Category: ancient geography

ancient geography, digital history, games, immersive learning, interactive fiction, making2 Comments

Stranger in These Parts – An Interactive Fiction for Teaching

Shawn

One of the things I want my students to engage with in my ‘cities and countryside in antiquity’ class is the idea that in antiquity, one navigates space not with a two dimensional top-down mental map, but rather as a series of what-comes-next. That navigating required socializing, asking directions, paying attention to landmarks.  I’m in part inspired by R. Ling’s 1990 article, Stranger in Town, and in part by Elijah Meek’s and Walter Scheidel’s ORBIS project. Elijah and I have in fact been talking about marrying a text-based interface for Orbis for this very reason. But I’m also interested in … Continue reading Stranger in These Parts – An Interactive Fiction for Teaching

ancient geography, archaeology, digital history, humanities, tools1 Comment

I know that I know nothing

Shawn

Commuting in Ottawa is an interesting experience. It seems the entire city disappears in the summer, beguiling one into thinking that a commute that takes 30 – 40 minutes in August will continue to be 30 – 40 minutes in September. This morning, I was pushing 1 hr and 40 minutes. On the plus side, this gives me the opportunity to listen to the podcasts from Scholars’ Lab, from the University of Virginia (available via iTunes U).  As I listen to this excellent series of talks (one talk per commute…) I realize just how profoundly shallow my knowledge is of … Continue reading I know that I know nothing

ancient geography, digital history, environments, games, networks

Second Site: Keith Challis’ work on archaeological visualization

Shawn

I learned this morning of Keith Challis’ blog, ‘Second Site‘. Keith is a researcher with Birmingham University’s ‘Visual and Spatial Technology Center’. Keith is exploring ways of using game engines to render & explore archaeological landscapes (a great use of LIDAR if ever I saw one).  In a recent post, ‘Ideas of Landscape‘ he writes, One of the key ideas behind using computer games to visualise archaeological landscapes is that they take us away from the god-like view from above that typical computer-based visualisation provides.  In Ideas of Landscape, Matthew Johnson reflects on the dichotomy between the romantic, Wordsworthian view … Continue reading Second Site: Keith Challis’ work on archaeological visualization

3d, adventure, ancient geography, digital history, environments, history, immersive learning, making, simulation, virtual learning environments, virtual worlds23 Comments

Virtual Worlds: and the most powerful graphics engine there is

Shawn

Virtual worlds are not all about stunning immersive 3d graphics. No, to riff on the old Infocom advertisement, it’s your brain that matters most.  That’s right folks, the text adventure. Long time readers of this blog will know that I have experimented with this kind of immersive virtual world building for archaeological and historical purposes. But, with one thing and another, that all got put on a back shelf. Today, I discover via Jeremiah McCall’s Historical Simulations / Serious Games in the Classroom site Interactive Fiction (text adventure) games about Viking Sagas – part of Christopher Fee’s English 401 course … Continue reading Virtual Worlds: and the most powerful graphics engine there is

ancient geography, archaeology, GIS

Seminars on GIS & Archaeology

Shawn

seen over at Stoa.org Contemporary Roles for Spatial Analysis in Archaeology The UCL Institute of Archaeology Seminar Series (January–March 2010) 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY Mondays 4pm, Room 612 (followed by a wine reception) Timetable 11 January 2010 – Benjamin Ducke (Oxford Archaeology) ‘Science without software no longer. Archaeological data analysis and the Open Source paradigm’ 18 January 2010 – Chris Green (University of Leicester) ‘Temporal GIS and archaeology’ 25 January 2010 – Tony Wilkinson (Durham University) ‘From household to region: incorporating agency into the interpretation of regional settlement’ 1 February 2010 – Tim Williams (University College London) ‘Earth … Continue reading Seminars on GIS & Archaeology

agent based modeling, ancient geography, archaeology, bibliography, data management, digital history, networks, simulation

2006 ‘Networks, Agent-Based Modeling, and the Antonine Itineraries’. In The Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 19.1: 45-64.

Shawn

It occurred to me that some of you might like to read this. 04_Graham I’ve got some other papers kicking around that I would like to expose to a wider readership; I’ll post those too, once I find them on this machine again… my how cluttered things can get! I’ve been thinking of doing this for some time, but the kick in the pants I needed was courtesy of http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2009/06/please-post-your-papers-on-internet.html Abstract: This paper presents a way of looking at Roman space from a Roman perspective, and suggests ways in which this point of view might open up new approaches in … Continue reading 2006 ‘Networks, Agent-Based Modeling, and the Antonine Itineraries’. In The Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 19.1: 45-64.

ancient geography, archaeology, epigraphy, GIS, history, simulation3 Comments

The Space Between: The Geography of Social Networks in the Tiber Valley

Shawn

The following is somewhere in the publication chain, and has been there since about 2004. Reference: (in press) ‘The Space Between: Places and Connections in the Tiber Valley’ in Coarelli, F. and Patterson, H. (eds) Mercator Placidissimus: the Tiber Valley in Antiquity. New research in the upper and middle river valley. (Proceedings of the Conference held at the British School at Rome, 27-28 Feb. 2004). Rome. British School at Rome – Edizioni QVASAR. The Space Between: The Geography of Social Networks in the Tiber Valley In a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, a man with a crumpled map wants … Continue reading The Space Between: The Geography of Social Networks in the Tiber Valley

ancient geography, making, mash up, pipes, platial, tools

Platial and Pleiades – rss feeds

Shawn

I’ve become a beta-tester on Platial. The RSS feed tool seems to work better on the testing side of the site, although it is still somewhat quirky. The screenshot shows what you get once you submit a feed – in this case, the atom geo-referenced feed from the Pleiades Project. Now, what I would’ve expected, is that Platial automatically extracted the geographic coordinates for each item in the feed, and mapped it. That’s not what happens – rather, the Platial tool is expecting that you’ve added a feed that doesn’t contain geographic info (say, a list of church suppers in … Continue reading Platial and Pleiades – rss feeds