CAA2014
21st century
Archeaology
concepts, methods and tools
Proceedings of the 42nd Annual
Conference on Computer
Applications and Quantitative
Methods in Archaeology
Edited by
F. Giligny, F. Djindjian, L. Costa, P. Moscati
and S. Robert
Archaeopress Archaeology
Archaeopress
Gordon House
276 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 7ED
www.archaeopress.com
ISBN 978 1 78491 100 3
ISBN 978 1 78491 101 0 (e-Pdf)
© Archaeopress and the individual authors 2015
Cover photograph © Emilie Lesvignes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system,
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without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.
Printed in England by Oxuniprint, Oxford
This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com
Contents
Foreword................................................................................................................................................................... v
Computers and mathematics in Archaeology, anatomy of an ineluctable success! .................................................... 1
François DJINDJIAN
Chapter 1 Historiography
Towards a History of Archaeological Computing: An Introduction .............................................................................. 9
Paola MOSCATI
A retrospective on GIS and AIS platforms for Public Archaeology in Italy. Searching backward for roots and looking
onwards for new methodological road-maps ........................................................................................................... 17
Mirella SERLORENZI, Ilaria JOVINE, Giorgia LEONI, Andrea DE TOMMASI, Andrea VARAVALLO
Art History of the Ancient Near East and Mathematical Models. An Overview ......................................................... 29
Alessandro DI LUDOVICO and Sergio CAMIZ
Archaeology and Computer Applications: the automatic cataloging of Italian archaeological heritage ..................... 35
Alessandra CARAVALE
Chapter 2 Field and laboratory data recording
Practical Assessment of a Multi-Frequency Slingram EMI for Archaeological Prospection ........................................ 43
François-Xavier SIMON, Alain TABBAGH, Apostolos SARRIS
Utilizing Magnetic Prospection and GIS to Examine Settlement Organization in Neolithic Southeastern Europe ...... 53
Alexis NIEKAMP, Apostolos SARRIS
Historic Forest Change: New approaches to Land Use Land Cover ............................................................................ 65
Charlotte E. STANCIOFF, Robert G. PONTIUS Jr, Scott MADRY, Elizabeth JONES
Challenges and Perspectives of Woodland Archaeology Across Europe .................................................................... 73
Hauke KENZLER, Karsten LAMBERS
Archaeological Mapping of Large Forested Areas, Using Semi-Automatic Detection and Visual Interpretation of HighResolution Lidar Data .............................................................................................................................................. 81
Øivind Due TRIER, Lars HOLGER PILØ
Laser scanning and Automated Photogrammetry for Knowledge and Representation of the Rupestrian Architecture
in Cappadocia: Sahinefendi and the Open Air Museum of Goreme .......................................................................... 87
Marco CARPICECI, Carlo INGLESE
Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Approach in Archaeological Fieldwork ..................................................... 95
Carlo BIANCHINI, Francesco BORGOGNI, Alfonso IPPOLITO
From Survey to Representation of the Model. A Documentation of Typological and Chronological Sequences of
Archaeological Artefacts: Traditional and Innovative Approach ............................................................................. 107
Alfonso IPPOLITO, Luca J. SENATORE, Barbara BELELLI MARCHESINI, Gabriella CEROLI
Archaeology in the Third and Fourth Dimensions: A Case Study of 3D Data Collection and Analysis From Prince
Rupert, BC, Canada ................................................................................................................................................ 115
Alyssa PARKER, Morley ELDRIDGE
Integrated RTI Approaches for the Study of Painted Surfaces ................................................................................. 123
Eleni KOTOULA, Graeme EARL
Survey, Documentation and Analysis of the Archeological Architecture: the House of the Knights of Rhodes in the
Forum of Augustus ................................................................................................................................................ 135
Carlo BIANCHINI, Gaia Lisa TACCHI
Digital Research Strategies for Ancient Papyri: A Case Study on Mounted Fragments of The Derveni Papyrus ........ 145
Eleni Kotoula, Graeme Earl
i
Chapter 3. Ontologies and Standards
Towards Linked-Data in Numismatics: How the DIANA Approach can Improve the Diachrony Integrating
Heterogeneous Pieces of Data ............................................................................................................................... 157
Maria CALTABIANO, Mariangela PUGLISI, Antonio CELESTI, Grazia SALAMONE
Celtic Coins in context, a new database ................................................................................................................. 165
Katherine GRUEL, Agnes TRICOCHE, Philippe CHARNOTET
Uncertainty handling for ancient coinage .............................................................................................................. 171
Karsten TOLLE, David WIGG-WOLF
Interoperability of the ArSol (Archives du Sol) database based on the CIDOC-CRM ontology.................................. 179
Emeline LE GOFF, Olivier MARLET, Xavier RODIER, Stéphane CURET, Philippe HUSI
Find the balance - Modelling aspects in Archaeological Information Systems......................................................... 187
Franz SCHWARZBACH, Felix F. SCHÄFER, Alexander SCHULZE
Integration of Archaeological Datasets through the Gradual Refinement of Models............................................... 193
Cesar GONZALEZ-PEREZ, Patricia MARTÍN-RODILLA
Linked Open Greek Pottery .................................................................................................................................... 205
Ethan GRUBER, T.J. SMITH
The Digital Archaeological Workflow: A Case Study from Sweden .......................................................................... 215
Marcus J. SMITH
Exploring time and space in the annotation of museum catalogues: The Sloane virtual exhibition experience ....... 221
Stephen STEAD, Dominic OLDMAN, Jonathan Whitson CLOUD
Building comprehensive management systems for cultural – historical information............................................... 227
Chryssoula BEKIARI, Martin DOERR, Dimitris ANGELAKIS, Flora KARAGIANNI
Managing Time Dimension in the Archaeological Urban Information System of the Historical Heritage of Rome and
Verona .................................................................................................................................................................. 235
Alberto BELUSSI, Sara MIGLIORINI, Piergiovanna GROSSI
Towards an Archaeological Information System: Improving the Core Data Model .................................................. 245
Muriel van RUYMBEKE, Cyril CARRÉ, Vincent DELFOSSE, Pierre HALLOT, Michelle PFEIFFER,
Roland BILLEN
Chapter 4. Internet and Archaeology
Archaeological open access journals: the case of ‘Archeologia e Calcolatori’ .......................................................... 257
Alessandra CARAVALE, Alessandra PIERGROSSI
Massive Open Online Opportunity: MOOCs and Internet–Based Communities of Archaeological Practice ............. 265
Jeffrey P. EMANUEL
Moving Instruction Beyond the Museum’s Walls: Priorities in Online Public Education at the Oriental Institute .... 271
Kathryn GROSSMAN, Catherine Kenyon, Megaera LORENZ, Brittany HAYDEN
Crowd- and Community-Fuelled Archaeology. Early Results from the MicroPasts Project ...................................... 279
Chiara BONACCHI, Andrew BEVAN, Daniel PETT, Adi KEINAN-SCHOONBAERT
The ACCORD project: Archaeological Community Co-Production of Research Resources ........................................ 289
Stuart JEFFREY, Alex HALE, Cara JONES, Sian JONES, Mhairi MAXWELL
Chapter 5. Archaeological Information Systems
12000 years of human occupation, 3 meters deep stratigraphy, 12 hectares… A geographical information system
(GIS) for the preventive archaeology operation at Alizay (Normandie, France) ....................................................... 299
S. MAZET, C. MARCIGN, B. AUBRY, I. COMTE, P. BOULINGUIEZ
Records and spatial representations in the context of a rescue excavation: the case of Quincieux (Rhône-Alpes,
France) .................................................................................................................................................................. 305
Ellebore SEGAIN, Veronique VACHON, Bernard MOULIN, Cécile RAMPONI, Wojciech WIDLAK
ii
Cartography and heritage: past practice and future potential for mapping Scotland’s cultural heritage.................. 315
Peter MCKEAGUE
Visualization based on the Norwegian University Museum Database .................................................................... 323
Espen ULEBERG, Mieko MATSUMOTO
An Inventory of Lucanian Heritage ......................................................................................................................... 333
Alain DUPLOUY, Vincenzo CAPOZZOLI, Alessia ZAMBON
Integrating complex archaeological datasets from the Neolithic in a web-based GIS .............................................. 341
Kai-Christian BRUHN, Thomas ENGEL, Tobias KOHR, Detlef GRONENBORN
Enhanced 3D-GIS: Documenting Insula V 1 in Pompeii ........................................................................................... 349
Giacomo LANDESCHI, Nicolò DELL’UNTO, Daniele FERDANI, Stefan LINDGREN,
Anne-Marie LEANDER TOUATI
MAPPA Open Data Metadata. The importance of archaeological background. ....................................................... 361
Francesca ANICHINI, Gabriele GATTIGLIA
A simple way to formalize the dating of stratigraphic units .................................................................................... 365
Bruno DESACHY
Recognizing temporalities in urban units from a functional approach: three case studies ...................................... 371
Julie GRAVIER
OH_FET: A Computer Application for Analysing Urban Dynamics Over Long Time Spans ...................................... 381
Laure SALIGNY, Ludovic GRANJON, Thomas HUET, Gaël SIMON, Xavier RODIER, Bastien LEFEBVRE
An ‘alphabet’ to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of settlement systems: a relevant representation of time? .. 393
Marie-Jeanne OURIACHI, Frédérique BERTONCELLO, with the collaboration of Pierre NOUVEL,
Laure NUNINGER, Elise FOVET, Stephane ALIX
Chapter 6. GIS and spatial analysis
ArkeoGIS, Merging Geographical and Archaeological Datas Online
Loup BERNARD, Damien ERTLEN, Dominique SCHWARTZ
Counting Sheep Without Falling Asleep: Using Gis to Calculate the Minimum Number of Skeletal Elements (Mne)
And Other Archaeozoological Measures At Schöningen 13Ii-4 ‘Spear Horizon’ ....................................................... 407
Alejandro GARCÍA-MORENO, Jarod M. HUTSON, Aritza VILLALUENGA, Elaine TURNER,
Sabine GAUDZINSKI-WINDHEUSER
Looking for the best. A comparison between GIS and PageRank based algorithms for preventive archaeology in
urban areas ........................................................................................................................................................... 413
Dubbini NEVIO, Gabriele GATTIGLIA, Augusto PALOMBINI
Analyses of bone modifications on human remains: a GIS approach ...................................................................... 423
Elsa CIESIELSKI, Hervé BOHBOT
Territorial organisation of the Terramare culture (Bronze Age, Italy): use of GIS methodology to tackle societal issues ....431
Julie BOUDRY
From the excavation to the territory: contributions of GIS tools to the study of the spatial organization of the
archaeological site of Argentomagus (France, Indre, Saint-Marcel/Argenton-sur-Creuse) ....................................... 443
Emeline LE GOFF, Laure LAÜT, Yoann RABASTÉ, Françoise DUMASY
The integration of landscape processes in archaeological site prediction in the Mugello basin (Tuscany/Italy) ...... 451
Elmar SCHMALTZ, Michael MÄRKER, Hans-Joachim ROSNER, Adrew-Williams KANDEL
The use of Burgundy stone from ancient times to the present day ......................................................................... 459
Stéphane BÜTTNER, Delphine MONTANGE, Laure SALIGNY, Marion FOUCHER with the collaboration of
Eric LECLERCQ, Marinette SAVONNET
Exploring Intervisibility Networks: A Case Study From Bronze and Iron Age Istria (Croatia and Slovenia) ............... 469
Zoran ČUČKOVIĆ
iii
Chapter 7. Mathematics and statistics in archaeology
Intentional Process Modeling of Statistical Analysis Methods ................................................................................ 481
Charlotte HUG, Rebecca DENECKÈRE, Ammar AYMEN
Ancient Mesopotamian Glyptic Products, Statistics and Data Mining: A Research Proposal ................................... 489
Alessandro DI LUDOVICO, Sergio CAMIZ
Intrasite spatial analysis applied to the Neolithic sites of the Paris Basin: from the archaeological feature to global
analysis ................................................................................................................................................................. 497
François GILIGNY
Statistical and mathematical models for archaeological data mining: a comparison............................................... 509
Nevio DUBBINI, Adam LODOEN
Chapter 8. 3D Archaeology and virtual Archaeology
Measuring and describing 3D texture .................................................................................................................... 519
Vera MOITINHO DE ALMEIDA, Juan Antonio BARCELÓ
Old versus new – introducing image-based 3D modeling into the general documentation workflow of archaeological
rescue excavations. Case studies: the Čachtice and Bratislava castles, Slovakia ...................................................... 529
Jan ZACHAR, Seta ŠTUHEC
Beyond spreadsheets: digitising the archaeological artefact inventory process ..................................................... 541
Arianna TRAVIGLIA, Stephen WHITE, Andrew WILSON
Potentialities of 3D Reconstruction in Maritime Archaeology ................................................................................ 549
Elisa COSTA, Carlo BELTRAME, Francesco GUERRA
Cultural Heritage Documentation in Cave Environnement Using Low-Cost Means for Archaeologists. Case Study of
the Larchant Caves in the Fontainebleau Forest in France ...................................................................................... 557
Aurelia LUREAU, Mehdi BELARBI, Pascal RAYMOND, Régis TOUQUET
Forum Romanum: A 3D Model For Self-Service Educational Purposes.................................................................... 569
Philippe FLEURY, Sophie MADELEINE, Nicolas LEFÈVRE
The Virtual Reconstruction of a Small Medieval Town: The Case of Briviesca (Spain) ............................................. 575
Mario ALAGUERO, Andres BUSTILLO, Blanca GUINEA, Lena IGLESIAS
25 Years of Experience in Virtual Reconstructions - Research Projects, Status Quo of Current Research and Visions for
the Future ............................................................................................................................................................. 585
Mieke PFARR-HARFST
Chapter 9. Multi-agent systems and complex system modelling
A Density-Based Simulation Approach for Evaluating Prehistoric Population Fluctuations in Finland ..................... 595
Tarja SUNDELL, Juhana KAMMONEN
Multi-Agent Modelling of the Neolithic LBK ........................................................................................................... 595
Jean-Pierre BOCQUET-APPEL, Richard MOUSSA, Jérôme DUBOULOZ
Explaining the Adoption of ‘Innovations’ in Western Europe during Bronze Age: Towards an Agent-Based Simulation ....613
Juan A. BARCELÓ, Florencia DEL CASTILLO BERNAL, Giacomo CAPUZZO, Berta MORELL, Joan NEGRE
Spatial Interaction Simulation Methods for Ancient Settlement Distributions in Central Italy ................................ 621
Taylor OSHAN, Carson FARMER, Eoin O’DONOGHUE
Interactions and network analysis of a rock art site in Morro do Chapéu, Bahia, Brazil .......................................... 631
Carlos ETCHEVARNE, Grégoire VAN HAVRE
iv
Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
CAA 2014 - 21st Century Archaeology/F. Giligny, F. Djindjian, L. Costa, P. Moscati, S. Robert (eds.)
Massive Open Online Opportunity: MOOCs and Internet–Based
Communities of Archaeological Practice
Jeffrey P. EMANUEL
Harvard University, USA
jemanuel@fas.harvard.edu
Abstract
While the World Wide Web has provided the public with heretofore-unimagined access to information, the democratization of online
content creation has also provided an unprecedented opportunity for the spread of misinformation and misinterpretation. Archaeology
is no exception, as developments like the exposing of museum collections, the ability to conduct armchair ‘surveys,’ and unfettered
access to uncontextualized images via simple Web search 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. The rise of
MOOCs (both as ‘massive open online courses’ and as repositories for massively-accessible online content) may help combat this by
providing a structured mechanism for practitioners 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.
Keywords: Massive, MOOC, Online Applications, Pedagogy, Communities of Practice
the World Wide Web is an unparalleled tool of information
dissemination, though, perhaps the most noteworthy
aspect of the explosion of Internet access and web–based
technologies that has taken place in the 21st century is
the near–eradication of the one–to–many model that once
monopolized Internet design and usage, particularly in the
overlapping academic, research, and education spheres.
Instead, people both shape the information available on
the Internet, making its contents a conversation rather than
a tool for broadcast, and engage in direct communication
with their fellow users via various tools available to them
(inter alia Matzat, 2004; Burgess and Green, 2009; Bohn
et al.,, 2014).
1. Information Flow in the Social Age
In 2013, 2.77 billion people worldwide were classified
as ‘Internet Users,’ as defined by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU 2010; 2013; Figure 1).
The rise of the Internet age has provided an ever–increasing
worldwide population with heretofore–unimagined
access to information, putting the combined knowledge
of the world literally at the fingertips of over one third
of the planet’s population. This, in turn, has allowed for
questions to be answered, knowledge to be transmitted,
and social endeavors to be engaged in at lightning speeds
in some of the most remote corners of the globe. While
Figure 1: Density map of Internet users worldwide, based on data from the International Telecommunications Union.
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Along with the spread of internet–based information
has come the opportunity for internet–based content
creation, both via well–known collaborative enterprises
like Wikipedia, and via lesser–known, but also potentially
influential, platforms like social media accounts and
personal blogs – all of which are available for free to
anybody with an Internet connection and a compatible
device (Daugherty, Easton and Bright, 2008; Correa,
2010; Blank, 2013). Unfortunately, the egalitarian –
and frequently anonymous – nature of online content
creation can lend itself to the spread of misinformation
and misinterpretation as much as it can to the creation of
reliable content and commentary (e.g. Huffington Post,
2013).
2. Embracing the Open Internet
Many One partial solution to this conundrum may be
found in a location that might seem, at first blush, to be
an unlikely place to look for a savior. I speak here of
the MOOC, or the ‘Massive Open Online Course’ – an
acronym and term which is increasingly disinclined
toward that which it purports to describe. As an offering to
the public in the free and open space, the MOOC can serve
as a structured mechanism for professionals across the
academy to reach, interact with, educate, and learn from
an ever–growing online audience (cf. Ho et al., 2014; for
an advocacy perspective, see Zapatero and Morales 2014).
This is of particular importance for archaeology, a field in
which standards of conduct and interpretation are keys to
sound and ethical practice.
Archaeology is far from immune to this side effect of
the 21st century web. So–called ‘Adventures in Bad
Archaeology’ abound on the Internet and beyond (see
badarchaeology.com, specialtyinterests.net, biblebabel.
net, or watch a few episodes of the History Channel’s
‘Ancient Aliens’ series for just a few of many examples!).
In light of this, any sound–minded practitioner could be
forgiven for reacting to such a twisting of our profession
with a combination of horror and a renewed commitment
to preventing archaeological information from reaching the
general public prior to being surrounded by comprehensive,
carefully–researched and –crafted contextualization and
explanation. However, like any other subject or pursuit,
archaeology in the 21st century cannot exist in isolation,
remaining a tightly guarded secret until each new data
point has been mummified inside an impenetrable wrap of
contextualization and explanation that would provide non–
specialists with one part raw data and ninety–nine parts
direction on how to view, think about, and use those data.
Fortunately, as this session’s very existence demonstrates,
many within our field have no intention of holding up
archaeology, and the data points archaeologists recover,
as the property of specialists alone. This is fortuitous for
many reasons, not least of which is the simple fact that
the nature of modern communication and the platforms
available for content creation combine to make such a
move all but impossible.
Though no single MOOC will likely ever compete with
the overall traffic of a site like Wikipedia, the presence
of these learning experiences in the free and open space
is a resounding positive for open access to information,
and sends a strong signal that specialists are not prepared
to withdraw from the discussions surrounding their areas
of expertise and cede the arena of ideas, once again, to
everybody else.
The open, inclusive nature of MOOC–based learning
experiences can allow them to coexist and 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.
The multidirectional communication that is characteristic
of today’s Internet is also a critical role–player in the success
of MOOCs as developers and perpetuators of communities
of practice. Successful participants, for example, may go
on to serve as international and intercultural hubs from
which accurate, professionally–conveyed information
can flow outward to various peripheries. In addition, 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.
The nature of the 21st century Web, and of human
communication in the Internet age, is one of openness
and personal contributions to the discussion surrounding
whatever subject an individual may be interested in. This,
combined with 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, has ensured
that the web will continue to abound in perpetuity with
myriad explanations and interpretations of artifacts,
archaeological data, and history writ large. Given this,
the last thing we should do is pull back from the public
arena of ideas and discourse, as any attempt by specialists
in archaeology or any other field to withhold information
– even if it is done with the purest of intentions – will
in effect cede the battlefield of information and ideas to
everybody else.
Internet and Archaeology
Now, of course, we come to the most often voiced criticism
of MOOCs: the abysmal ‘retention’ and ‘completion’ rates
they boast, and the correspondingly low percentage of total
registrants which goes on to earn a certificate at the end of
each learning experience (Parr, 2013; Perna et al.,, 2013;
Ho et al.,, 2014; Hollands and Tirthali, 2014; Lauerman,
2014; Levy, 2014). The outsized attention paid to these
data points, though, only reinforces how inapplicable they
are to the present space (Ho and Reich, 2014).
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business: Wikipedia. Using September 2013 as sample,1
we see that a little over 116 million people visited the site
during this period (Wikipedia, 2014). Of those, the number
of ‘active participants’ – people who made five or more
edits to Wikipedia’s vast array of articles – was 7,789, or a
little under seven thousandths of one percent. The number
of active contributors – people who made 100 or more
edits – was 778, or six ten–thousandths of one percent
(ibid). This leaves 99.993% of visitors to be classified as
non–participatory and non–contributory (Figure 3) – a
statistic which starts to make participation in ‘MOOCs’
sounds a little better!
In many ways, higher education has remained static
for centuries. Our understanding of it is fueled by a
shared vocabulary, and by a common understanding of
expectations. College courses are formal engagements,
which are quarters, semesters, or years in length. They are
offered synchronously, with a beginning date, an end date,
and a cutoff for registration and honorable withdrawal.
They are undertaken by students who have completed an
official registration (and payment) process – a process that
includes contractually agreeing to participate that course
from start to finish, and that lays out the rewards for success
and the consequences of failure. In the case of the former,
a good grade, college credit, and eventually a certificate
or diploma awaits, while the latter offers a negative
mark which will remain on the student’s transcripts for
the rest of his or her life, affecting every other academic
undertaking he or she pursues (cf. Ho and Reich, 2014;
Emanuel, forthcoming).
Viewed through this lens, a combined withdrawal and
failure rate of twenty percent would be highly suspect
to say the least, while a rate of nine in ten meeting this
description would rightly be viewed as an unmitigated
disaster – a breach of contract by both the professor and
the institution offering this course. However, in the open
online world, where the only barrier to entry is access to
an Internet connection and the willingness to provide an
email address, this same rule simply does not – and cannot
– apply. Terms and concepts like ‘registration,’ ‘retention,’
‘completion,’ and even ‘course’ lose their traditional
meaning, and their application here makes little more
sense than using maritime terminology to describe modern
interstate travel.
Figure 2: Certificate earners, active participants, and
non-participatory and non-contributory enrollees as
percentages of overall CB22x enrollment (illustration by
the author, based on data from Reich et al., 2014).
A more relevant comparison would be other open online
resources that offer engagement, track participation and
contribution, and pose similarly low barriers to entry
and contractual obligations for the user. For a frame of
reference, we may consider some basic metrics from the
Massive Open Online Course ‘The Ancient Greek Hero’
(CB 22x), a learning experience produced by Harvard
University (HarvardX) that focuses on the close reading
of ancient Greek texts and vase paintings. 43,563 people
registered for this learning experience (which was referred
to internally as a ‘Project’ rather than as a ‘Course’).
Registration, which was possible up to three months
prior to the Project’s official start date, consisted of to a
user providing edX with their email address, viewing the
CB 22x information page, and clicking ‘register for this
course.’ Of the 43,563 registrants, 25,686 (59 percent)
were active participants, meaning that they actually logged
in to the Courseware and accessed the available materials
once the Project was live (Reich et al., 2014). 3.2 percent
of total registrants (and 5.5 percent of active participants)
completed the necessary requirements to earn certificates
of completion (ibid; Figure 2).
Figure 3: Active participants and contributors versus
non-participatory and non-contributory web traffic to
Wikipedia.org, 1-30 Sept. 2013 (illustration by the author,
based on data from Wikipedia 2014).
Now let us compare these numbers to an open online
community that has certainly affected the way that we
as scholars and researchers, and the way our students, do
Internet and Archaeology
1
At the time of this writing, September 2013 is the most recent month
broken down in detail on Wikipedia’s statistics page.
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J.P.Emanuel / Massive Open Online Opportunity: MOOCs and Internet–Based Communities of Archaeological Practice
This is also consistent with the move among some to
change C in the acronym ‘MOOC’ from ‘Course’ to
‘Content,’ and to consider these objects for what they might
be more accurately described as: massive open multimedia
textbooks, with – in many cases – a significant social
component to them, which can be leveraged to create both
feedback loops within, and hubs for accurate information
transmission beyond, these learning experiences (cf.
Fowler et al., 2014; Emanuel, forthcoming).
As several studies and visualizations have shown, the
seven–thousandths of a percent which actively participates
– and especially that seven–ten–thousandths of a percent
which actively contributes – can be very active in
engaging the content and in engaging each other, bringing
a remarkable level of interactivity that active contributors
bring to a subject matter about which they are passionate
(Forte and Bruckman, 2006; Viégas et al., 2007; Viégas
and Wattenberg, 2014; Wagner and Prasarnphanich, 2007;
Yang and Lai, 2010).
Finally, the rise of the MOOC is helping to provoke serious
thought about just how our field and many others can be
properly communicated to a broad, international, and truly
diverse population of learners, enthusiasts, and future
professionals (cf. Dufton, Durusu–Tanrıöver and Alcock,
2014). This will hopefully grow into acceptance and
consideration of the multiple modalities of participation
that consumers of MOOC content desire, but it has already
served as an opportunity to invest in better ways for we as
archaeologists to communicate our story. In other words,
it has spurred investment in better tools and approaches
for the conveyance of archaeological understanding and
practice, and has provided a means for interested persons
to congregate around the topics that make our field so
fascinating, while also allowing them to disseminate that
information themselves, within their own circles both
online and off.
This is by and large the nature of social interactions and
interest–based groupings in the online world, and we can
see it borne out in MOOCs, as well. The graph below
shows the level of successful engagement with assessment
exercises charted against the number of chapters of content
viewed within CB22x (Reich et al., 2014: fig. 5). As you
can see, user types – and, we can infer, user intent – covers
the entirety of the spectrum, from non–participatory,
non–contributing registrant through the learner who
viewed every chapter of content provided and aced every
assessment. An excellent case in point on the different
modalities of engagement available to participants is what
we call ‘the listener,’ an identification which at its extreme
refers to a participant who engaged with every chapter of
content but none of the assessments – in other words, a
person who truly came to learn and to interact, but without
the desire to ‘earn a certificate’ (compare to readers vs.
active participants in Wikipedia; Antin and Cheshire,
2010).
These tools include, for example, media–rich annotation
of all modes of content presentation, including text, image,
and video (Desenne, 2014; Desenne and Reis–Dennis,
2014; Mondenero Moya et al., 2014), as well as expanded
3D imaging of objects (e.g., inter alia, Zhou et al., 2012:
13–140; Sanders, 2013; Emanuel, 2014; Manuelian, 2014)
and vastly improved interactive viewers that can be used
to engage with objects of all types within our museum and
library collections and beyond (Harward et al., 2014) –
along with robust analytics that enable and perpetuate the
feedback loops that make MOOCs special, by allowing
for measurement of participant engagement, and thus
providing an opportunity to recognize where we need to
recalibrate our message.
This should provide the impetus for our looking at MOOCs
in a different light. Rather than ‘courses’ whose ‘retention’
and ‘completion’ rates we count like beans, the significant
differences in user intent and modality of participation
should be taken into account when creating, running, and
evaluating MOOCs.
Further development is underway to shrink not participation
in these experiences, but the experiences themselves, so
as to create overlap between the multiple modalities of
participation that learners wish to engage in. An example
of this is Humanities (HUM) 1x ‘The Book: Histories
Across Time and Space,’ a hyper–modular learning
experience currently under development at HarvardX,
which combines archaeology, history, art history, law,
music, and several other schools and specialties into a
user–directed, interdisciplinary learning experience made
up not of a lengthy, ‘in–or–out’ type ‘course,’ but of
numerous discrete learning experiences focused loosely on
one overall topic – in this case, the History of The Book –
which can be arranged into learning paths or engaged with
on their own. Each of these discrete learning experiences
can, in turn, be engaged with via user–directed paths, in
terms of both order and depth.
Figure 4: Scatter plot showing the level of successful
engagement with assessment exercises charted against the
number of chapters of content viewed by enrollees in CB22x
(after Reich et al., 2014: fig. 5).
Internet and Archaeology
268
CAA 2014 Paris
F. Giligny, F. Djindjian, L. Costa, P. Moscati, S. Robert (eds.) / Proceedings of CAA 2014 Paris
DESENNE, P. and REIS–DENNIS, L. (2014) Open edX
Annotation Tools: Breaking the Unidirectionality
of Online Course Content. Paper presented at the
conference Learning With MOOCs: A Practitioner’s
Workshop, Cambridge, MA, 12–13 Aug.
3. Conclusion
The fact that we are willingly entering the open online
world is both encouraging and worthwhile, and it is made
vastly moreso by a willingness to engage in multidirectional
dialogue, and to welcome multiple modalities of
participation, trusting that those who participate in even
a small portion of our learning experiences may take a
portion of the knowledge they gained from us and use it
positively, both to educate their peers and to combat the
false information that abounds on the 21st century web.
Further, though no single MOOC will suddenly challenge
Wikipedia or any other multi–million–user resource on the
web for Internet supremacy, the simple fact is that only
by refusing to cede the field and leave the arena will we
be able to truly educate individuals – and, through them,
the world – about our profession, and about the critical
knowledge, context, and information that is necessary to
truly understand the past.
DUFTON, J. A., DURUSU–TANRIÖVER, M. and
ALCOCK, S. E. (2014). Archaeology at Large:
Embracing
Massive Audiences
for
Online
Applications. Paper presented at the conference
Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in
Archaeology 2014, Paris, France, 22–25 April.
EMANUEL, J. P. (2014). Prospectus Omni ab Angulo:
3D Imaging in Archaeological Reconstruction and
Analysis. Paper presented at the Symposium Thinking
With Your Eyes: Visualizing the Arts, Humanities, and
Sciences, Cambridge, MA, 27–28 Feb.
EMANUEL, J. P. (forthcoming). MOOC as Multimedia
Textbook: Rethinking the Open Online ‘Course’ in
Light of Learner Intent. In J. P. Emanuel and C. Filos
(eds.), Digital Humanities in the Age of the MOOC.
Classics@ 12. Washington, DC.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend special thanks to the organizers of
the session ‘Archaeology at Large: Embracing Massive
Audiences for Online Applications,’ J. Andrew Dufton,
Müge Durusu–Tanrıöver, and Susan E. Alcock (Brown
University), as well as HarvardX, whose funding made
attendance at CAA2014 possible.
FORTE, A. and BRUCKMAN, A. (2006). From Wikipedia
to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and
Learning. Paper presented at the 7th International
Conference on Learning Sciences, Bloomington, IN, 27
June–1 July 2006. Available at: http://www.cc.gatech.
edu/~asb/papers/conference/forte–bruckman–icls06.
pdf.
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