computing as discourse Standards should be controversial Political / industrial drivers Hidden (overt) expectations of what arts and humanities are about?

In spite of all that … Can we use E-science tools to be better at archaeology? Taken as read: Focus on archaeology needs Access grid for meetings etc Moving large objects Collaborative tools meets data grid Computational tools meets grid Need to articulate needs Need to be understood

Collaboration in e- space Sharing data across multiple computers Not just http Distributed file stores Federated databases Multi-site use Big (and small) research Channel Tunnel Rail Link Heathrow T5 Stansted M74 … OASIS as an example

OASIS: what it used to be like … Fieldwork unit Print outBacklog Local Govt. Print out National Monuments Record Backlog Post

In an ideal world the machines should do the talking … Fieldwork Print outBacklog Local Archive govt Print outNational agency Backlog Post

But at each point where data is keyed in, it is validated by experts … Local govt: local knowledge Is this what it claims to be? Do we have monuments like that here? That’s the wrong parish name That field unit is no good National Agency: national standards It’s not MIDAS compliant It’s not like other records The terminology is different That SMR is very good So need to capture the validation process but eliminate the drudgery

Fieldwork Local SMR National Monuments Records ArchSearch OASIS record and report

Backlog and the rest of the country Backlog bigger than front-log Quality of grey literature Quality of DC archaeology Only grey literature Geophysics? Survey? Only DC archaeology ac.uk? DNA? C14? Dendro? Closed process Import and export issues Only UK Sharing data not processes Single data source Shared standards development It works! Inherently collaborative Roles and responsibilities clear More records in the pipeline DC as big stick Resolves duplicates Persistent and pervasive Not weaknesses: Areas for growth! Strengths and weaknesses …

Computational power? CPU resources from different machines are used to address a single problem: Desktop scavengers or server grids

Geo-computation: viewshed (etc) Geo-temporal computation? Visualisation and recording VR applications Data mining and processing Simulation? Conservation and management Others Content-based image retrieval? Video and audio? William’s data mining example Computational archaeology

How does it work? Knowledge Map (classification) Gatherers Document Set (XML chunks) Text Mining Tools Creates … Adaptive Concept Map Every possible query already processed Click and browse instead of type and hope Visualise the distribution of data against concepts

What’s the problem? Scalability … Huge numbers of possible combinations 5000 concepts and 1,000,000 documents = 50,000,000,000 possible combinations Conceptually simple Huge memory overheads Space is infinitely refined

Grand Designs: can archaeology, use the tools of the E-science programme Dr William Kilbride Of course we can! Only scratched the surface here… Need to concentrate on archaeology Hype and jargon are problems but … Collaboration Computer processing: … both have a role in archaeology