Multimedia information systems for East African archaeology

Sebastian Rahtz, Paul Sinclair

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 1994, 5, 219-236

Abstract

Archaeology is starting to face the challenges of electronic publication posed by advances in information technology; we are now able to offer almost all types of archaeological data in a single software environment, and have the opportunity to integrate hitherto discrete results. This paper describes the use of the University of Southampton’s ‘Microcosm’ open hypermedia system in an archaeological context. Microcosm is a set of programs running under Microsoft Windows which can support a variety of archaeological data, including databases, digitised site plans and survey data, synthetic text, and GIS images. The example uses the data generated by the Urban Origins in East Africa project, a Swedish-funded initiative to bring together archaeologists from ten East African countries and look at a regional problem. We suggest how the integration provided by multimedia can not only be a vital part of research work, but also be used in publicity, and provide the structure of a genuine regional resource.

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