Massive Open Online Archaeology, Massive Open Online Opportunity: Toward a Worldwide Community of Archaeological Practice

Jeffrey P. Emanuel

Massive Open Online Archaeology, Massive Open Online Opportunity: Toward a Worldwide Community of Archaeological Practice

Citation:

Emanuel, J. P. (2014). Massive Open Online Archaeology, Massive Open Online Opportunity: Toward a Worldwide Community of Archaeological Practice. In Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology 2014 Congress: 21st Century Archaeology: Concepts, Methods, Tools . Paris, France.

Date Presented:

22-25 Apr

Abstract:

While the World Wide Web has provided the public at large with heretofore-unimagined access to information, the egalitarian – and frequently anonymous – nature of online content creation has also provided an unprecedented opportunity for the spread of misinformation and misinterpretation alike. Archaeology is no exception to the double-edged sword that is the 21st century web, as the opening of museum collections, the ability to conduct armchair “surveys” via tools like Google Earth, unfettered access to uncontextualized images via simple Web search, and similar developments have combined to confront a new generation of avocational and aspiring archaeologists with myriad explanations and interpretations of artifacts, archaeological data, and history writ large.

While certainly – and literally! – not a deus ex machina, the rise of the MOOC (both in its traditional definition as “massive open online course,” and in its growing use as a repository for massively-accessible online content) may help counter this current state of affairs by providing a structured mechanism for professionals across the academy to reach, interact with, educate, and learn from an ever-growing online audience. This is of particular importance for archaeology, a field in which standards of conduct and interpretation are keys to sound and ethical practice.

The open, inclusive nature of MOOC-based learning experiences can allow them to compete with similarly free and open sources of information about archaeological topics that are broadly accessible on the public Internet. Further, in the MOOC environment, experts leading open online learning experiences can draw in new participants, while simultaneously ensuring that the facts, techniques, and practices conveyed in their particular learning experience represent accurate scholarly interpretation and understanding, as well as the most up-to-date professional standards and methods. Successful participants, in turn, may go on to serve as international and intercultural hubs from which accurate, professionally-conveyed information can flow outward to various peripheries, while at the same time the multicultural nature of MOOC audiences may also serve as a mechanism for improving the professional practice of archaeology, in part by creating a feedback loop via which practitioners can be exposed to viewpoints and cultural interpretations that might not be commonly considered.

While distance education is not a new phenomenon by any means, the combination of open learning opportunities and 21st century technologies has allowed “non-traditional” education to take a decidedly non-traditional turn of its own. New technologies and techniques allow learners to be provided with interactive experiences, while teachers can be provided the ability to keep their fingers on the pulse of the participant collective, ensuring that knowledge and understanding are being effectively communicated to the community of learners, and that the feedback loop between participants and practitioners remains firmly in place. This paper considers the role of MOOCs in this “new academy,” with two open learning experiences offered by HarvardX/edX in 2013 serving as case studies to evaluate and demonstrate the opportunity presented by the MOOC phenomenon not only to engage students online, but to take steps toward creating a true worldwide community of practice.

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Last updated on 06/08/2016

Books

Emanuel, J. P. (2021). Naval Warfare and Maritime Conflict in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean . Ancient Warfare. Leiden: Brill. Link to publisher's page Abstract

In Naval Warfare and Maritime Conflict in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean, Jeffrey P. Emanuel examines the evidence for maritime violence in the Mediterranean region during both the Late Bronze Age and the tumultuous transition to the Early Iron Age in the years surrounding the turn of the 12th century BCE.

There has traditionally been little differentiation between the methods of armed conflict engaged in during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, on both the coasts and the open seas, while polities have been alternately characterized as legitimate martial actors and as state sponsors of piracy. By utilizing material, documentary, and iconographic evidence and delineating between the many forms of armed conflict, Emanuel provides an up-to-date assessment not only of the nature and frequency of warfare, raiding, piracy, and other forms of maritime conflict in the Late Bronze Age and Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition, but also of the extent to which modern views about this activity remain the product of inference and speculation.

Emanuel, Jeffrey P. 2020. Naval Warfare and Maritime Conflict in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean (monograph). Ancient Warfare Series, Volume 2; Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, Volume: 117. Leiden: Brill.

Review Excerpt

All in all, the author has presented a truly profound study that examines the source material in an almost encyclopedic manner and interprets it lucidly with the question of the role and consequences of maritime conflicts. ...[E]ven what is known gains new nuances and aspects that are of interest not only to Bronze Age specialists through its confident classification in power-political contexts, the cross-epoch overview and the always carefully considered discussion of research.

– R. J. Schulz, Ancient West & East 22 (2023), 353

Emanuel, J. P. (2017). Black Ships and Sea Raiders: The Late Bronze–Early Iron Age Context of Odysseus' Second Cretan Lie . Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Lexington Books. Link to publisher Abstract

The Late Bronze Age ended with a bang in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean: palaces and empires collapsed, from Greece to Egypt; coastal territories were beset by pirates and marauders; migratory peoples were on the move across land and sea; and geopolitical lines were permanently redrawn – conditions reflected, in many ways, by the world portrayed in Homer’s Odyssey. The notorious ‘Sea Peoples,’ mysterious groups of warriors who were credited by the pharaoh Ramesses III with destroying empires across the Near East at this time, fit into this puzzle in some way, although their exact role continues to be hotly debated. In the Odyssey’s various subplots, Odysseus himself carries out activities that are that highly reminiscent of the Sea Peoples, as he engages in raids and skirmishes while circuitously making his way back from Troy. Though it is presented as a falsehood within Homer’s master narrative, one such subplot, the “Second Cretan Lie” (Odyssey xiv 191–359) is striking in its similarity to the experience of one specific Sea Peoples group, whom Egyptian pharaohs referred to as the ‘Sherden of the Sea’, and whose seaborne attacks they claimed that “none could withstand.”

This book marshals documentary, pictorial, and material evidence to examine Odysseus’ Second Cretan Lie in the context of the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition, with particular emphasis on changes in the iconography of warriors and warfare, social and economic upheaval, and remarkable innovation in maritime technology and tactics. Particular focus is given the hero’s description of his frequent raiding activities, including an ill–fated attempt on the Nile Delta, and on his description of seven subsequent years spent in the land of the pharaohs, during which he claims to have gathered great wealth. Setting the evidence for the Sherden of the Sea against this Homeric narrative demonstrates not only that Odysseus’ Second Cretan Lie fits into the temporal framework of the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition, but that there were historical people who actually lived that which Odysseus falsely claims as his own experience.

Emanuel, Jeffrey P. 2017. Black Ships and Sea Raiders: The Late Bronze–Early Iron Age Context of Odysseus' Second Cretan Lie (monograph). Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Articles & Book Chapters

Emanuel, J. P., & Lamb, A. (2017). Open, Online, and Blended: Transactional Interactions with MOOC Content by Learners in Three Different Course Formats. Online Learning , 21 (2), 1-25. Click Here to Download Abstract

During the 2013-14 academic year, Harvard University piloted the use of MOOCs as tools for blended learning in select undergraduate and graduate residential and online courses. One of these courses, The Ancient Greek Hero, combined for–credit (Harvard College and Harvard Extension School) and open online (HarvardX) groups into a single online unit, marking the first time the same instance of a MOOC was used simultaneously by both tuition–paying, credit–seeking students and non–paying, non–credit students enrolled exclusively online. In this article, we analyze and compare the online behavior of students and participants in the three groups that simultaneously participated in The Ancient Greek Hero via the edX platform. We find that, in similar fashion to a traditional learning setting, students enrolled in all three versions of the course engaged the online content in a transactional way, spending their time and effort on activities and exercises in ways that would optimize their desired outcomes. While user behavior was diverse, HarvardX participant engagement tended to be either very deep or virtually nonexistent, while College and Extension School students displayed relatively homogenous patterns of participation, viewing most of the content but interacting mostly with that which affected their overall course grades. Ultimately, we conclude that educators who intend to utilize MOOC content in an effort to apply blended learning techniques to their classrooms should carefully consider how best to incorporate each online element into their overall pedagogical strategy, including how to incentivize interaction with those elements. Further, for MOOCs to have maximum impact, they must address multiple learner motivations and provide participants with multiple modes of interaction with the content and with their peers.

Emanuel, J. P. (2016). Sea Peoples in Egyptian Garrisons in Light of Beth Shean, (Re-) Reconsidered. Mediterranean Archaeology , 28/29 (2015/2016), 1-21. Click Here to Download Abstract

One of the most noteworthy, and most discussed, groups of material finds from Beth-Shean comes from the site’s Northern Cemetery, where the remains of at least 50 clay anthropoid coffins were uncovered in eleven tombs dating mainly to the 13th and 12th centuries BC. Five of these in particular, from Tombs 66 and 90, are unlike anything known from the corpus of anthropoid coffins in Canaan or the greater Egyptian world.

While the view of these coffins as representations of Sea Peoples has fallen out of favour in recent years, this paper argues that this specific coffin group—and site—should be separated from the larger phenomenon of anthropoid coffin burials in Canaan as well as in Egypt and Nubia, and that this iconographic and chronological connection adds to the evidence for a presence of individuals connected to the Sea Peoples’ tradition in the Egyptian garrison at Beth-Shean in the 12th century BC.

Emanuel, J. P. (2016). Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age. Palestine Exploration Quarterly , 148 (4), 265-280. Click Here to Download Abstract

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference,’ as well as an increase in the scale of ship–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.

Emanuel, J. P., Morse, C., & Hollis, L. (2016). The New Interactive: Reimagining Visual Collections as Immersive Environments. VRA Bulletin , 43 (2), 1-16. Click Here to Download Abstract

Emerging technologies and shared standards have opened up new avenues for the curation and presentation of data in archives and published research. Among their many benefits, these developments have made collections across archives more accessible, and have vastly improved the visual experience for users. This paper focuses on the next step in applying technical development and standards to digital collections: improving discoverability and providing a visual product that is simultaneously informative and experiential. The cases presented here focus on new approaches in these areas, with an emphasis on the utilization of visual search and discovery across a research archive and the integration of data and image into an augmented reality (AR) experience, with discussion of how these approaches can improve the usability of visual material while broadening the user’s experience from the purely visual into the realm of the immersive.

Emanuel, J. P. (2016). ‘Dagon Our God’: Iron I Philistine Cult in Text and Archaeology. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions , 16 (1), 22-66. Click Here to Download Abstract

Despite the late date and dubious veracity of the Deuteronomistic history, and despite the Bible’s status as the only Bronze or Iron Age text which indisputably refers to Dagon in a southern Canaanite geographical context, scholars have traditionally accepted 1 Samuel 5:1–8’s portrayal of Philistine cult in the Iron Age I as being centered on this deity and his temple at Ashdod. This study marshals archaeological and historical evidence to assess the level of support for the presence of Dagon in Iron I Philistia, and for a temple at Ashdod as described in the biblical account. Also considered, through comparison with the materially analogous situation in the Bronze Age Aegean, is the critical role that a textual complement to physical evidence (or, in the case of the Philistines, the lack thereof) plays in cultic analysis and pantheonic reconstruction.

Jeffrey P. Emanuel