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Issue 85November/December 2005ContentsnewsArchaeologists find trowel - and other stories Bid to list first commercial nuclear power station Model views - arial photography on the cheap Cave archaeologists find human remains featuresFrom Ashes to Dust: who cares about sports heritage? Coast Survey special White Badges Roads to the past: Ireland's archaeological revolution on the weblettersCBA newsHeadlines from the CBA office.
ISSN 1357-4442 Editor Mike Pitts |
Issue 85 November/December 2005on the webInternet exhibitionistsCaroline Wickham-Jones enjoys virtual museums. From city (www.si.edu) to island (www.museorapanui.cl) virtual exhibitions allow world travel whatever our fitness or wealth. They help us plan (www.virtualmuseum.ca), mug up (www.ancientsites.com) or simply wander (collections.ic.gc.ca/fisheries). Sites reflect their hosts' ethos. The British Museum's is classy and wideranging. They want us to visit in person – there are no dedicated virtual exhibitions – but informative on-line tours link to current shows (www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions). The Marischal Museum, Aberdeen, in contrast, offers a sophisticated tour (www.abdn.ac.uk/virtualmuseum), with 3D displays and a peek behind the scenes of conservation, reserve collections and offices: almost as good as an afternoon in the galleries. London and Aberdeen are not hard to visit. Other virtual exhibitions showcase remoter areas, in Britain few more so than St Kilda. An enterprising Hebridean offers day trips to the island (not for the faint hearted), but the "window of accessibility" is short. The National Trust for Scotland's evocative website (try www.kilda.org.uk with your eyes shut) provides a mine of information and photographs and saves on seasickness tablets. Google yields virtual museums around the world. Most are based on physical collections and, despite the attraction of the internet for children, are aimed at adults. Show.me (www.show.me.uk) seeks to remedy this with a roundup of children's games and information. The 24 Hour Museum (www.24hourmuseum.org.uk), Show.me's parent site, provides a guide to over 3,500 uk museums and galleries including many virtual resources. The versatility of the internet means that it is not just visual, nor static. The Imperial War Museum's online exhibitions (www.iwm.org.uk) incorporate sound and film clips in a way often yet to be developed fully elsewhere. Increased broadband means that this is a realistic option, and the wide variety of media used by the IWM makes it a useful resource for historians, teachers and children. Museums also serve the professional. The Portable Antiquities Scheme (www.finds.org.uk, hosted by the British Museum and supported by Museums, Libraries and Archives across England and Wales, is a good example. The formal home page hints that we have left the leisure world, though it is clear and comprehensive, including material on getting involved, what to do if you find something, and legal information. pas has a dedicated children's section (www.finds.org.uk/pastexplorers) with a wonderful game based on packing to go fieldwalking (www.finds.org.uk/backpack): I liked the advice not to clean finds with Coca-Cola. There is also a site-based tour of the Anglo-Saxon village at West Mucking (www.finds.org.uk/village): fascinating, but is everything found across England and Wales Saxon? Comparable information is provided by the Treasure Trove in Scotland site (www.treasuretrovescotland.co.uk) hosted by the National Museums of Scotland, though it lacks material for children. Both sites include galleries of artefacts they have examined. Many virtual tours lie well hidden: are the museum hosts embarrassed? Do they consider virtual access a poor second best? Many people can benefit, accessing the upper floors of a cathedral, exploring a fragile cave or reaching an exotic ruin without huge cost. Virtual reality has a strong future. Sites to search for web museums
Open doorVictoria Morgan introduces an extraordinary website created by enthusiasts and volunteers. The Megalithic Portal (www.megalithic.co.uk) is dedicated especially to prehistoric archaeology. Many ancient sites have disappeared over the last 50 years or so due to development and intensive agriculture. Even scheduled monuments have limited real protection. The Portal's mission is to document, publicise and protect those that remain and help to ensure their preservation for future generations. The site is crammed with useful information contributed by thousands of visitors from all over the world: a kind of Hitchhikers' Guide to Ancient Sites, from chambered tombs and standing stones to hillforts and settlements, and much in between. Over the years the site has extended beyond prehistoric megaliths, for example taking in Pictish symbol stones, so while still calling itself the Megalithic Portal, it is also the biggest online repository of data on holy wells and ancient crosses. Founded by electronics engineer Andy Burnham, the immense site database began in 1997 as a prehistoric web index in a Microsoft Access database. It now runs entirely on free Linux and open source software, showing that online archaeology does do not have to be expensive. The Portal runs without any external funding, save for a few member contributions and sales from a small online shop. With many thousands of photos catalogued, and complex map plotting programs to run, it soon outgrew conventional web hosting, and the site now runs from a dedicated server. The Portal has been in its current form since February 2001. It is an increasingly popular resource, with four million page views in 2004. The information is maintained by a dedicated team of voluntary editors and administrators, distinguishing it from photo repository/blog type sites with little or no quality control. It has become the centre of a keen user group. One contributor left his job as an aircraft design engineer to travel Europe in a camper van, researching little-known megalithic sites to add to the fast-growing sections on France and Germany. Site features include:
Victoria Morgan is editor of the Megalithic Portal. |
CBA web:British ArchaeologyFebruary 2001 CBA BriefingFieldwork CBA homepage |
