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Managing Archaeological Data Session from APA/AIA

Posted On February 01, 2013 | 10:28 am | by noahm | Permalink

In early January, a few members of the Dumbarton Oaks community travelled to Seattle in order to participate in the joint annual meetings of the American Philological Association (APA) and Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), which were held January 3–6, 2013.

During the AIA meeting, Deborah Brown, Librarian for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, led a special colloquium, “Managing Archaeological Data in the Digital Age: Best Practices and Realities,” which she organized with the assistance of Lucie Stylianopoulos (UVA). Co-sponsored by the Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology Group (AIA) and the Forum for Classics, Libraries, and Scholarly Communications (APA), several of the papers featured archaeological projects that included important Byzantine or later material, but the colloquium also brought together archaeologists, librarians, and archivists for a discussion of common problems and possible solutions for the critical issue of long-term data management. Screencasts of the individual papers are available to the public on YouTube.

Late antique, Byzantine, and medieval studies were well-represented during the joint meetings. In addition to reports from active fieldwork projects in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, and other Mediterranean countries, presenters also discussed late antique and Byzantine material culture in AIA sessions such as “Mapping and Mathematics for Sites and Shipwrecks” and “The Afterlives of Monuments: Reuse and Transformation in the Ancient World.”