Articles by Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets

The Archéologie du monde grec et systèmes d’information team (CNRS – Paris X – Nanterre) presents a survey of the web resources available for Archaeology in two parts, the first dedicated to developments and use of web products, the second to information retrieval. This article is focused on practices: access to research results transposed from a traditional edition to a web site; hybrid diffusion and original contents specially designed for the Internet; retrieval tools usually used, such as Google, distinguished between “portals” designed and developed by archaeological institutions: these portals allow researchers and students to find selected and qualified information. At the end of the text, we present our web sites: Mélanges électroniques en hommage à René Ginouvès, Bibliographie de l’architecture grecque, «Cahiers des thèmes transversaux», Chronique Internet pour l’archéologie.

After presenting a summary of the development of computer applications in archaeology from the 1960s up to the present, the author discusses a diagram outlining the main processes which characterise the work of the archaeologist and specifically those in which computer methods have assumed an important role. The author identifies the following essential stages for the use of computers in archaeology: data gathering, data structuring, also for purposes of interpretation, and data diffusion, in order to make results known. This last stage seems to be particularly influenced by the developments brought about in recent years by the introduction of multimedia systems which have made the electronic publication of archaeological data possible by employing digital supports like CD-ROM as well as by creating Internet sites.

This paper deals with a particular aspect of computer-based data management in archaeology: the recording, publication and diffusion of archaeological information. The author stresses the particular character of archaeology: it is not an experimental science, but rather a learning discipline in which data should be cumulative, as each excavation involves the destruction of some previous information and, in general, each intervention, both of excavation or of conservation, gives new information that must be added to the existing ones. Therefore, the author investigates three fundamental topics with their relevant examples: the recording of excavation data, sites and objects or structures analysed and restored; the publication and diffusion of scientific results aimed at specialists; the diffusion of results towards a widespread public. In all these aspects, computer-based tools constitute a basic element. The author, in fact, maintains that their introduction and improvement will not only modify the archaeological professional experience and the way of operating, but will also affect the methodological and epistemological point of view.

The authors present the research activity carried out at the “Centre de recherche sur les Traitements Automatisés en Archéologie Classique”. This activity can be divided into two main themes. The purpose of the first is to publish works intended to standardise descriptive archaeological language. The second aims at creating data banks, with particular reference to classical archaeology, and videodisks permitting the association of images to the relative documents.