Open Archaeology Prize
The Open Archaeology Prize a series of competitions sponsored by the Alexandria Archive Institute, which promote the development and use of open educational resources in archaeology and related disciplines. The Open Archaeology Prize aims to enhance community recognition of open scholarly communication. Past competitions include the Junior Researcher Open Zooarchaeology Prize and the 2007 and 2008 ASOR Open Archaeology Prizes (see below).
Winners of the 2008 ASOR Open Archaeology Prize competition were announced on November 21, 2008 at the annual ASOR meeting in Boston. The printed prize announcements can be found on page 31 of the Winter 2008 ASOR newsletter.
First prize ($500) was awarded to the Abzu web site, led by Charles E. Jones, Head Librarian at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University and Research Associate, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Launched in 1994, Abzu collects and manages open access scholarly material relating to the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world, including the rich corpus of ETANA Core Texts, which are available for free for noncommercial teaching and research. In addition to standard search functions, Abzu provides several different ways to track recently entered material, such as news feeds, a clip blog and a widget. It also allows for the re-presentation and re-formatting of material indexed in it in the continuing series "AWOL - The Ancient World Online", beginning at the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. Abzu is self sustaining with selection and editorial control having been integrated into the workflows of the editor at the Research Archives, Oriental Institute, the Blegen Library at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and at the Library of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
Second prize ($200 in books, co-sponsored by the David Brown Book Company) was awarded to the Badè Museum of Archaeology web site, led by Aaron Brody (Pacific School of Religion). The Badè Museum’s web site was recently overhauled to allow for virtual outreach to a limitless audience, helping educate beyond the brick-and-mortar walls of the Museum's galleries, and bringing transparency to the Museum’s holdings. The web site provides access to reusable content from archaeological excavations at Tell en-Nasbeh, conducted by WF Bade in the 1920s and 1930s under the auspices of Pacific School of Religion. The new web site provides digital versions of the contents in the Museum’s exhibits, overviews of research projects and facilitates the ordering of traveling exhibit materials. By openly licensing all content with Creative Commons licenses, the Bade team has ensured that these free and open resources can be downloaded for reuse by anyone. The photographs and short movies are of particular interest, and Aaron informs us that many more resources will be coming on line in the near future.
Scholars from UC Berkeley swept the Open Archaeology Prize competition, held at the 2007 meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). One of a series of awards around “open archaeology” funded primarily by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, this particular Open Archaeology Prize targeted members of ASOR, a long-standing organization of archaeologists conducting research in the Near East. The winners, who were selected based on their project’s scholarly merit, potential for reuse in research or teaching and availability on the web in a free and reusable format, were announced last week at ASOR’s annual meeting in San Diego.
First Prize, Senior Scholar
First prize for a Senior Scholar was awarded to the team led by Ruth Tringham (Professor, Department of Anthropology) and Noah Wittman (Program Manager, ) for their website “Remixing Çatalhöyük” (http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.html). Remixing Çatalhöyük has been variously described as a database narrative and as a multimedia exhibition and research archive. Launched in October 2007, it features the investigations and data of the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük (BACH) and their colleagues at the Neolithic tell settlement of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. The aim of the website, accessible in English or Turkish, is to engage the public of all ages in the exploration of primary research data through four themed collections that are selected from the research database. One theme on the Life-History of People, Places, and Things - also includes a K-12 activity module. The public are invited to download media items that are licensed with a Creative Commons 3.0 license, create original projects and contribute their own "remixes" about Çatalhöyük. Tringham and Wittman write that the developers of this resource “hope that this project will inspire other researchers to openly share their research data and engage broad public audiences.” Remixing Çatalhöyük represents a groundbreaking effort toward sharing and elucidating the past, and we certainly hope other projects will follow their lead.
First Prize, Junior Scholar
First prize for a Junior Scholar was awarded to Catherine Foster (PhD student, Department of Near Eastern Studies) for her project “Household Archaeology and the Uruk Phenomenon: A Case Study from Kenan Tepe, Turkey” (http://nes.berkeley.edu/~cpfoster/). Catherine is awarded first place for developing a website on her research involving household studies of a Late Chalcolithic community in the Upper Tigris region of southeast Anatolia. Foster explains that the ultimate goal of this project is to create an open access micro-artifact database that can be used as a reference resource for other scholars wishing to embark on this type of analysis. Because it will be open access, other scholars will be able to add to the database with high-resolution scans and descriptions or alter categories as developments are made. She states, “To my knowledge, no such database is freely available over the Internet and will be a valuable resource as the inclusion of microarchaeological techniques in Near Eastern excavation projects becomes more and more commonplace.” Foster’s project demonstrates a solid foundation in open access and a visionary approach for future sharing of research in archaeology.
Runner Up
A second prize of $200 in books, co-sponsored by the David Brown Book Company, was awarded to Justin Lev-Tov (Statistical Research, Inc.) for his project “Hazor: Zooarchaeology” (http://www.opencontext.org/database/project.php?item=HazorZooPRJ0000000010). This project presents zooarchaeological identification and analysis of nearly 10,000 animal bones from Late Bronze Age and Iron Age contexts at Hazor, research Justin conducted as part of the Hazor Excavations in memory of Yigael Yadin. By sharing this dataset in Open Context with a flexible license for reuse, Justin is improving access to high-quality research and original data that accompany published syntheses. This dataset has been accessed over 11,000 times since it was uploaded to Open Context in Fall 2006. We hope to see more related content from this time period available in open access formats so that Justin’s dataset becomes even more valuable through comparison with other sites.The ASOR Open Archaeology Prize competition is sponsored by the Alexandria Archive Institute, promoting the development and use of open educational resources in archaeology and related disciplines. The competition aims to enhance community recognition of open scholarly communication and receives generous support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David Brown Book Company and the American Schools of Oriental Research.
Open Context Updates
The Alexandria Archive Institute continues technical development on Open Context and the Penelope Data Importer. Our current build of both systems is intended to test interface designs and features.
New Interface Features:
(1) Table output to Excel
(2) Citation information for each item, to copy or automatically send to Zotero
(3) Summary tools for multiple project variables
Features under Development:
(1) Faceted browsing in Open Context
(2) Simple steps for self-publishing using Penelope
(3) Custom styling and branding for different organizations/communities
(4) RESTful web services
Unless otherwise stated, this content was created by the Alexandria Archive Institute. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
