OK, well, welcome back.
I hope you had a good bunch
and enjoyed some of the weather
here in Providence, which is
actually pretty nice today.
So that's a good
change in New England.
We'll start with
our third session.
I just want to say
that part of breaking
the boundaries presented
in the last two sessions,
those of chronological
and geographical nature,
a really integral part
of that is, in fact,
the employment of method.
More specifically,
methods within
a well-theorized framework.
I was going to discuss
developing relationships
between archaeology in Egypt,
Egyptology, and methodology
more generally
stemming from my own,
how I could say, entanglement
with Egyptian archaeology
and papyrology.
But so many of
the talks thus far
have already touched
on method, and it
would be a shame to let
go of the threads that
are carrying us through the
conference already today.
One, that of
physical landscapes,
I will use to introduce
our first speaker.
And the second, that
of method and theory
as both tools for advancing
argumentation and outreach,
I will use to segue
into our second.
As Gregory so rightly
remarked, our standard toolkit
as archaeologists now includes
a wide range of techniques.
Just within Nigel's talk,
we saw 3D photo modeling,
we saw archaeometrical
analysis on pigments,
archaeological work on the
nearby Nile paleochannel,
and Matt Dalton's
micromorphological
on flora thin sections,
which not only added
to the interpretation of
the phases of the site,
but also can be used as a
proxy for local environmental
change-- something near
and dear to my own work.
Add to this
seriation, radiocarbon
dating Joe mentioned, laser
scanning and conservation
we saw in Betsy's talk, and
the geophysics and imaging
among others in Gregory's talk.
I'm not surprised by
this amount of method.
The exceptional preservation
among other things--
the embarrassment
of riches of Egypt--
has a way of demanding the
need for additional analyses
before and outside the trench.
But I would argue that there are
more boundaries to be pushed.
As Susan pointed out in her
intro to the second session,
methods could and
should also help
us to get to what is not
monumental, not funerary,
and not in the Nile Valley.
Although within those,
as you will see today,
are striking examples
of what is possible.
To get to our first thread.
Ian, if you're
still in the room?
There you are.
You read my mind in
the last session,
and pointed out the theme
of relationships with water,
relationships in
the ancient world
and the contemporary
and as archaeologists.
It is here again
where methods are
crucial to working in
diverse landscapes,
expanding and complicating
our view of the ancient world.
As someone myself who has
been drawn to what has been
considered in the
past the "fringes"--
the eastern desert--
and more recently,
the wetland coastal lagoons
of the Mediterranean at large
in the context of climate
change and human negotiation,
I'm thrilled that we will add
to the list of methods with
Pearce's talks today on
dendrochronology and maritime
and underwater archaeology.
Our second thread,
method theory,
both in terms of argumentation
and moving forward
in our intellectual
journey, but also
as a way of making
knowledge accessible
to other academic audiences as
well as the general community.
What strikes me,
and is exemplified
in our second speaker
today, is the need
to use many tools and methods
within a well-theorized
framework, a boundary
Willeke has pushed and blow
past, not only her
work, that I've long
admired on mobility,
community, ethnography,
but also as well as in digital
humanities, demonstrating
the ability of
various techniques
to build narrative as well as
be implemented for outreach
and boost the
accessibility of knowledge.
Also the way we publish.
Looking towards
the next session,
I want to point out a few
things before I formally
introduce our speakers.
As Andy pointed out,
many of our technology
stems from other
fields, not just
other disciplines, but
also other spheres,
such as military.
Again in Gregory's
talk, the difficulty
of working past
boundaries, not only
physically and intellectually,
but politically.
Tools such as drones
are not necessarily
in keeping with
administrative perceptions
or allowances of what we
can do as archaeologists.
As a way to point forward to
our next session on politics,
please keep those in mind
as sort of an undercurrent.
That brings us to
our first speaker.
Pearce Paul Creasman is
an Associate Professor
of Dendrochronology
and Anthropology,
the Curator of the Laboratory
of Tree-Ring Research,
and Director of the
Egyptian Expedition
at the University of Arizona.
He received his PhD in
anthropology in the Nautical
Archeology Program at Texas
A&M. He is actively involved
in several initiatives to
apply scientific methods
to longstanding problems in
Egyptology, using new data
to improve the resolution
of our collective knowledge
in areas such as ancient climate
change-- yes-- and chronology.
His research primarily focuses
on understanding ancient human
and environmental
interactions, especially
as it relates to the
use and acquisition
of natural resources and
to maritime life in Egypt.
Forthcoming works include two
co-edited volumes, Flora Trade
Between Egypt and
Africa in Antiquity,
by Oxbow Books,
and Pharaoh's Land
and Beyond-- Ancient
Egypt and Its Neighbors,
published by Oxford
University Press.
Both are expected in print in
the first few months in 2017,
so keep an eye out.
Our second speaker,
Willeke Wendrich
got her PhD at Leiden
University in the Netherlands,
and holds the Joan Silsbee Chair
in African Cultural Archeology
and is Professor of
Egyptian Archeology
and Digital Humanities in the
Department of Near Eastern
Language and Cultures at the
University of California, Los
Angeles.
She has worked for
30 years in Egypt,
and currently
directs the project
in the north of
Ethiopia with a focus
on the invisible vegetal
past, combining archaeology
with ethnoarchaeologicl study
of the use of organic materials,
ancient technology, and
communities of practice.
She is the Faculty Director
of the Center for Digital
Humanities and the Director of
Cotsen Institute of Archeology
at UCLA as well as
the Editor-in-Chief
of the online UCLA
Encyclopedia of Egyptology,
a worldwide cooperation
of Egyptologists,
archaeologists, linguists,
art historians, geologists,
and other disciplines that are
involved in researching Egypt.
She is also Chair of the Board
of the institute for Field
Research.
May we all be so lucky as to
have at least a little bit
of your energy.
Her latest books include
The Desert Fayum Revisited,
and Press; Egyptian
Archaeology, Wiley-Blackwell;
and Archaeology and
Apprenticeship-- Body,
Knowledge, Identity, and
Communities of Practice.
I also have to mention
here the co-edited volume
on The Archaeology of
Mobility, old-world
a new world nomadicism,
which I have read
cover-to-cover several times.
So with that I will introduce
us to our next speaker, Pearce.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
OK, thank you all for
coming back from lunch.
I know it's always a temptation.
We will try to keep you awake
for at least the next 22
minutes.
Whoever's keeping time,
it's going to be 22.
And thank you for the
wonderful introduction.
So it's my great pleasure
to be here with you today
to speak about the two
primary fields in which I
work-- maritime and
underwater archaeology
and dendrochronology.
These are fairly underutilized
methodologies in Egypt,
and that's not to say
that they're nonexistent.
It's just to say
that we can probably
find ways to take better
advantage of them.
So I'd like to talk
to you a little bit
about the backgrounds
for each and how
we might get there to take
better advantage of them.
Foremost, though,
I'd like to start off
with this popular
concept of ancient Egypt
as a desert society.
It is a broken paradigm.
When you Google
"ancient Egypt," you
come up with deserts and death.
And, yeah, it's really
sexy, and that's great,
but it's a maritime society.
And from both the long-term
history of Egyptology-- yes,
we've kind of passively
recognized this.
Of course, boats
and things like this
play a major role
in the iconography.
And there's very
few sites that that
can be discussed outside of
their context in relation
to the Nile or something
along those lines.
But we do archeology to
learn about people's lives.
So maybe we ought to start
looking towards the places
where they lived those
lives-- on the water,
in the flood plain, in
the delta-- as we've
seen with other
presentations today,
and learn more about
this maritime culture.
We surprisingly know--
it's surprising to me
that we know comparatively
so little about that.
But the material
world of ancient Egypt
is encompassed by these
three major bodies of water,
and this is very obvious--
the Nile, the Mediterranean,
and the Red Sea, of course.
Each provided a flow
of traffic, whether it
be in people, products,
ideas, that resulted
in the grandeur of Egypt.
And the sometimes less
well-understood periods
surrounding it in the
intermediate periods,
none of these operated
independent of this.
Now, these waters
were equally important
in the spiritual world.
Some creation myths
envisioned the world
as an island floating in the
primordial waters of eternity.
Was it Nick that was
talking about this earlier?
This primordial ooze.
That the Egyptians conceived
of their world as an island
is clear in certain times.
That's a powerful
recognition that they were
subjects to and of the water.
And we need to perhaps
acknowledge that more.
And it's easier when you
look at it like this.
This fundamental
association with the water
is quite evident
today, but it does only
constitute a fraction of
the study in Egyptology,
and an even smaller percentage
of the archaeological work
that's been done
throughout the field.
Now, that isn't to
say it's unknown.
Lots of people have
written, and this
is one of my favorite quotes
from the relevant Egyptalogical
literature.
But maritime archeology has been
comparatively well-developed
in other parts of
the Mediterranean
and in other parts of
the Middle Eastern world,
so it seems to me that this is a
really ready area for expanding
boundaries in Egypt.
The methods of inquiry,
the modes, the practices,
are fairly well-known.
The standards and procedures
are available in a variety
of languages, and
so these things
should be more accessible to us.
So there's-- when I
talk about this stuff,
I often find that there's some
confusion as to underwater,
maritime, nautical, which
is what and who and where.
So I'll just take
a very quick moment
to clarify how this
all kind of developed.
And if you'd like
more detail, this
is in the written
version of this paper.
But fundamentally, maritime
archeology is the larger whole.
It's anything of, by,
near, relating to, in,
around the water.
It itself developed from
two more specific fields--
underwater archeology,
which is, as it sounds,
anything that's underwater.
It doesn't have to be maritime.
Courtesy of two world wars, we
have a lot of tanks and planes
underwater, which
none of us would
consider to be a maritime
endeavor, perhaps.
And then nautical
archeology, which
is kind of the crucible in
which this stuff developed--
the study of ships and boats,
trade, trade routes, diffusion,
things like that.
Of course, this wasn't really
available to the average person
until the 1940s and '50s with
the advent of the aqualung.
We now call it the
Self-Contained Underwater
Breathing Apparatus, or
SCUBA, and that allowed people
to go underwater for
extended periods of time.
And specifically in
1960 was the first time
that an archaeologist went
underwater to excavate.
So this is a very recent advent
in archeology as a whole.
So this shouldn't be
viewed as a criticism
in any way of Egyptology
or Egyptian archeology,
but really just to look
at the opportunities.
And I'm really glad
that Greg went earlier,
because he saved
me a lot of time
with having to explain
what's going on
in all these various places.
So I will largely
skip over this,
but this is just
something I came up
with off the top of my head
with a basic map of what's
going on that is maritime
or underwater in Egypt.
The green dots, I don't
think anybody working
on those projects
would themselves
consider it to be
a maritime project,
but there's maritime iconography
or something like this
related on those sites.
And this is not an
all-inclusive map onto itself.
But historically, I think,
few of these projects that
might otherwise be categorized
this way have really been
viewed as a maritime endeavor.
And now we can start putting
these pieces together
as the field has developed
as a larger whole,
and then applying it
to Egypt, especially
over the past 15 or 20 years.
If you wanted to-- if
one were so inclined,
they could understand the
history of maritime archeology
in Egypt in three phases.
Basically this antiquarian
phase, a curiosity phase,
and then what can
probably be considered
as a modern scientific phase.
I will gloss over all of
those and go straight to 1994.
So in the 20th century, there
are a lot of different projects
that were maritime
in nature, but it
wasn't until the early
1990s when there were
these underwater inquiries.
People really wanted
to start looking
at these underwater sites, and
this kind of pushed people.
It pushed the
government of Egypt
in 1996 to establish
a specific division
to tend to these matters.
And that was a very
important step.
Of course, the wonderful history
that Gregory provided earlier
today about the Red Sea
projects, that's really
blossomed and helped this
part of the field to grow.
But I think the watershed event
for this, in Egypt, at least,
is Alexandra University's
establishment
of a formal graduate program.
In 2009, after many
years of training,
of attempting and
working together
with a number of
international partners,
the Alexandria Center
for Maritime Archaeology
an Underwater Cultural
Heritage was established.
Really through the
Herculean efforts of two
or three Egyptian
academics and scholars
that this came
together, bringing
in half a dozen international of
the programs and universities,
has made this a really
exceptionally valuable program
and a springboard for
these kinds of studies.
But Egypt needs at
least two more of these.
The entire Department of
Underwater Antiquities
is based out of one
office in Alexandria.
By my calculations, there's
only about 4,000 other miles
of coastline that perhaps
might want to be attended to.
And it's just impractical
to ask one office that
far removed from some of these
places to tend to it all.
It makes it expensive
in manpower,
in resources, and
for other reasons.
I'll talk about
those momentarily.
But that office and
this center are really
doing some incredible things.
They've undertaken an
archaeological survey
of the Nile under water.
This is just one phase
of it that was conducted
in Aswan some years ago.
And they really did
do everything they can
with the resources
they have available.
But it just can't
be driven by one.
It needs to be
expanded, so an office
perhaps in different parts
of the country, I think,
would be a useful way to go.
Of course, there
are other projects,
international programs, that
have been doing this either
as a series of projects,
which seems like it's
Pierre's interest of late,
whether intentionally
or otherwise, but
having done these very
long series of excavations.
The foreign missions
and individual projects
can play an exceptional
role in training.
The new training program
that was recommended
by the prior occupant of the
Office of Foreign Missions
seems to be a reasonable
request for training
future generations of folks.
And the work that we've
heard about in depth.
But it seems to me
that Egypt really
needs something spectacular,
something superlative.
The work at Wadi
Gawasis was superlative.
The work at Wadi el
Jarf was superlative.
And it got press.
In both cases, these were
spread across the cover
of New York Times,
and CNN, and BBC,
and all of these web pages.
This kind of stuff,
unfortunately or fortunately,
as you so choose, is what
drives the development
of underwater archeology.
And it has for its
entire history.
You need one
phenomenal shipwreck.
That's what drives this field.
This is why in Turkey they
have a robust program.
Israel has the Ma'agon Michael
and the Kinneret boats.
Greece has Antikythera.
Turkey has Uluburun.
Even the United
Kingdom has The Titanic
and other things like this.
Where you see
well-developed maritime
and underwater
archaeological programs,
you have one case, always
a shipwreck, that is sexy,
that has this really phenomenal
imagery that goes with it
that sets this above the rest.
And I want you
all to know that I
have suffered looking for this.
[LAUGHTER]
Every time I go to Egypt,
I suffer a few days
more trying to find such a site.
And they must be out there.
We don't have any pharaonic
Egyptian shipwrecks.
They invented the sail,
and you're telling me
they batted a thousand
and never lost a ship?
It's inconceivable.
There must be
pharaonic shipwrecks.
They must be there somewhere.
Now, there are geophysical
reasons and other sorts
of things for not finding them--
the way the sands deposit,
and things like this.
But there's got to be one.
I actually really
intensively suspect
that the Egyptian navy might
know where these things are.
So if anybody has
connections in that realm,
I'd be really excited
to know about it
and not get arrested
talking about it.
But if everybody
in the room would
attempt to suffer a few
days a year this way
and go and snorkel and scuba
dive and just report back
to me, I would appreciate it.
We need the catalyst,
is the point.
You need this one
thing that can really
make this valuable
to the field that
can make it more accessible,
that can drive the resources
and make that more
useful for everybody.
Conducting an underwater
project is expensive.
The general rule of thumb
is it's three-to-one
in just dollars put in.
It costs three times as much
to dig the same site underwater
as it would on land.
Sometimes, after things have
been underwater for thousands
of years, it takes
more than a decade
to conserve them
and get them stable
before you can study them.
This has career
implications for people.
An assistant professor can't
take a project on like this,
so it needs other
sorts of things.
There are other
considerations that
really have to be tended
before this can, I think,
really take off.
But there is opportunity.
There is so much coastline.
There are so many
opportunities out there.
I think we need to just
find a way collectively
to work together.
It can't be done just
by an outside group,
and it can't be done
just by an inside group.
So that's my appeal
for increasing
our underwater archeology
and maritime projects.
Now I'd like to talk
to you about expanding
on another front on land.
Much like my call here
for the application
of well-developed methods
in underwater archeology
and maritime
archeology, I'd like
to make a similar one to
apply tree-ring research
to a lot of the problems
that face Egyptology
and Egyptian archeology
and its related fields.
Dendrochronology has been
a scientific endeavor
for more than a century.
It receives tens of
millions of dollars a year
from the US federal
research organizations.
It's been applied to almost
every meaningful study
of climate change in
the last 50 years,
and it drives most of them.
So this kind of precision that
dendrochronology can offer
gives you precise chronologies.
Some of you who know me
will have perhaps noticed
my conspicuous silence during
our discussion of chronology
earlier today,
because there are so
many ways we can do this better.
We shouldn't be
publishing dates when
we don't know them to be true.
There are some methods that
can reveal this stuff to us.
When we talk about climate
change in ancient Egypt,
we should be using the
materials and the data
from Egypt to have
this conversation that
gives us annual resolution.
We can even get seasonal
resolution, in the best case
scenario, with tree rings.
It can give us a regional
radiocarbon calibration
scale, which is, for those
who don't know radiocarbon,
it is based on tree rings.
That's how you get-- at a
very, very basic level, that's
how you get your
plus or minus factor.
And so if we have
this sort of material
and this sort of
chronology built
for this part of
the world, we can
get better radiocarbon dates.
This would be an important
contribution if we just do it.
Now, the growth patterns of
many trees, though not all,
have been used to create
14,000 and 15,000 year
long chronologies in
parts of the world.
And tree ring
dating is basically
like putting a puzzle
together, except you
don't know how
big the puzzle is,
you don't have the picture
or any of the edge pieces,
and it's probably going to take
you a decade or two to do it.
That said, it can be done.
It takes patience, and
it takes buy-in from all
of the right people to do it.
Egypt has the material.
From the beginning of
complex constructions,
earliest monumental
building phases,
we know that the Egyptians used
wood when they were stressed.
This beam-- I'm going
to traumatize everybody
in the audience today on
a number of occasions--
this beam was collected
in 1932 from the burial
chamber of the step pyramid.
We know that there is wood
in these places, folks.
We have a number of
samples that came out
from the early part of
the 20th century that
show us this stuff.
The early founders, the
founder of dendrochronology,
was in touch with
the important folks
in the development of
Egyptology in the early part
of the 20th century.
And they all wanted
to work together
to make this thing happen.
It just hasn't happened yet.
There've been various
fits and starts,
and some people have
collected a little bit here
and a little bit
there, and there
are some floating chronologies
and bits and pieces like this,
but it can.
Dendrochronology is a
phenomenally flexible field,
and it's inexpensive
at its very base.
This was developed in the
pre-computerisation era.
For $10, today's
dollars, you can
get all of the
equipment you need
to do dendrochronology-- graph
paper, pencil, saw, drill bit.
Now, the training is a
little bit different,
but that's like anything.
You need the training, and
you need to put in the time
in order to get it.
So the simplicity of
equipment and mobility
of this training-- you
can take it anywhere--
makes it a really ideal gateway
drug for archaeological science
to use this in Egypt.
And I'm not just
talking about using it
and taking it and going
there, but to spread the word,
to train people, to
get broader buy-in.
I think this is essential.
So it can be done
in-country, which
a lot of other modern scientific
applications struggle with.
Because of the
export regulations
about taking samples
out of the country,
you don't need to
do this in Egypt.
You can do it there.
Tree rings tell us a
lot about chronology.
They tell us a lot
about the environment.
They tell us a lot
about human behavior.
I view them as a Rosetta
Stone, except in this case,
we already know how
to read the stuff.
We just have to
sit down and do it.
That should be valuable to us.
So what are we doing to build
capacity in this regard?
Well, we're doing
a lot of things.
Over the last five or six years
I, and a number of colleagues,
have been working towards
implementing tree ring
studies in Egypt.
And anybody who has seen me
speak any time in the last five
or six years will be
tired of hearing it,
but I think that this can
be spread by everybody else
and everybody in this room.
For example, what have
we actually been doing?
We've been training.
We've been training two
Master's or PhD or post-docs
from Egypt every year in Arizona
and sending them back to Egypt
with this information.
Whether or not they are able
to do the tree ring dating
is irrelevant.
It's easy to analyze
who can do it.
If you can put the square
peg in the square hole
and the round peg
in the round hole,
you can probably do
tree ring dating.
It's pattern recognition.
It's like looking at
a bunch of bar codes
and trying to match
up the bar codes.
So we need to extend
general knowledge of this.
We've been writing
methodological manuscripts.
For example, we're going to
publish an illustrated glossary
in Arabic.
You have to have the
information available to people
in the languages that they read.
And it's not just-- who was
discussing earlier today
the-- Neil.
Where's Neil?
You can't dumb it
down, so we are also
translating the fundamental
manuscripts in the field
into Arabic and
making them available.
These things need to be
available to folks in a way
that they can understand it.
We're also asking the
fundamental questions--
do the trees that actually
grow in Egypt work
for dendrochronological
analyses?
No one has ever
done the evaluation.
So with the support from the
National Science Foundation
in February of 2015, and the
permission of the Environmental
Ministry in Egypt, we went and
collected from 15 sites more
than 300 samples
and have been asking
this fundamental question.
Do the trees that grow
in Egypt, the ones that
appear most regular in
the archaeological record,
can they work?
And we are working
on this question.
We've done this-- evaluated
it with the Sycamore fig,
Acacia nilotica-- this
is my favorite sampling--
inside the guard
hut, and Tamarix.
And all three of
these situations,
which everyone has
just largely assumed
not to function and
not to work properly,
we have found promising signs.
Now, we need more data
to be certain of it,
and I don't want to overstate
where we are with it,
but they are very promising.
We have been able
to date Tamarix.
We think we've been able
to date some Sycamore.
This is a smoking gun for us.
You can see on the
very left there's
a thing called an
intra-annual band.
This is a glitch in growing.
It appeared in two different
trees at the right time,
and matches up.
We have this
pattern recognition.
This is important.
So we know that these
things are possible.
The key now seems to be to
be getting material that
exceeds the construction of
the High Aswan Dam and the Low
Aswan Dam so that
we can see what
the environmental
signature on the Nile was.
And so I hope to go
to Sudan and collect.
And, Neil, we'll be having a
conversation about those Acacia
and those Tamarix that were so
well-illustrated on your site.
I would love to visit
them and cut them down.
[LAUGHTER]
This is the point
where I need to tell
anyone who works in an art
museum to avert your eyes.
There is a fundamental
question about how to deal
with destructive sampling.
This is a complex
discussion, but if you
want to make an omelet,
and so on and so forth.
We want to make
a lot of omelets,
and so we have to take samples.
And in the process of
taking these samples,
you may be traumatized.
This summer we went
to the Denver Museum
of Nature and Science.
They have three
wooden coffins, later
periods of Egyptian
history, and we
sampled there just
to ensure that this
can be done
responsibly, that this
can be done without
damaging the materials,
and to evaluate this and
really see how this goes.
We now-- I now have at least
six other science and university
museums, international
collaborators,
lined up to do this.
And I'm not going
to tell you who
they are, because I want
you to leave them alone
until we do the work.
But this is what it looks like.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Go slow.
- So we monitored
for vibrations.
We checked to make
sure that none
of the plaster, none of
the other bits and pieces,
were coming off.
And if you do this properly
with an experienced hand,
you can take these samples
without damaging the artifact.
[END PLAYBACK]
Now, do you want to take
the sample through the nose
of a wooden statue?
I might want to.
It's unrealistic, and that's
not what anybody's asking here.
You can do it with a
lot of other things.
So little pieces like
this, these are fantastic.
Everybody finds these
when you excavate,
and it's a broken tomb
or something like this.
For those who are
from the MFA, this
came from the MFA excavations.
It was given to the
Tree-Ring Lab in the 1930s.
You cannot have it back.
And there are things like
this that are just all over.
The museums of the world,
the warehouses and magazines
in Egypt, have hundreds
of tons of wood.
We don't have to put
a shovel or a trowel
in the ground to make
meaningful progress on this
and have a real
opportunity to address
some important questions.
But we do need to have places
in order to do the work.
This is an important
consideration.
Where would one do
this work in Egypt?
I've been in touch with the
National Academies there
to try and build a laboratory.
It would seem that the
Ministry of Antiquities,
building a laboratory there
might be a valuable thing,
but until we get all of
the ducks in a row and all
these pieces together-- we have
bought a facility in Luxor,
and it's going to be an
open scientific center.
And I'm standing
here today saying,
anybody who wants to do
science and try and do
new and interesting things,
you are welcome to use this.
This is an open door.
It has or will have-- as we
get more materials in there,
it can accommodate
about 10 to 15 people.
But it will have microscopes.
It will have computers,
internet access.
And if there's other
equipment that you
think you need to do
the work, let me know
and we can try to get it.
Almost all of the
equipment we need
to do these kinds of innovative
and interesting research
projects can be
done with materials
that are available in Egypt
or legal and easy to import.
And I know "easy to import"
and "Egypt" don't really
sound right to people who
work there, but it can be.
We now have a place
to do this work.
We now have a training center.
And I have a handout with
more details about this.
Also, acceptable place to
have tea in the afternoon.
So if you are interested
in this sort of thing,
you're welcome to
be there and join
and to experience this with us.
But this is a call.
This is a call not just
to do and try and do
dendrochronology, this is
a call not to try and add
to the corpus of maritime
and nautical archaeological
projects, it's to
do anything that
expands the methodological
boundaries, that
finds new ground,
temporal or otherwise.
And if we can help, we will.
If this facility would
be of use to you,
you are welcome to make it so.
So in both cases that I have
talked about, today, at least,
the application of
dendrochronology and furthering
maritime archeology,
we're poised for progress.
I think there's a lot
to be hopeful about.
I think there's a lot of
opportunity ahead of us.
The methods are known.
The techniques are established.
There are energetic people
working behind these endeavors.
And it's largely just a
matter of doing it and having
the right resources, and by
that I mean people and goodwill
and collaborators.
One step that will need to
be addressed in both cases
is the governmental
considerations in Egypt.
Some of the red tape is
oppressive and preventative.
And this is in
part why you don't
have more underwater
archaeological projects
in Egypt.
The paperwork, as Gregory was
saying, is just really intense.
If you have to have a full-time
person to just run your papers,
how do you then have time
and resources and energy
to do the rest of the work?
But there are a lot
of moving parts,
but I feel confident that
there are ways to put them
together and make progress.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
This is also my
first time at Brown,
and I'm really
delighted to be here.
And I want to thank
the organizers
for this really stimulating
day, or two days,
because we started
already yesterday.
A little bit of a shift.
I'm going to talk a
little bit about method,
but also very much about theory,
and a different type of theory
than most archaeologists use.
So I'm not going to talk
about drones and stuff
like that, even though I'm
very fond of them and use them.
This is really
more about thinking
what we do after the drones
and after our excavations
and after all the data
that we collected.
And this really
stems from experience
in a lot of digital projects
that we're doing at UCLA.
We started the
escapade of Egyptology
now about 14 years ago,
so it's an old project.
And as all old things, it is
a bit creaky now and then.
And we've really lived
through all the problems
of digital archeology,
digital Egyptology,
from sort of the first
steps onto products dying,
and you have to revive them.
So I'm very good at digital
project CPR as well.
So just a quick introduction
for those of you
who don't know these projects.
The Encyclopedia
of Egyptology is
an old-fashioned
Egyptological standard work.
Many great scholars
have written for us.
Thank you, Jim.
And the power of
it is not that we
have good well-mediated
content online,
but that we have a different
way of accessing that content.
And one of those ways
is through a time map
where you can select a time
period, which then shows
you all the places
in Egypt where
we have some information
in one of the articles
about this place.
So then you can
sort of drill down
and look at a particular area.
And then it gives you
the articles or images
that reference this
particular place.
It's a different way of
looking at materials.
And it's actually-- it helps
you find new things by combining
things geographically.
So I've come to
surprising realizations
when things from
certain collections
were found in the same place
as other very well-known
Egyptological things, but we
didn't realize that context.
And context is key, of course.
Aegaron, Ancient Egyptian
Architecture Online,
is a collaboration with
the German Archaeological
Institute in Cairo.
Ulrike Fauerbach
is co-PI on this.
This was a project to make
mediated architectural
drawings-- again, a
heavily vetted project--
based on published
drawings, comparing
all the different
variations that you
have in these drawings, and
doing field checking-- that's
definitely part of it-- and
making a clear distinction
between sort of the present
stage, reconstructions,
different reconstructions
of different phases.
So a very clearly-defined
way of looking at maps.
And all those maps can
be downloaded for free.
And also, the whole CAD file
can be downloaded for free.
Digital Karnak is a web website
based on a virtual reality
model of the Karnak
Temple complex
with a possibility to
jump from phase to phase.
And I'll show more about this,
so I'm now skipping over.
Our latest project is
called Immersive Humanities.
It started off with the
idea that 3D is becoming
more and more important.
And we are looking at 3D
architecture, landscapes,
but we also should
look at objects,
and that's really what
this project is about.
It started with
coffins, because they
are about as complicated a
3D object as you can get.
They are nested.
They have insides, outsides.
They're highly decorative.
They have text.
They have imagery.
They have materials.
And if you look at
a database where
you would put all
that information in--
and this is Kara Cooney's
database-- then just filling
out one of those sheets takes
you about a week, let alone
doing the research to
get that information.
And it's only mildly
useful, because how do you
find anything?
It's also not really related
to where on the coffin
something is.
So if you want to say, OK,
this particular text is here
and here on the
coffin, you're faced
with all these
lengthy descriptions
in many, many
words, while we now
have digital means of really
working much more with images.
So we're working on an
annotation project in which you
can have a 3D model of an object
which you can then annotate
by pointing at a point or an
area, and then you can say,
OK, I'm interested in materials.
I put in the wood
identifications
that I've done for
the whole coffin
or for this particular
part of the coffin.
I want to annotate
this particular text.
And then I can search to
all the versions of Spell 42
that occur on a particular
place on the coffin,
or occur anywhere on the coffin.
Or I can say, where do I get
scarabs in Egyptian blue?
Or whatever combination of
data you might think of.
Working with communities of
scholars who arrange and give
access to add to
this information,
but also involving
the general public,
because they have
ideas about coffins.
And we may, at times, think
that they're pretty crazy ideas,
but if we talk about
multi-validity,
then we also want to grant them
access to a resource like this.
Maybe we don't want to
mix it in our analysis
if we try to look at particular
Egyptological questions.
It's a very versatile way
of presenting objects.
And as I said,
coffins are chosen
because they're about the most
complex thing that you can get.
But we're also looking
at modern art pieces
that we link to the
archives of the sculptor.
Or it's really agnostic as
far as material is concerned.
So it's in development.
It doesn't exist quite yet,
but we're working towards this
and we have funding
to continue this work.
Now, a lot of these projects
are based on digital humanities
methods and theory.
So I want to go a
little bit into what is
or what are digital humanities.
The purpose of
digital humanities
is to create knowledge and
insight through digital means,
and that includes new
modes of scholarship
and new institutional centers,
centers for digital humanities,
libraries that have
an important role.
It's inherently collaborative.
It's productive.
And what I mean with that is
that students who interact
with this usually are not
consumers of knowledge,
but are producers of knowledge.
They put things in rather
than just get things out.
It's transdisciplinary
computationally engaged.
You can use in
research and teaching,
and really at the contact
point between the two,
which for undergraduate students
is extremely attractive.
Publication does no longer have
print as the primary resource.
It's much broader, and
you can do much more
and the results are
often interactive.
The object of study is basically
an entire human record.
So again, it's agnostic.
Now, the scope of digital
humanities projects
is enormous.
So you can have
in-house searches,
and you can limit
yourself to text.
But then, of course, there's
all these other forms
of information--
photographs, drawings, video.
What is really important
about this project
is that it's an
aggregation of information,
so you can join
information, and from that
you get really new ideas.
Spatial analysis, of course,
is one example of that.
GIS is now widely
used in archeology,
and it is part and parcel
of this whole movement.
Timelines are a big thing.
Yesterday-- or this morning.
God, we did so much today.
This morning Emily brought up
this-- what it is called again?
Chronoscope?
[INAUDIBLE]
Chronozoom.
Chronozoom, thank you.
Network analysis,
looking at relationships,
is really important.
3D modeling and animations.
What most of these
things have in common
is that it's a form
of visualization.
And there we really coming
to an important point
that we all should
really keep in mind.
We shouldn't be naive in
how we use this stuff.
If you use GIS, then you
have to make choices,
because GIS, and computing in
general, don't like ambiguity.
They don't like vague things.
They don't like uncertainty.
So often you have
to make choices.
And with those choices,
you determine already what
the outcome is.
And if we're not
aware of that, we
become very bad users
of this technology.
We really scrap our
humanistic values that
really value that ambiguity.
And we were just discussing
all of this this morning.
The difficulty that we
have with chronology,
the difficulties that
we have with space,
can get really worse if
we are too naive in how
we use digital tools.
So I want to go a little bit
into visualization today,
because there is a huge gap
between data and insight.
And how do we fill that gap?
Well, I made a little
visualization for you.
So analysis is an
important part of that.
Analysis leads potentially
to information.
But then there's another
step, which is design.
Because if you design that
information in a good way,
you get an image.
And that image and the
perception of that image
really leads to insights.
So there's a number
of steps that
need to happen
before you really can
bridge that gap between
data and insight.
What is really important
also is what the purpose
is of the visualization.
And there's a whole bunch
of different purposes,
different subjects.
Often they are combined, but
we can look at space or volume
or time.
We can look at
properties of ceramics,
for instance, at quantities,
and at relationships.
All of these required different
types of visualizations.
Some of them can
do multiple things.
But with all of
those, you really
should think about what is
it that they bring across?
What is it that
they are useful for?
And in what moments
do they really cloud
our perception and our insights
rather than enhance them?
So again, it's very important
to be very critical in your use
of these wonderful new tools.
And that really links closely to
the function of visualization.
And there are, again,
many subject matters
and many functions.
A visualization can reflect
a state of knowledge.
How much do we know?
What do we know about something?
You can use visualization
to put forward
an argument, which is
a very different type
of visualization.
You can use it as
a heuristic device.
As I said, the time
map in the Encyclopedia
has really helped me to
find new information.
Very important, you can
present alternatives.
If you have multiple
interpretations,
possible interpretations, you
can actually display that.
You can create
virtual environments
that can be used for
different things.
It enables augmented reality.
You know those old
books from Rome
where you have the old monument
and then the lay over which
shows the reconstruction?
Well, we can now
do that digitally.
Plus, we can do multiple
interpretations.
It allows different
forms of knowledge,
more associative knowledge--
things that come up
in your head, things that are
not a direct line from data
to insight, but help you
think through something
by association.
You can experiment virtually.
And it can help you with a kind
of embodiment, especially 3D
modeling of spaces.
You can actually place
yourself within those spaces
and experience that in
a very realistic way.
And I thought Betsy's
model this morning
was a perfect example of that.
I've never seen the
Red Monastery that way.
Plus, of course, there
are a number of caveats.
And there are several types
of those-- digital caveats,
content caveats, and
representational caveats.
The digital ones are,
of course, can we
preserve these things long-term?
What we excavate, we destroy.
So saving our data is
extremely important.
It's a great argument to
make towards fund givers,
because medical data
usually can be thrown away,
but ours really can't.
We do things for eternity.
So really thinking about how
do we preserve digital content,
and many libraries are in
that business at the moment.
And with that go
updates in the software.
The security of our
data is important.
So those are just a few
problems connected to the fact
that it's digital.
And they're in no
way small problems,
but I'm confident
that they will be
solved, because a lot of
people are thinking about this.
And content-wise,
there's, of course,
problems with quality control.
All the UEE, Encyclopedia
of Egyptology, articles
are peer-reviewed.
There's version control.
If you quote something,
you have to be able to say,
this was the text at this
and this moment in time.
So you really need to
be able to quote things
that are more or
less stable, even
if they continue to develop.
And of course, there's the
problem of tenure and promotion
in the academic setting.
Do people consider this
real scholarly work or not?
Again, we're in a
transitional phase.
It's very important
that, especially the more
senior scholars,
do stand for this
and say, yes, this is
real scholarly work.
I have a beautiful
story about that,
which I won't go into now.
It would take too long.
But I'll happily
tell you my choices
in my tenure and promotion case.
The most important thing I want
to bring to the front light,
though, is representation,
because as I
said, if we use
these tools naively,
we really run the risk
of misrepresenting
what we try to do.
You can distort information.
I already said there
is this problem
of uncertainty and ambiguity.
There is the matter
of perspective.
What status, gender,
age, country, ethnic part
do we represent silently
or really obviously
in the way we represent
or visualize information?
And apart from
misrepresentation,
really the power, but also
the danger, of visualizations
is that it really burns
in your eyes, right?
If you see a visual
representation,
that sort of seems
to be the truth.
It's very strong that we see
something and then believe it.
And that has a lot of
consequence as well.
So just a couple of examples
of distortions of information.
We all are used to look
at the world map this way.
But of course, this
is a distorted world,
because the MacArthur
Projection, which
dates to 1569,
displays everything
that's near the equator much
smaller than the things that
are near the poles.
So here we have a big Europe
and a big North America,
a tiny Africa, a
giant Antarctica,
and of course it has no relation
with what the world looks
like if you see it as a globe.
An alternative projection
was present in 1974.
And this represents
the land masses
as they're supposed to be.
This was a real shock, and
it has real consequences,
because Africa
and Europe are now
in a very different
ratio to each other.
And this works really
subconscious, almost.
So these are really dangerous
things to interact with.
We really shouldn't
do that carelessly.
America in the middle
or Africa in the middle?
Is that two minutes?
Oh, OK.
And, for instance,
disrepresentation
of information, which-- so
this is a representation of--
let me show that-- occupied
housing units lacking
a telephone.
So which situation
looks the most dire?
I think it's the one on the
left bottom with this very
black sort of outline.
Actually, this is all
the same information,
but just with different
cutoffs and different ways
of viewing things.
So you can use this as a
digital tool to convince people,
but really not based
on firm ground.
It's just the way you
visualize the same data that
makes a huge difference.
In the Karnak model,
what we tried to do
is show uncertainty by this sort
of slightly-- through visible
reconstruction of the pylon,
of the first pylon, which,
of course, was never finished.
Now, the big theoretical
genius of visual analytics
is Edward Tufte, and
he has put forward
a number of things
that are really
important in the representation
of visual information.
It's really important to
compare and contrast and look
at differences in
your visualizations.
You can use them
to make arguments.
For instance, arguments
about causality.
It's important to have
more than two variables
in each visualization
in order to really make
a powerful use of graphs.
Otherwise, it's much better to
just have a list or a table.
Ideally, you should integrate
words, numbers, images,
and diagrams so that it's
clear in one view what
it is that you're saying.
The picture should actually tell
you what it's trying to convey.
You should, of course, always
include your data sources.
And, again, the
most important thing
is the quality, relevance,
and integrity of the content.
His favorite
visualization is this.
I hope you've all seen
this once in your lifetime.
It's a map made in 1869,
and it has six data types.
It shows Napoleon's
army going into Russia.
It shows in brown,
or beige, the number
of troops that left, and then
in black, the number of troops
that returned.
It shows the distance
that was traveled.
The temperature down here,
so really serious freezing
temperatures on the way back.
The direction of
travel, and the location
relative to specific dates.
And what you see is that the
troops diminished dramatically
through this horrible
trip back from Russia.
They set out with 680,000
soldiers, and 27,000 returned.
Just to illustrate you how
misrepresentation really
sticks to your brain, you
probably know this one.
It's the Baptism of Pocahontas.
Or this one, The Signing of the
Declaration of Independence.
This never happened
in this form.
I mean, it was signed,
but not in this way,
not with these
people in this room.
So these are historical
reconstructions,
but they're taught to children.
And you think this is
what it looked like.
Especially because we're so used
to photojournalism nowadays.
This is a 3D representation
of our site in Ethiopia.
And you see that it's right
at the edge of a river, almost
a small canyon.
In black you see outlined
the area that was destroyed.
And in red are three trenches.
The color is, in a
way, not necessary,
because you do see that there's
a big difference in height.
But the color indicates how much
the difference in height is.
So it does add information.
The Karnak model really
tries to incorporate things
that we know.
It's the state of knowledge.
So here we have
this empty landscape
with this temple of the
early New Kingdom in there.
And what it allows us
to do is to place back
things like the White Chapel.
It allows us to
reconstruct colorings.
It allows us to
place back things
that we now find in
open air museums,
but then we can see them
in their original context
and with original
lighting, which
gives more of an idea of what
it would have looked like.
And it can also be used
to make an argument.
Now, this is the VSIM program.
It is a program that is really
meant to show digital models.
And you can make a narrative.
You can have pop-up
explanatory texts,
or you can have
pop-up images that
show, for instance,
the situation now
and the situation in
the reconstruction.
And again, it depends
on what your purpose
is of the model what
it would look like.
So in this case, I don't mind
to have an empty landscape
around the temple,
even though I know
it probably was very crowded.
But the only thing
I want to show
is what do we
actually know, and we
don't know what was around it.
So it's not about
recreating the past.
It's not at all about that.
It's really about what we know
and how we show that best.
I wanted to show you
some of the VSIM.
I can do that in the
break, because I've way
run out of time, as we all do.
But we're all so enthusiastic
about everything we're doing.
So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much.
I really like the
call to action,
and I need to [INAUDIBLE].
So now we'll have Parker
for our discussion.
We're very lucky to have
him, the Assistant Professor
of Anthropology here at Brown.
He's an archaeologist
whose research
focuses on landscapes, politics,
and environmental change
in the early modern
world, particularly
in the late pre-Hispanic
and early Colonial Peru.
I think I will--
Thank you.
--let you set up
and [INAUDIBLE].
Thank you.
I saw it was coming up.
Lovely.
So thank you so much for
inviting me to speak today.
It's been a pleasure
to be a part
of this exciting conference.
I'm in the process of
coming down with a cold
and wasn't able to
make it this morning,
so I'm a bit like the guy who
arrived late to the party.
So if I'm repeating
myself or I'm
repeating ideas that
were presented earlier,
I apologize in advance.
This is a particularly
exciting event for me
to speak at because I've
never actually taken
a course in Egyptology,
and so I'm learning a lot.
So my sincere thanks
particularly to Miriam and Jenn
for the invitation.
As a user of various
archaeological gadgets
and platforms in
my own research,
and as a critical consumer
of digital data products,
I hope I can make a few comments
and raise a few questions
about the roles that new
methodological advances,
particularly digital
ones, are playing
of the archeology of
Egypt and elsewhere.
To frame this
discussion, I'd like
to start with a couple of
images from an area of the world
that I know a bit better than
Egypt, the north coast of Peru.
And specifically, a couple of
pieces of art produced by Moche
craftspeople depicting
the so-called Revolt
of the Objects.
In a roll out of a Moche
vase dating probably
sometime between 400 and 600 CE
from Peru's north coast region,
the artist depicts a scene in
which animated forms of Moche
artifacts and regalia,
including war clubs, spindles,
and these metal adornments
that scholars typically
label back flaps, come to
life and attack Moche people.
Similar scenes are also
depicted in mural paintings
at the site of Huaca de
la Luna, and a number
of other ceramic vessels.
Scholars including Jeffrey
Quilter, Catherine Allen,
and Chris Donnan have
called their attention
to resonances between these
scenes and events in the myths
and histories of various Native
American peoples recorded
in documents including the
Huari [INAUDIBLE] Manuscript
of the central Peruvian
highlands and the Maya Popol
Vuh.
I should make it clear
that these images in no way
prefigure romantic and
post-modernist critiques
of technology.
Sort of the hermeneutics
of suspicion
that runs from Marx through
the Frankfurt School
to Stanley [INAUDIBLE],
maybe to Bill Caraher
as well, who's now advocating
for slow archaeology.
But I include it here
because it provides us
with the same simple
provocation, namely,
how do we keep our tools
from becoming our masters?
This may seem like
a crude question,
and I hope I'm not creating a
straw man out of our colleagues
who are at the forefront
of popularizing
digital methods for the
analysis of archaeological data.
After all, I myself
am incredibly
enthusiastic about the use
of geospatial technologies
in archaeological research.
Yet I do believe that we
are now living in an age
when the popular imagination,
and some archaeologists whose
public outreach efforts
appeal to that imagination,
treat so-called "big
data" as if it speaks
for itself, as the
editor of Wired magazine
is quoted as saying here.
What I appreciate
perhaps above all
about both papers
in this session
is that rather than assuming
that technology provides
its own justification,
they show us a way forward
that focuses on how some
well-established but still
changing methodologies can
allow Egyptologists to address
questions that are
fundamental to their field
and also subtly transform the
web of social relationships
that constitute it,
bringing new voices
and publics into the fold.
And Pearce, Paul, and
Willeke, I apologize
for putting photos of
you up on the screen now.
In this paper,
Pearce Paul Creasman
focuses on two families of
methodologies, or better put,
disciplines, with deep histories
and proven track records--
dendrochronology and
maritime archeology.
He's quite honest about
the practical challenges
that both fields face if
they are to become staples
of Egyptological scholarship.
But he makes a strong case for
the transformational effects
that they may have
on research practice
if the scholarly
community collaborates
to make them reality.
As both archaeologists
working in other regions
such as the American Southwest
and Northern Europe--
and also Egyptologists
working on later materials--
have shown, precise
chronological information
provides answers not only to
the simplest of questions,
but also the basis for
asking truly compelling ones
about social life, political
change, and cultural discourse.
Creasman also shows us how
dendrochronological data
might open up new
possibilities of addressing
the nature of
human/environment interaction
through the information it can
provide on floods, droughts,
and other major
climactic events.
And perhaps best of all,
from a practical standpoint,
because dendrochronology
can be performed
not just on newly
excavated materials,
whose extraction requires ample
funding and reams of research
permits, collaborative work
with museum collections
can begin immediately
with cheap equipment.
In the first half of his paper--
and I switched this around,
because you pulled
a switcheroo on me--
Creasman then suggests
how underwater archeology,
while quite a bit more
resource-intensive,
can also open up vast
new quantities of data
for analysis.
In contrast to the supposedly
instantaneous magic
of aerial imagery, both
dendrochronology and maritime
archeology reward patience.
The former requires that we
carefully build up archives
over the course of decades.
The latter is tedious
and expensive,
but it can radically
transform our understanding
of social practice and
maritime civilizations,
like those of Egypt
and perhaps also Peru.
As a bit of an
aside here, I should
say that I truly appreciate this
focus on painstakingly refining
chronology.
In his highly influential 2004
book The Political Landscape,
archaeologist Adam
C Smith argued
that archeologists' critical
analysis of the production
of space in social
life had been hampered
by our overwhelming focus
on chronology and social
evolution.
I wonder now,
however, if we might
be entering a moment in
which the study of space,
and particularly the precise
measurement of location,
is itself becoming
somewhat tyrannical,
in which knowing where
something happened
is a sufficient discovery,
and the map, rather than
the narrative, is
becoming too much
of a model for
scholarly production.
After all, we live in a world
in which literally everything
seems to have a GPS on it.
If we rely too much
on this sort of data,
perhaps we risk succumbing
to what Laura Kurgen points
to as one of the most sinister
effects of high-resolution
maps-- the fact
that they, quote,
"let us see too much and hence
blind us to what we cannot see,
providing a quiet tyranny
of orientation that raises
the possibility of
disoriented discovery."
Something to discuss, perhaps.
In her presentation,
Willeke Wendrich
advocates for deeper engagement
on the part of Egyptologists
in the digital
humanities, demonstrating
through examples from a
digital Karnac project
and the UCLA Encyclopedia
of Egyptology,
as well as a couple
of other projects,
how critical data
visualization can transform
the nature of Egyptology
as a field of knowledge
and practice, incorporating
new actors and institutions.
At the same time, she does
not present digital methods
of data analysis
and visualization
as manna from heaven, or a means
of cleaving modern Egyptology
from a pagan, pre-digital past.
Rather, she shows
us how the burden
of reflexivity and
self-criticism for highly
realistic immersive media
is perhaps even higher
than it is for other forms
of data presentation,
and that it is critical
that we develop means
of indicating uncertainty
and/or bias in our digital data
projects.
Among our colleagues in
text-focused disciplines,
indeed, perhaps
among Egyptologists,
whose work is primarily focused
on text and visual culture--
I'm not sure about this,
not being and Egyptologist--
there's been a great
deal of skepticism
of the digital humanities.
Writing in 2010, the scholar of
literature Matthew Kirschenbaum
suggested that the term "digital
humanities" and, for some,
become "a free-floating
signifier that increasingly
serves to focus the
anxiety and even
outrage of individual scholars
over their own lack of agency
amid the turmoil in their
institutions and profession."
Archaeologists have perhaps
been less anxious in part
because, as Stuart
Dunn has pointed out,
our discipline is
a, quote, "mash-up,
needing support from a range
of technical infrastructures,
at all levels of
scale and complexity."
Yet at Wendrich and commenters
such as Jeremy Huggett
have pointed out, archaeologists
have been strangely missing
from conversations about
the goals and futures
of the digital humanities.
Here, what Huggett characterizes
as the logo-centricity of DH
may be partially to blame.
Egyptologists, like scholars
in classics, Maya studies,
Sinology, Assyriology, and
the historical archeology
of the Atlantic world, are
well-positioned to bridge
the gap between DH and
archaeological material,
as the work of people
like Tom Elliott
and Sean Gillies on Pleiades
is beginning to show.
At the same time, analyzing and
visualizing archaeological data
in digital format
presents unique challenges
to the analysis of large
numbers of digital texts.
I would argue that it
is absolutely essential
that our fields develop
our own critical practices
for mobilizing DH methods.
So what are those practices?
Or what questions should
we be asking ourselves
about the technologies
we employ?
Here are just a few ideas to
send us off on our discussion.
The first is to understand
where technologies come from,
engaging with the literature
that often emerged
alongside these methods
and the disciplines
from which we've borrowed them.
And here I'm thinking
in particular
about critical
literature about GIS
in geography, which is something
that archaeologists don't tend
to read, and the alternative
sort of genealogies of GIS
that are present out there,
if you actually do the work.
The second is a healthy
skepticism that any one method
holds the answer
to our problems,
and a devotion to the importance
of what geographer Lisa Parks
calls "ground-truthing," by
which she means not simply what
we do with a GPS when we go out
to check our satellite imagery,
but also sort of bearing witness
to the experiences of people
on the ground.
The third is that we
should be developing
new creative practices, like
the Wendrich employs, that
allow users not just to
explore our interpretations
of the past, but to
create their own.
And this project to sort of
tag three-dimensional models as
fascinating.
I'd love to learn more about it.
And then finally, I'd
suggest that we also
lack studies of mediation
that not only theorize
the way in which archaeological
media are consumed,
but also study the impact
of the products we create.
We put a lot of emphasis
in our grant proposals
onto the transformative
effects of employing
new types of digital
media, but what do
people actually think of them?
And how is Egyptology
as a field,
not just produced
within the ivory tower,
but consumed beyond it, affected
by digital implementation?
So those are just
a few ideas that I
hope will get us started
with a nice discussion.
Thank you, once
again, for having me,
and I look forward
to talking later.
[APPLAUSE]
I should point out also
that Parker, last semester,
taught a graduate
seminar introducing us
to a lot of different
kinds of techniques
that you can use in
digital humanities.
So he's already been quite
an influence on many of us,
both within Egyptology
and outside.
Well, thank you so much.
So now I think we'll open the
floor for questions, comments.
And we actually
have a good amount
of time for some discussion.
Thank you, everyone.
Parker, I was really
struck by your--
when you showed the
satellite images,
your point that knowing where
something is is not enough.
And I think it was
Janet Richards who
wrote, over a decade
ago, that in the past,
Egyptologists really
tended to treat location
as a very narrow thing,
as if everything can just
be shown where it is on a map.
And she pointed out
that that is not enough.
And so this is a great way for
us to segue into a discussion,
if we wanted to have one, about
environment, and to pick up,
again, things like wetness
and dryness and landscape
more broadly, and bring
those into the discussion
of location.
And I'm interested to hear
everybody's thoughts about how
those can be simulated
and discussed
in a digital humanities model.
Wetness and dryness.
I like that.
Of course, wetness and
dryness were constantly
interacting in Egypt.
And part of the very important
work that we need to do is--
and that is being
done-- is looking
at where river branches
were at any time,
especially in delta archeology.
That's extremely important.
But also where coastlines were
and where drink water sources
were.
So the role of water, I
think is extremely important.
How you would show
that digitally,
that really depends on what
you're trying to show exactly
and why you're
trying to show it.
So if you want to look at
climate shifts, which then
relates to a shift
in habitation,
then one of the
things you can do
is really look at where you
actually find information
for habitation over time.
And we still can't get around
place and time there, either,
because they are still
mainstays of what we want to do.
The only thing is that they're
not a purpose all in itself.
They're really there
to talk about things
like climate change.
The work we've done in Fayum
and that's about to come out
is we looked at the
stratified site,
but we also looked at
everything around it,
and it really appears
that the Epipaleolithic
and the Neolithic in Fayum that
show a gap, and that was always
theorized to have been
because of climate change
and because of different peoples
coming in, of course, actually
has much more in
common with each other
than that they're different.
Basically what people do is
they are at the lakeside edge,
they fish mostly, and then
they gather some wild grasses.
In the neolithic, they
sit at the lakeside,
they fish, and they
grow some grain.
But the emphasis is really
not on the domesticals.
It's our emphasis.
So looking at the distribution
of hearths in that desert
landscape made us realize
that the stratified site is
basically the same as what
are called the surface
sites, except that they're just
more concentrated and stacked.
But really the way of living
wasn't all that different.
So there's a lot
of preconceptions
that we have as
archaeologists that we really
need to step back with--
have to step back from.
And it's really important
to always look at the data.
So start there, and
then start theorizing.
If I can add to
this, because I think
this is really interesting.
One of the things
that I was thinking
about in your talk, Willeke,
is the intense focus on visual,
right?
And one of the things
we're constantly
dealing with in
digital with women
is the tyranny of the visual
and what are the opportunities
to bring in the olfactory,
bring in the oral,
bring in the tactile, right?
What ever happened
to haptics, right?
And is that a way
to then address
this question of climate?
Do we get the winds coming
through the Temple of Karnak
and we hear them, we feel them?
So I'm wondering whether you
see a potential future where
we move beyond just the visual?
And I also had a really quick
question for you, Pearce.
You mentioned that Egyptology
needs this shipwreck.
And I'm wondering why the
discoveries in the Alexandria
harbor haven't actually done
what you want to have happen?
So what really seems to
drive it in every case
where it's taken off and
there are rigorous program
and things is one really
superlative case that gets
people excited and inspired.
And it draws
resources, and it draws
smart, hardworking people,
and all these other things
to grow it.
There are 47 shipwrecks
in the Alexandria harbor,
and one of them actually
has a radiocarbon
date of about 1200 BCE, and
it's not been published.
I saw this in a
PowerPoint slide.
And, I mean, that could be it.
That really could
be, but, I mean,
you need more
information about it.
And, I mean, the folks that are
doing it are taking their time
and trying to do them
right and going slow,
but it could be there already.
It's just not out there.
The lore of Cleopatra
city [INAUDIBLE]?
It's not pharaonic, right?
I mean, it's not the same thing.
That's a classics discussion
that it doesn't always
carry over into Egyptology.
And I'm not saying
that it shouldn't.
I'm saying that tends
to be how it goes.
OK?
Willeke, I loved your
comment about project CPR.
And I can sympathize,
having done
a bit of mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation on my own.
I wanted to ask you about
digital Karnak, though.
And when you look
at those models
and you see that the
outlines of the pylons
and pillars and things
are fairly basic,
and I wondered if the two
sides of that argument
are if money were no
object, would you now
texture them and make them
photo realistic and beautiful?
Or do you consciously keep
them looking very basic
and, some might say, a little
bit more on the primitive side
because it's about the
phasing and it's not
about trying to do a sort of
World of Warcraft realization
type of system?
Do you--
I've--
Are you constrained
by the resources?
Or is this a conscious decision?
No, this is a
conscious decision.
We actually made a model
of [INAUDIBLE] which
is even more basic
which just has walls
at sort of a generalized
height of 150,
because we don't know
the actual wall height.
But again, it's a way to
understand phasing better.
I've seen digital models with
waving grass and hippopotami
sort of [INAUDIBLE],
and the problem
is if you present
things that way,
people expect different things.
So I think your visual
language should really closely
match to what you're trying
to do with that model.
And there might be a reason
to make a very photo realistic
temple model where you
actually play with the lighting
or reconstruct all the-- the
whole decoration in color,
which we also didn't
do, but that really
wasn't-- the objective for us
for this model was to take all
the French publications, which
have all this information about
where things were found, what
they think things looked like,
and translate those into that
model and then jump through all
the different phases and
show where things ended up.
That's the purpose, and
that's where we stuck with.
The danger is that if you make
it to testing, that people
expect-- well, first
of all, they think
that's what it looked like.
And secondly, I even had
it with the sound and light
in [INAUDIBLE] when there
were all these voices coming
and I expected Isis
to flit through.
And I was very disappointed
that she didn't.
So it also sets you
up for expecting
more of the really
well-developed gaming engines,
for instance.
I think that's quite
interesting, also,
is that the final intent
sort of drives your choices.
For ones that I've
worked on, the intent
was the photo model to be
used as an interpretive
to a [INAUDIBLE] for the field
archaeologists themselves,
and then secondly as a way
to present the information.
And so for that,
it was kept as what
you saw in the dirt was what
was in the model kind of thing.
Yeah.
Super transparent.
But there was a lot of
conversation and sort
of discussion and
bickering a little bit
between what should the one
for publication look like.
Right.
So do you feel the
need to narrate
that sort of thought process,
that decision making,
alongside the model or?
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's vital,
because with the mobile
goes this whole thinking through
with every step, because you
make so many decisions
when you make a model.
So those decisions
should be made explicit.
But also the decisions why
a certain height or why
a certain color, or why
a certain outline, so
part of a publication
that goes with a model
is accountability for all those
steps and all those decisions.
And it's also why
with all the models
we have a scientific
method that discusses those
points and makes decisions.
And again, if you then
end up in a fight,
you can make an
alternative interpretation.
But I have to say, I
love the UCLA tools.
And I would say of the
online tools for Egyptology,
those three that you talk
about, the Encyclopedia, Digital
Karnak, and Aegaron, these
are the three I go to
and I use, often without
engaging with what
your intent really was.
And it's really interesting
that you bring up-- you know,
I never really recognized
the inherent tension
of the term "digital
humanities" until you point out
that "digital" and
"ambiguity" don't go together
and "humanities" and "ambiguity"
are more or less bedfellows.
And I agree with
you that leaving
things non-photo realistic
actually helps me in my use.
So I use Digital Karnak not
for a research tool, that's
not my area of
research, but I use it
in teaching all the time.
And so I export images
from the model to say,
when we're looking
at the White Chapel,
here's where the
White Chapel was.
It's not going to be
the totality in how
I teach the White Chapel.
We're going to look
at the photographs
and talk about
barks and movement.
But the fact that the
model is relatively blank
actually allows me
to use it better
than would be the case if it
attempted to be a [INAUDIBLE].
And that's why we also made a
choice with the fly-throughs
that are online to not
do a voiceover, but a PDF
with a very detailed description
so that either a student can
read those two and
then look at it,
or a teacher can do
the voiceover live,
which is much more interactive
than having something
droning on with that image.
So you can really fill
in your own information.
But it's a layer.
I mean, you can go
to the photographs,
you can go to the bibliography,
you can go to the model.
That's what's so great about it.
Yeah, I use it all the time.
Me, too.
But the problem is we can't
make the full model available.
We can.
You can download them
to your computer,
and I can give you
all, or send you
all, the link where you can
download this example that I
wanted to show, which
is a narrative made
by Elaine Sullivan on
mostly the early New
Kingdom to Late Kingdom phases,
where you can just pull up
all kinds of information next to
your fly-through to the model.
And you can step out of
it and explore by yourself
at any moment.
And that is really
something that I
would like to have generally
available through a web
interface.
But it's just too heavy.
You just can't run it.
Yeah?
I think it's really
interesting that
with these digital
projects we've
seen themes of archives
that are being digitalized,
and then we're able to study
them in the new projects
where it's [INAUDIBLE] digital
on the ground [INAUDIBLE].
And I was wondering if
anyone could comment
on how we can use these
platforms to stitch together
that depth of knowledge
from historical excavations
and then what's being
brought in today.
I didn't quite hear.
Oh, I'm interested in how
digital platforms can help
stitch together historical
knowledge that's
been excavated, day,
a hundred years ago
and it's being newly digitized
and then information that's
being born digital in
current excavations.
I can comment on that.
I think there is
actually the tools
to do that using semantic
web and link data--
There's a new program
called Scalar that's doing
[INAUDIBLE].
But I don't think
it's been deployed
for any projects I know, because
I think a lot of archaeologists
have difficulties dealing
with software terminologies.
But it's actually
when someone does it,
and then you can say
[INAUDIBLE] slightly,
but something different.
We've actually
wondered at [INAUDIBLE]
whether we shouldn't
publish a book
at the end of an excavation,
but we should actually
publish a 3D model
that's annotated
or where the database
is linked in 3D space
and so people can
read a narrative,
whether it's PDF or website,
but can also go and explore
the spaces and look for, say,
a certain types of artifact
and where it's found.
But that's the kind of thing
you have to find funding for.
It's kind of a scary
amount of money
that's needed to fill
that kind of thing.
And then Betsy.
Neil, your point
actually raises what
I think is an interesting
question, which is, you know,
oh, somebody else did it.
I didn't know how
to do it, and I'm
going to use it if
somebody else does it.
And one of my
question is how much
we are repeating each other's
work in developing platforms
like this.
And so Digital Karnak
and Giza or whatnot,
you know, many of us are
independently writing field
paperless recording systems.
But is there a need or
interest in working together
to develop platforms
that many of us
can use at different sites or
more broadly so that we're not
replicating one another's work?
Is that a reasonable goal
or totally pie in the sky?
Well, I think within archeology
there's definitely a movement.
SAA has just started
a committee on this.
There are several people
who look into repositories.
There's TDAR at ASU.
There's Out of Context
by Eric [INAUDIBLE].
The Carlton Press
is starting, or has
started with publishing
smaller books
with a lot of online
information, which will include
databases and GIS, but purposely
linked to a publication,
because that's the
moment when your really
chew through your data
and clean up your data,
because it's a lot of work to
prepare data for publication.
It's as if you're
writing another book.
So it is a lot of work.
But [INAUDIBLE] this
immersive humanities idea
is exactly to get at
that, to have a model
and link out to all kinds of
information that is available
online and also search
that information
and bring that back
into multiple models.
So it's something we
are working towards.
Of course, we're
not there yet, but I
would love to talk more and see
if we can come to something.
And if we can join
efforts that are happening
at SAA with the
IEA-- I was really
struck last year about how many
digital projects there are.
And there's this whole
session on digital Egyptology,
which was great.
There's a lot of
thinking going into this.
There's a lot happening.
[INAUDIBLE]
I think, picking up
on Laura's point,
I don't know what
the environment is
like in the States at the
moment, but in the UK,
funding bodies are increasingly
asking for a demonstration
that you are going to be using
tools that have been developed
by other people, so rather
than reinventing the wheel.
And I think this is where
open source [INAUDIBLE].
So there's a number of
digital humanities products
that come into fruition
where they'll provide you
with a set of tools,
but you'll need
to add another tool
for your project.
And then that tool becomes
available for other projects
thereafter.
But again, there's not
enough concrete examples
of that, in Egyptology,
at least, for us
to kind of question,
critique, and build upon.
But one thing that
it strikes me that
would be really
useful for, building
these tools that others can
use, is for particularly
our Egyptian colleagues
who don't have access
to the same kinds of
funding that we do.
And for systematic recording
of excavations done by the MSA,
for instance, having access to
a universal digital database
type-- empty, right?
Not populated with
data, but with a system
and universal form might
actually be really useful.
It just struck me that--
I'm sure somebody's probably
written about this already--
that public funding is
a really good
thing when it comes
to encouraging collaboration.
And one of the new players
in digital projects
is crowd-funded or research
funded by private conversations
where there isn't this same
shared mission to, you know,
ask people to share code.
And maybe it facilitates
the types of relationships--
or we should all be backing
public funding opportunities
because of their
growing interest
in foster collaboration.
And to piggyback
on that, many of us
use ArcGIS very proprietary
[INAUDIBLE] software
rather than available, really
good open source GIS software.
And that is excluding
many of our colleagues
in the Middle East
and elsewhere,
because they can't pay to have
licenses to Esri Software.
So keep that in mind as you're
developing your GIS parameters.
That's a very good point.
Betsy, did you have-- OK.
Do you want to go?
I'd like to make it
[INAUDIBLE] notion of Egypt
as a maritime
society, because we
don't have a pharaonic
shipwreck, unfortunately.
And that's a problem, but
in the future, in theory,
we should be able to find one.
There's also plenty
of evidence already
for the maritime nature
of ancient Egypt.
If we think that among the
earliest representations
of predynastic
art include boats,
the two main words for
travelling north and south
in Egypt are based
on sailing the Nile.
We have two of the major
works of literature
based on seafaring ship
with sailor as [INAUDIBLE].
We have sailors listed
as a social category
in the center on the trades.
There's already
a lot of evidence
which has just never been
considered comprehensively
to discover the maritime
nature off ancient Egypt.
And I think also
a shipwreck would
be extremely helpful,
would be a catalyst,
but there is also a change
of mentality that is needed
in approaching ancient Egypt.
We just think of ancient
Egypt as Nile and desert,
and we forget about the two
other ways of travelling
to other countries.
So the Red Sea and
the Mediterranean.
No, it is.
It's the high-profile projects
that drive that, right?
I mean, Peter, how
many times have you
and Pierre-- how many
e-mail requests did
you guys get for interviews
when the oldest papyrus ever
discovered?
You know, it's things
like this that do--
[INAUDIBLE] very few.
Yeah.
It's just--
[INAUDIBLE]
That's what drives it.
But you're right, there is
no centralized resource.
No, yeah.
There's no maritime
history of Egypt.
And the closest
we get it probably
Shelley Wachsmann's study of
late Bronze Age seafaring,
but that's the
closest we can get.
We never have a
comprehensive study
of seafaring in ancient Egypt.
It's just exclusively
dedicated to ancient Egypt.
I'll give you a
horribly shameless plug.
We will have that book--
Yeah.
--inside of 12 months through
Oxford University Press
called The Maritime History and
Archaeology of Ancient Egypt.
Yeah, I'm looking
forward to that.
I should-- I said it up front.
I should probably mention
that for the Red Sea,
we are actually talking
about quite ancient boats.
Yeah.
And the condition of
preservation in the Red Sea
are quite different, because
[INAUDIBLE] Mediterranean area
because of the coral formation.
So we are not too much
affected by the coral,
but in [INAUDIBLE] that's
a huge coral reef area.
So if you have
some wreckage, it's
probably under a couple
of coral formations.
And geologists estimated
that four meters of coral--
Yeah.
--grew in the past 4,000 years.
So it covers anything--
Yeah.
When you're going really
south of the Red Sea,
you have very few chance
after for [INAUDIBLE] area
they definitely choose this
location because there was not
too much coral reef.
But we already survey this
area with the [INAUDIBLE]
here in [INAUDIBLE].
We already surveyed all the
bay in [INAUDIBLE] years ago,
and in [INAUDIBLE].
And that's the same
guy all the time.
That's Mohamed Abd-el-Maguid who
did cover quite a huge surface.
So after, if you do that in
a regular underwater survey,
it's gigantic task.
So maybe, in that
case, you can think
about other kinds of tools.
But honestly, [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah.
And there have been at
least six different surveys
on the Mediterranean
coast that I
know of that aren't published.
But you can get them if you
ask the folks that did them.
Egyptian divers are--
They know.
--diving regularly on
the [INAUDIBLE] boats.
Yeah.
So they're doing this
[INAUDIBLE] archaeology.
And, you know, we have also
very important information
from the land itself.
We are actually discovering a
boat every two or three years.
There was the one in
[INAUDIBLE] last year.
That was the one that you showed
at [INAUDIBLE] four years ago,
I guess.
We have discovered many bases on
the whole harbor installation.
So we have, actually,
a lot of information.
And also for the
dendrochronology,
we have this question many
times about the dendrochronology
and the cedar
pieces that we have.
But the problem this wood is
already extremely huge trees
with about 300 years
of life generally.
So if you don't know exactly
where you are on the tree,
it's really tricky.
And the Jarf example showed
that they reopened the galleries
probably under the reign
of [INAUDIBLE] in order
to take out all the wood pieces
that they recarved on site.
They reshaped the pieced
on site, and they reuse it.
So we are [INAUDIBLE]
about 20 years after.
But these pieces of
cedar were probably
used for decades, centuries,
on multiple ships.
So at the end, the use
of dendrochronology
for the-- with the cedar is
not really useful in some way.
But if you can, in the next
years, produce a reference,
a [INAUDIBLE] reference
in dendrochronology
for the local species,
that [INAUDIBLE]
would be interesting, because
generally the things that
are left at the Wadi Jarf,
that's only the pieces
that we can replace.
And generally they're
only made with local wood.
So a piece of wood like that,
I have thousands of box.
Tons of it.
Well, if we don't
understand human behavior
and how it relates to
their natural resources--
how long did it take for cedar
to get from Lebanon or wherever
to Egypt?
And that's-- people
aren't asking--
aren't really addressing
those questions,
which you have to address.
If you don't understand
how people use it,
you can't put it in context.
Well, but it makes the
precision of the dates
you might get from
the [INAUDIBLE]
as, I don't know,
as much of a fantasy
as the precision of digital
data that pretend to be more
[INAUDIBLE].
But on the bright side, it's
great for chronology building.
That much reuse--
[INAUDIBLE]
I look for the bright side.
The problem with
the Wadi Jarf, we
have such a small time
of use for that site.
We're under the accuracy even
of the [INAUDIBLE] expedition,
which is, at the most,
more or less 20 years.
So we are not-- will not
do dendrochronology or C14
for dating of sites.
We don't really want to offer
that for [INAUDIBLE] something.
But for the Egyptian
species of wood,
it's a long way [INAUDIBLE].
I hope you success.
And perhaps on that
note, it's a good time
to take a quick coffee break
before our last session.
So thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
