Articles by Costis Dallas

Research in theoretical and computer-based archaeology, from the 1950s onwards, established important perspectives for the formal representation and analysis of tangible cultural entities such as complex artefacts, iconographic compositions and archaeological assemblages, and became a precursor for the emergence of knowledge-based tools, methodologies and standards for artefact-centred information systems in contemporary museums. One particular case in point is CLIO, a semantic information system intended for research use, developed by ICS/FORTH and the Benaki Museum in Greece in the early 1990s, which became a foundation for the definition of the Conceptual Reference Model of the International Documentation Committee of ICOM (CIDOC CRM), recently adopted as the ISO standard for cultural information representation. It is argued here that, as the capabilities of computer applications to provide access to complex, multimedia cultural information increase, so does also the validity and importance of earlier research advances in artefact-centred archaeological computing; and, conversely, that the advent of digital infrastructures for material culture disciplines such as archaeology highlights the pertinence, and potential benefits, of further work on archaeological formal analysis and knowledge representation.

The author makes some general observations on the scope of various approaches to archaeological virtualisation, with particular reference to virtual exhibitions. He examines some interesting fully dynamic, evolving case-studies and, linking the historical development of archaeology to that of different kinds of archaeological knowledge, he highlights the possibilities offered by hypermedia applications on the World Wide Web not only for public communication, but also for archaeological meaning construction and mode of representation. The overall discussion points include virtual exhibition in the context of virtual museums, the notion of virtualisation and some ideas on content, formal representations and affordances. At the same time, the author laments the fact that virtual exhibitions are still fledgling, unstable practices, ignored by the majority of the archaeological public and, at the same time, by most mainstream archaeologists and most archaeological museums. Further work requires unification with relevant research and practice in Information and Communication Technologies, but also further reflection and research on the production of archaeological meaning through virtualisation.