Articles by Francesca Cantone

The 30th anniversary of ‘Archeologia e Calcolatori’ has offered the chance to focus on its rich repository of scientific contents and to envisage further strategies to better classify the journal’s papers. Mapping web resources is crucial in organizing and managing cultural information in the Semantic Web and Internet of Things (IoT) perspective. In this context, the editorial board has decided to adopt geographical and chronological annotation strategies and to implement established gazetteers of geographical and historical entities. The first step in this annotation project was to experiment with the ‘Recogito’ Pelagios tool, an international initiative aimed at facilitating better associations between online resources documenting the past. Furthermore, an analysis has been undertaken by means of Social Network Analysis techniques, which in the last years has been developed to cover a wide interdisciplinary field of study, including social and behavioral sciences, economics, psychology, anthropology. The paper illustrates the main results, to highlight connections between themes and technologies in the papers published over the last ten years.

The paper focuses on the digital strategies developed in the study of the corpus of flower woman terracotta figurines found in the excavations carried out by Paola Zancani Montuoro and Umberto Zanotti Bianco at the Foce Sele Hera Sanctuary and stored in the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum. The flower woman definition identifies the best known structure of the statuettes composed of a female bust supporting a flower orthogonal to the base. Actually, the scientific literature about these peculiar artifacts reveals a diffused vagueness and ambiguity in the definition, formalization, and functional exegesis, encouraging a new comprehensive study. The main results come from: digital management of the information; seriation analysis supported by a quantitative approach; visualization of occurrences in the Mediterranean Basin based on Fusion Tables; testing of multidisciplinary approaches to cooperative content building in archaeology. The study developed a whole technology-enhanced workflow, including multimedia data digital management and sharing; statistical techniques for the analysis of terracotta shrinkage in moulded coroplastic figurines seriation; webGIS visualization of occurrences in the ancient Mediterranean Basin and their relations.

The Or.C.He.S.T.R.A. project focuses on the development of a set of ICT solutions supporting the smart valorization of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the Campania Region, in particular the city of Naples and its historic center, for citizens/visitors/tourists while fulfilling the principles of sustainability and eco-friendliness. The project investigates the perspectives of applying the Smart City paradigm in the Cultural Heritage field. Thus, this research outlines the emerging concept of Smart Cultural Heritage and proposes a new integrated approach, in which the fundamental value of the cultural framework is acknowledged in the complexity of the smart model. The studies on Cultural Commons are invoked as a basis for the analysis on the advantages of sharing common cultural resources (such as cultural heritage and the related digital information) within the Communities, identified in their inclination to innovation by means of the Evolving Networks model. In this context the Or.C.He.S.T.R.A. project aims at defining a new model of an integrated multidisciplinary approach to Naples’ historic center: a participatory, cooperative, complex system of heterogeneous information on the identified area, ranging from mobility, to health, energy, cultural heritage. The integration of different aspects increases their potential, affecting the values of cohesion and density of the networks of shared contents, goods and services in the area, and supporting the availability of culture and innovation in the community, facilitating their assumption and thus contributing to the generation of value on the territory.

The paper investigates the perspectives of applying the smart city paradigm in the Archaeology and Cultural Heritage field, thus outlining the emerging concept of Smart Cultural Heritage and Smart Archaeology and proposing an integrated approach, in which the fundamental value of the cultural framework is acknowledged in the complexity of the smart paradigm. The theory of Cultural Commons, moreover, is invoked as a basis for the study of the advantages of sharing common resources (such as cultural heritage and the related digital information) within the Communities, identified in their inclination to innovation by means of the Evolving Networks model. In this context, the Or.C.He.S.T.R.A. project proposes a participatory and cooperative complex system of heterogeneous information on the ancient center of Naples as a case study, ranging from mobility, to health, energy, and cultural heritage, to support the smart exploitation of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage, for citizens, visitors and tourists while fulfilling the requirements of sustainability and eco-friendliness. The first experimentations of this methodological approach are presented, with focus ranging from archaeological exploitation to participated management of cultural heritage, to educational innovation. The integration of these aspects multiplies their potential, and influences the value of cohesion and density of networks of shared goods and services in the area, supporting the spread of innovation in the community, and creating value in the territory, thus impacting the possibility of the appearance of the tragedy of cultural commons.

This paper examines some methodological issues related to the implementation of open approaches in teaching cultural heritage computing and archaeological informatics. The main results of experiments conducted at the Neapolitan Universities of Federico II and L’Orientale are presented, aimed at improving the overall quality of the learning experience by didactical innovation with an attempt at identifying and defining the main features, critical aspects and best practices for further case studies. The research on cultural heritage e-learning strategies, presented by the authors in the previous ArcheoFOSS workshops, lead inter alia to the proposal of a e-learning SCORM module for Archaeological Informatics didactics, a MUVE 3D model for the communication of an archaeological stratification, a whole Master Course on Multimedia Environments for Cultural Heritage in Blended Learning, and to the proposal and prototypal implementation of cultural heritage distributed and federated interdisciplinary repositories. Lifelong learning literature shows that students need to have the possibility of personalizing their learning experiences and to integrate highly specialized contents with basic skills supports. Starting from this methodological background, a shared construction of teaching materials about basic open source informatics skills was tested, as a new step in the federated repository modular construction. Methodological aspects of the processes implemented and preliminary results of the e-learning materials trial are outlined in the perspective of further research and investigation.

Virtual Archaeology in Blended Learning. Experiments, methodologies and tools at the “Federico II” University of Naples. The rapid transformation of knowledge systems has changed methodologies and educational processes in a fast, continuous and substantial way. Among the various solutions, methodologies and technologies referred to by the term “e-learning”, this article focuses on experiments in “Blended Learning” in which lessons are integrated by online interaction. In particular, our experiment involved the preparation of a SCORM course of “Information Technology and Archaeology”, created using the IDEA (Instructional Designer Applications) software for Learning Objects, written, and implemented through the “Federico II” Campus platform, according to the paradigms of Computer Supported Collaborative Learn¬ing. Restructuring Virtual Archaeology didactical topics as Learning Objects led us to reflect deeply on the contents to convey and on their new organization, which had to be modular, combinable and granular in order to ensure the best re-usability in various educational contexts and the possibility to be customized according to the characteristics of students. The test covered different levels of classes (three-year degree, two-year degree, laboratory) for three academic years (2005/6-2007/2008). The number of students was limited to between ten and twenty per class in order to improve and control interaction and active participation by students. This paper describes and offers for discussion the main results of the experiment that was conducted, results of which were very encouraging in terms of: educational performance, construction of thematic e-communities, methodological innovation, preparation of re-mixable and re-usable didactical contents, testing of software/methodology IDEA available for free downloading and able to encourage and support dissemination of new teaching methods in archaeology, supporting and facilitating authors in the multimedia production workflow.

The ICT revolution in archaeological studies is producing thousands of digital data: interaction can be the key word to make more easy and efficient their access, communication, use, and analysis. It is well known that a lack of standardization is one of the most important limitations that prevent efficient interaction between different data sets. Interoperability and comparability of different archaeological data sets may increase interpretation and analysis. The paper outlines current developments in archaeological data standardization, and looks forward for an easier and more efficient process of integration of different kinds of data. The paper focuses in particular on the possibility of exploiting peer-to-peer and shared technologies to build archaeological data networks in an easy way, disseminating the standardization in a down-to-top way, avoiding technical and practical problems related to the hierarchical imposition of new formats. The paper addresses the possibility to realize and make available on the Internet a free tool to build an archaeological data community, with free access, validation, etc., to share data making the most of free text-based standards: XML, X3D, etc. The overall benefits of the proposed file-sharing solution can be summarized as follows: integration of different data typologies; standardization; interaction and networking; modularity; human readability; cooperative creation of vocabularies, graphical libraries, utilities, tools.