Preface to Supplement 4, 2013

Introduction to Supplement 4, 2013

For the 7th edition of ArcheoFOSS, the authors (who have attended every edition of the event since its founding) have classified all the papers presented during the different workshops and attempted to analyse their most significant characteristics. We highlighted which projects had a real impact on Italian archaeology, which ones fell by the wayside, and did not leave any trace and what was the ultimate fate of these applications. This is a unique occasion to study how archaeology evolved in Italy in the last decade, from the Open Source point of view, and how ArcheoFOSS proposals influenced the job market and the relationships among institutions. We tested whether the Open Source and Open Data culture really influenced archaeological work and made it better, where and why it happened and which ones are the most reliable perspectives in this sense, after seven years of attempts.

Recently Italian legislation has made some important steps towards openness in the Public Administration. The most important changes come from the recent laws that, among other important innovations, establish for the first time the openness by default of the PA web site contents. Moreover, transparency and openness of sites will become parameters to be considered when evaluating the performances of the employees responsible for them. Probably, the actual application of the laws will be anything but easy: preliminary work will be required, like filtering data that cannot be published to protect copyright or privacy rights of third parties. This paper focuses on data produced or managed by the agencies for Cultural Heritage with emphasis on archaeology: the main limits on opening data and contents will be discussed.

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.

Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photo contest for monuments, organized by the national chapters of Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia is the movement behind several projects like Wikipedia, the most famous among them, through a global collaboration authored by volunteers. Cultural heritage is an important part of the knowledge Wikipedia collects and disseminates. Everybody can contribute sending images: an image is worth a thousand words, in every language at once and local enthusiasts can (re)discover the cultural, historical, or scientific significance of their neighbourhood. Wiki Loves Monuments Italy could be more than a simple contest. Our country, in fact, although it is so rich in historical heritage that it is called a widespread museum, is suffering from disaffection by the general public, partly because of the shortage of funds that makes it difficult to take advantage of this heritage. To protect and enhance it, you have to flip the perspective with which you face the problem from the bottom up, considering the shortage of funds: WLM Italy may therefore be an opportunity to familiarize the common user with archaeological themes and history in general, becoming the main protagonist, promoter of knowledge and defender of the past.

This article is based on the SITAR project experience, which was conducted by the Special Superintendency for Archaeology in Rome. In compliance with recent legislative developments about the open data of the Public Sector, the overall goal of the SITAR project is to propose a way to publish the archaeological data on the web, combining the protection of intellectual property rights and the necessity of sharing of information. Some archaeological data, indeed, must be considered as public data and must be shared with licenses that allow their use for research and learning, as well as the development of preventive archaeology. This paper presents a summary of the topics related to the dissemination of archaeological data, with special attention to unpublished data and to the rights related to their publication, in relation with both the protection of intellectual property rights of field archaeologists and scientific directors and the use of proper licenses.

This paper describes the experiments conducted by FiLaS Spa and explains the reasons behind the technology trade-offs in the implementation of the infrastructure of the District of the Technologies for Cultural Heritage of Regione Lazio. The work was divided into ten initiatives, including six projects which were developed in six cultural sites of the provinces and four others concerning the establishment of the Welcome Center in Civitavecchia, the traveling Digital Shuttle, the Futouring web portal and the Center of Excellence of research and expertise in Cultural Heritage in Lazio. Overall, it comes to applications related to multimedia fixed installations each related to an historical theme, and the web portal provides a common resource and web service repository where data resides and digital content is accessible at each site and through tablets and smartphones in mobility. The architecture of the web portal was developed based on open source, multi-platform software solutions, having in mind the metaphor of navigation on interactive maps, and access on the move. It is worthwhile mentioning that all originally produced data and the developed code are licensed under CC-BY-SA license terms.

RAPTOR is a project, still under development, designed to build an easy and versatile tool in order to computerize the administrative procedures of the Italian Superintendencies for Archaeological Heritage. Its purpose is to ensure a faster response to any kind of external request and to align, as much as possible, the Superintendency offices to the new Code of Digital Administration. RAPTOR geo-database is based on open source software PostgreSQL and PostGIS, while the web-interface management is provided by PHP, JavaScript, GeoServer and OpenLayers. In this way all vector data can be entered into the system through specific compilation forms and displayed on a map, where they can also be queried. In short, RAPTOR will provide the users a complete and accurate mapping module, which will be able to show in real time a thematic cartography both with known archaeological evidence and negative areas.

The subject of this paper is a research project focusing on the meadow-wood system in a mountain micro-community (Sagron Mis, Trento). The project studies the evolutive/involutive dynamics of the meadow-wood system at medium-high altitude above sea level.

The Tiber Valley Project aims to create a series of digital applications for 3D reconstructing, visualization and real time browsing of the ancient and current Tiber Valley landscape (particularly for the Villa dei Volusii and Lucus Feroniae areas), in four different historical phases. In this perspective, the first problem to face is the need for a valid methodology for ancient landscape ecosystem reconstruction, before dealing with monuments and building. On the basis of an intense multi-disciplinary discussion and the previous VH Lab experience in this field, in this article we are presenting a scheme for a standardized reconstruction procedure, where the landscape is built using all available sources and elevation data obtained by a photogrammetry process on historical pictures. Ecosystem areas are then calculated through GIS elaboration in GRASS-GIS environment, through a procedure which may be shared for any situation of historical landscape reconstruction, allowing the matching and the mathematical processing of geographical data aimed to the definition of different ecological areas (both in terms of natural vegetation and cultivated lands). Maps are then created to be imported in procedural landscape generation engines: the last part of the paper focuses on the lack of effective open source software in this field, and a possible proposal implementation in this sense.

The development of the SITAR project took place in a time of new approaches in the management and use of archaeological geospatial data, even at the higher central levels of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage (MiBAC). SITAR represents an important technological and institutional challenge for the Special Superintendency for Archaeology in Rome, the governmental institution in charge of the safeguarding and exploitation of the Roman archaeological heritage. The aim of the SITAR project is the construction of the Archaeological Territorial Informative System of Rome for the management of the enormous and heterogeneous amount of data and for the multi-dimensional representation of the valuable historical context of a constantly evolving city like Rome. After a first phase of conceptual analysis, data model definition and taxonomic structures description, currently the technological development is focused on the SITAR project web platform and more specifically on the webGIS. The paper discusses the use of basic GIS functions integrated with specific tools for dynamic dataset multi-representation and web editing. These implementations allow all the users, both scholars and archaeology amateurs, to build their own new geospatial information; users now play an actual role in the system and in the enrichment of collective knowledge.

The aim of this paper is a critical survey of webGIS in Archaeology and its real usability. Generally, webGIS users can search, visualize, print, download and, in a few cases, upload data; so the system seems to be the ideal platform to share information. However this wonderland does not exist in the real world. First of all, because it is not easy to find projects on-line: wrong or expired links, slow page loading, system crashing. Second, because, even when it is possible to download or upload data, bridges or connections between different systems are missing. Starting from the point of view of a web user, different webGIS projects on-line were surveyed, in order to give a global overview of Internet cartography applied to archaeology.

The Project pyArchInit-Python for archaeology began in 2005 with the aim of developing a python plug-in for the open source software Quantum GIS. pyArchInit comes mainly from the needs, increasingly present in the archaeology community, to computerize the archaeological records using software which handle alphanumeric, multimedia and topographical data in a single solution. This package aims to meet these requirements with a unique solution that over time guarantees stability, development, easy installation and updating. The final goal is the creation of a GIS platform with a high interoperability between different operating systems, in which alphanumerical tables, GIS geometries and multimedia data are within a single system. This allows us to maintain the integrity of the raw data as much as possible, providing the archaeologist with an approach which is both very fast and powerful and, in the meantime, offering a system open to changes and customizations by other developers. The database management system of archaeological data is automatically installed both in PostgreSQL and in Spatialite. Different user interfaces, created to support the entering of data, manage the database. It is structured in seven management user interfaces: Stratigraphic Units, Site, Chronology, Infrastructures, Taphonomy Record, Archaeological, Multimedia. The first part of the package includes the management of stratigraphic units (pyarchnit_US module) because of the need to manage on site the documentation of excavations in progress. With pyArchInit we will try to bridge the gap between skills and knowledge acquired on an academic level and daily life in archaeological fieldwork; moreover, it will help the interaction with engineers, urban planners, government, Cultural Office administrators and all the agencies that gravitate around the archaeological world.

In this article we discuss a possible architecture to store, analyze and share large quantities of data (also known as Big Data). This data can be structured or not and can be generated from different sources: mobile devices, servers or, in general, sensors. This infrastructure can be integrated with analysis software like R, Solr and many others; it is developed with the cloud computing and its principles in mind so it can scale out easily and is high available. It is based on the Hadoop framework and, in particular, on the HDFS - Hbase store mechanisms (a distributed file system and a NOSQL database). Those repositories are exported with Fuse and are published with a typical Apache HTTP server with the addition of WebDav module. Fault tolerance and load balancing is achieved with HAProxy and Keepalived. All those software are free and open source (FOSS), can be installed on commodity hardware and are constantly updated by a large community of users.

ArchaeoSection is a software for drawing archaeological sections. Its goal is to automatically rotate section points measured with total station and to insert them in a geodatabase and GIS: this software is supposed to be a third way between traditional techniques and the most advanced digital systems of section record. This paper presents the technical properties of ArchaeoSection, how it works, its usage for different types of section and the advantages of a geodatabase-GIS management of archaeological sections. ArchaeoSection is also an example of the potential of FLOSS, that allows archaeologists without programming experience to build their work tools on their own, like an ancient craftsman.

In this paper we compare, through a case study located within the municipal boundaries of Rome, various proprietary, free and open source software libraries, in view of the coordinate transformation from the cadastral system Cassini-Soldner in the Gauss-Boaga system. The analysis was based on comparison of the Gauss-Boaga coordinates given in cadastral benchmark monographs and results of processing carried out with the libraries examined. Specifically, benchmarks were chosen for their representation both in IGM national geodetic network and in cadastral network in order to compare respective values in the final analysis. Aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the transformation made from Cassini-Soldner to Gauss-Boaga in order to obtain statistical values that allow us to choose or discard the libraries for topographical and GIS application within the metropolitan area of Rome.

This article illustrates the fourth release of ArcheOS, the first GNU-Linux distribution developed for archaeological aims and released under GPL. Since the first version in 2005, this free operating system has attempted to satisfy all the needs of an archaeological project, covering every single step of the operating workflow, from data collection and storage to elaboration, publication and sharing. The main target of the project is to spread the use of Free and Open Source software and to apply the ideology of the Free Software movement to archaeology itself (a central postulation of the Free Software Foundation is the free circulation of data and ideas). The new release Caesar, based on Debian Squeeze 6.0, has some important changes in the organization of the structure of the entire project. In fact, the developer team focused more on the stability of the operating system and an on-line service to keep the different programs (APT deb-repository) up to date. Caesar ensures a better hardware integration and a more accurate selection of software. The research of new technological solutions is one of the most important aspects of the project, which, from this aspect, is strongly connected with innovation in archaeological methodology.

This paper discusses some new perspectives about communication in archaeology. The main direction in recent years seems to go toward the increased use of new technologies by the same archaeologists who dig in a site and are not specialists in computer science and communication. So far these new technologies have been used in the search of better communications but they have been developed individually. Furthermore, the focus has been on the instruments rather than on the contents of the communication. Our proposal is to put together different media in order to enhance the potentiality of the same communication. For example, the use of 3D and docudrama together can enhance both the visual and narrative aspects of communication. In this paper we show a possible interaction of 3D and docudrama applied to the archaeological site of Vignale (Livorno, Italy), and discuss their benefits and drawbacks and the useful relationship between this creative approach of communication and the open source philosophy.

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.

In February of 2012 a basic course was given at the Livelet Archaeological Park, in Revine Lago (Treviso, Italy), about free and open source software for archaeology. It was organized by members of the Studio Associato Sestante and Arc team and supported by the Archaeological Park itself. The express purpose of the course was that of providing an overview of the many possibilities offered by these types of software in the archaeological field, in order to introduce participants to an unknown world, both in the universities and at work. The analysis of the responses to a questionnaire given to the participants has produced very encouraging results.

The ArcheO3D Project is an experiment of a methodology driven approach for the creation of 3D models of objects and archaeological finds. It allows the use of the models through simple and immediate means of online publishing and sharing. So far the project, which aims to develop digitization and publication of various classes of materials, has produced the first results for the management of architectural stratigraphies and metallic objects.

In the last ten years there have been several steps ahead towards the GIS 3D, in particular for the visualization of 3D objects within a GIS; few, instead, are the prototypes of GIS systems operating in 3D. The use of 3D Pdf is an intermediate solution that uses an open format such as .pdf and a series of free and open source software like Blender and PostgreSQL-PostGIS combined with programming languages such as Python and scripting languages such as Javascript. The aim of this paper is to describe a procedure for the interaction between a 3D model and a 2D geographic database. The opportunity to experiment with 3D Pdf was the subject of the Master thesis Tecnologie avanzate di rilevamento, rappresentazione e diagnostica per la conservazione e la fruizione dei beni culturali at the University of Palermo; a survey and a study of the Castle of Maredolce is described and the data that were employed to create a product for the public use of the Castle.

Nobody can deny the impact the web has on every possible domain and archaeology is not an exception. The Web 2.0 has put all users on the same level. Wikipedia and its software Mediawiki are an outstanding example of this process. The MediaWiki software was successfully applied to the archaeological record and its success is also due to the fact that it is always in beta format. This last feature is the characteristic that allowed the software to evolve, to respond to the necessity of the users. Chronic problems of Wiki systems, such as research and the reliability of on-line publications, and much more, could soon be solved by new software and network. In this article I will describe some of the most interesting novelties in this domain.

The subject of this poster is a survey in the territories of Web 2.0 and an excursion through the historical and archaeological data, the platforms of social networks and the cultural containers based on the Wiki philosophy. The route starts from the description of the most used web platforms, social networks as Facebook and Academia, and wiki containers as Wikipedia, passing through the experience of scientific teams that use the web to managing and disseminating the archaeological data, and the observation of the main features of each container. This preliminary survey explores the need for some reflections: on the quality and coherence of datasets, on the quality and traceability of sources, and on the needs of the scientific community and the web users.

The Adulis Project started in 2011, directed by the Ce.RDO in collaboration with the Centre for Geotechnologies of the University of Siena and the National Museum of Eritrea. The project aims to investigate and promote the cultural heritage of the ancient port site of Adulis, one of the most important archaeological sites in Eritrea and East Africa. The first two fieldwork seasons revealed a detailed stratigraphic sequence and massive walls, which required a complex documentation, highlighting the need for a system for managing data in a GIS platform, in which to collect all the stratigraphic, topographic and cartographic data. In the early stage, the project team used a commercial GIS software, ESRI ArcGIS, but with the progress of the work, the team soon realized that the application did not meet the required needs. In particular, the high licensing costs made it problematic to install and share data within the research team, especially for the Eritrean colleagues. It was therefore decided to seek an alternative solution adopting the open source plug-in pyArchInit, as it is a pre-prepared and already successfully tested software in several context and is perfectly in line with the needs which emerged during the work.

The making of an intra-site GIS of the archaeological site of Montecorvino is related to a more comprehensive project, led by University of Foggia, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane, focused on the study of the medieval landscape and settlements in northern Apulia. Statistical and spatial analyses have been applied in this project, as well as a global overlook on the archaeological research conducted on the site.

At the University of Padua, since 2005, after the inclusion of a course in Human Paleontology as part of the degree in archaeology, an osteo-archaeology study team has been active. In order to record in a comprehensive and systematic manner data relating to paleobiological research, an open source osteological database was developed. The database is based on LibreOffice Base, a versatile and easy to use software, as well as a multiplatform. The data is entered and stored in a table within the software, which is freely and easily exportable. The table is visually expressed through eight forms created in LibreOffice Base. The first section collects all information relating to the general biological profile (sex, age at death, stature, etc.) of each individual. The next section, developed only for adult subjects, is intended for the recording of paleobiological data and consists of two different parts, reporting of the possible presence or absence of trauma and/or pathologies. All pathologies, alterations and bone characteristics are listed in detailed form. The final form is intended for recording data about the state of dental health of adult and child subjects. Currently the database is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 Italy (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

Concluding remarks to the 7th Edition of ArcheoFOSS.