Articles by Francesca Anichini

The MAGOH (Managing Archaeological data for a sustainable Governance of Heritage) project is a two-year project funded by Regione Toscana, co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MIC) and coordinated by MAPPA Lab of the University of Pisa. The project was designed to address the needs of the Superintendencies of Florence, Pistoia and Prato and of Pisa and Livorno to manage archaeological data. The project represents the development of the MAPPA project on a larger geographical area of 72,000 km², corresponding to almost all of Northern Tuscany. MAGOH system is composed of a web-based back-end which allows collecting textual and vector data and the archaeological documentation. It contains around 8000 archaeological interventions openly accessible through the web platform and reusable as open data following FAIR principles. Furthermore, through an appositively developed API, it is entirely interoperable with GNA, the National Geoportal for Archaeology, managed by the MIC.

This paper aims to demonstrate how field data collection applications can represent a good resource in archaeological surveys. As an alternative to the classic paper documentation, using a smartphone application saves time both during the survey (automatic geolocation, GPS tracking) and in the post-processing (easier data import in a computer software, reduction of typo-errors and prevention of transcription errors). The focus of this paper is Geopaparazzi, an open source application for Android that allows customized and easy collection of field data by using a smartphone; collected data are ready to be processed by computer software like GIS. Geopaparazzi 6.1.0 was tested in four archaeological survey campaigns, three in Versilia (Italy, Tuscany) and one in Lampedusa (Italy, Sicily). The two environments are profoundly different: Versilia is a mountain landscape, and Lampedusa is a small island. Moreover, the data collected are different but these differences helped to understand how adaptable the application can be.

Data and the possibility to circulate and spread them are the key infrastructure of archaeology. Part of the (interpretative) information underlying data is connected to the know-how of each single researcher. Data, instead, are firm points. In this paper, we describe how open data can be used for determining the archaeological potential. We used a sizable number of datasets, in order to consider the problem of estimation of archaeological potential in all of its aspects: archaeological, historical, and geomorphological data. As the identification of relations among finds is a key issue in archaeological interpretation process, we applied a modified version of the PageRank algorithm. The procedure included a categorization of archaeological data, the assignment of initial values of potential to the available data, the creation of geomorphological maps, the definition of functional areas (i.e. the levels of spatial and functional organization: urban, suburban and rural areas), and the application of the PageRank based algorithm. The model has been applied on the urban area of Pisa, and tested through the data of 14 new cores. The map of archaeological potential consists of the composition of the 7 layers, one for each archaeological period under consideration. The results, including the archaeological potential map, are to be considered as the first steps towards an automatic, formally definable, and repeatable approach to the computation of archaeological potential.

An archaeological excavation is an unrepeatable practice. The only action that can be reproduced and re-analysed is the continuous use of raw data. Data sharing, therefore, is the only way to understand and re-examine the archaeological interpretative process and to answer questions regarding new surveys. Data do not circulate freely in Italian archaeology today. In order to make open data searchable (and, therefore, usable), they must be entered in open archives. Only the free access to raw data, based upon an Open Data approach, will allow a further step to be taken towards 2.0 archaeology. The idea of creating an Italian open digital archaeological archive, using data from the urban area of Pisa as case-study, originated from the MAPPA project (Methodologies Applied to Archaeological Potential Predictivity). The main objectives of the MAPPA Open Data (MOD) archive will be to allow simple and free access to all archaeological data (of any type or size) and to guarantee a digital lifecycle for as long as possible.