November Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology (VERA) Prof Mark Baker School of Systems Engineering University of Reading Tel: Web:

November Outline Brief recap a VERA, VERA at the 2007 Silchester Dig.

November The VERA Project Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology. A JISC funded collaboration. Building on VRE 1 project. Developing computer- based tools for archaeologists. VERA took part in the 2007 Silchester excavation. It rained a lot!

November The aims of VERA Enhance the means of documenting and archiving archaeological excavation data. Create a suitable Web portal that provides enhanced tools for the user community. Develop tools that work with existing practices of research archaeologists unfamiliar with VRE. Test these tools out in the field with the archaeologists.

November VERA is a Collaborative Effort CS: School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading. Archaeology: Department of Archaeology, University of Reading and The York Archaeological Trust. User Testing: School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College London.

November VERA at the 2007 Silchester Dig The testbed is the Silchester Town Life project - eleventh season. The excavation site is a portion of what was once a large, bustling Roman town. The aim of this dig is to trace the site's development from its origins before the Roman Conquest to its abandonment in the fifth century AD.

November Gathering Data with Digital Pens Logitech IO2 digital pens. Look and write like normal pens on what looks like normal paper. A camera inside the pen records what has been written.

November Digital pens for Context Cards Context cards describe what the archeologists have discovered. At the 2007 Silchester dig VERA used digital pens for all finds in the south east corner of the trench. The pens and paper survived the weather, the mud and the archaeology students.

November Docking the Pens The pages are imported and interpreted by software. Text is converted using hand writing recognition software and diagrams are saved as images.

November Importing the Data After checking for spelling and archaeological errors, the text is copied to the clipboard and pasted into the VRE (1) portal.

November The Digital Pens were a Success Simple training. Robust (weather, mud and student proof). Speeds up post- excavation work (context cards must be transcribed). Encourages legible handwriting. Paper master copy created in the trench in case of computer related disasters (unlike a PDA for example).

November Context Cards with Nokia N800s The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is a hand held Internet Browser. PDAs have been used in the past to record context cards directly into the VRE portal, VERA tried again this year. Computer equipment does not like sunlight, rain, dust or mud. The system relies on a stable WiFi link (Silchester gets Internet access from a barn down the road).

November N800s for Complimentary Data Digital pictures of finds can be taken and uploaded from the trench, VERA tried this when the weather permitted. Skype can be used to bring a remote expert into the trench for advice.

November Silchester 2007 Dig Summary Rain stopped play for nearly 50% of the dig. The digital pens were a storming success. VERA documented the digging process using diaries to gain insight into the archeological processes. VERA gained first hand experience living and working with the archeologists in the field.

November Plans for the 2008 Silchester Dig Follow up on the success of the digital pens. Wireless camera monitoring of the dig, where do the archaeologists work? A bigger generator for all the technology. Rely on Internet - ensure that this is stable, provides full coverage and a good service.

November VERA Web site A standard-based Web site with an integrated Wiki and Blog. Follow the progress of the project by subscribing to our RSS feed. The web site is at -

November VERA Portal The current VRE 1 portal is a bespoke PHP application, VERA will migrate this into JSR-168 portlets. We are using Gridsphere for the portlet container. The prototype VRE 2 portal will use a portal- bridge to consume the VRE 1 portal. VERA will develop generic portlets for use in other VREs.

November Web Applications and Portals We strongly believe that instead of refactoring Web applications (e.g. Wikis and Blogs) to fit into a Portal Framework, that a portlet should consume the Web applications: –Provides a greater range of software to use within the portal, –The software is not forked from the main source tree, –It is NOT necessary to maintain the Web application. We followed this route in VRE I - Sakai Demonstrator project, and we believe that this route is the best way forward with the VRE I - Ogham portal.

November Recycle Bridge - Demos We have produce what we call the Recycle Bridge that can consume most Web applications. All that need to be done to integrate a Web application into the Recycle Bridge is to address the security - via and plugin or a patch. This approach means that all time and effort creating bespoke portlets for Portal frameworks should be over: –Save huge amounts of time and effort. –Mat will show a demonstration of the VERA Web site and Portal after this talk.

November Recycle Bridge - Demos MediaWiki

November Recycle Bridge - Demos Wikipedia

November Recycle Bridge - Demos Recycle Bridge - MediaWiki

November Recycle Bridge - Demos WordPress - one of the most used Blog systems

November Recycle Bridge - Demos We use it for the VERA blog

November Recycle Bridge - Demos And expose its content to the VERA Web site

November Recycle Bridge - Demos Recycle Bridge - WordPress

November Recycle Bridge - Demos VERA Portal Login

November Recycle Bridge - Demos The IADB is a bespoke PHP VRE

November Recycle Bridge - Demos Recycle Bridge - consuming the IADB

November Conclusions A great collaborative effort between the VERA. partners Silchester Dig: –The digital pens were a storming success, –The Nokia were a limited success, –VERA documented the digging process using diaries to gain insight into the archeological processes - Claire Fisher will briefly talk about this, –VERA partners gained first hand experience living and working with the archeologists in the field. Undertaken various software engineering processes to create a sustainable system - updates to the Ogham code, use of SVN and Trac. IADB/Silchester portal consumed into a Portal Framework via our Recycle Bridge.

November Current Work Starting to work on 3D views of site data - need to potentially make changes to how data is stored, and we need to create an interface to view images. User feedback and Analysis: –Winter Workshop organised for 6th December - some 25 IADB and others attending. –Undertaking user interviews. –Log analysis being under way. Making preparations for next years dig too.