world archaeology congress paper
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Recording a fragile past The Portable Antiquities Scheme
Daniel Pett
Who am I and what do I?
• I work for the Portable Antiquities Scheme
• Responsible for Scheme’s ICT• Run the largest
archaeological database of artefacts ever created online (that we know of!)
• Have access to over 338,000 objects and176,000 images
• I provide advice to the British Museum on web technologies and GIS
• Try to provide innovative applications for our audiences
What do we do?
• Founded in 1996, in 6 pilot areas• Went National in 2003 with 36 recording
officers known as Finds Liaison Officers• Record objects found by members of the public• Run outreach events to promote best practice• Work with National bodies to promote
archaeology• Employ 50 people in archaeology with a huge
range of talents
Why is the Scheme important?
• Provides unique research material for England and Wales (in one place!)
• Has a proven track record for attracting AHRC funding for second and third degrees
• Records data that would otherwise be lost to archaeologists
• It is the only project of its type in the world
Is it any good?
Awards
• In 2000, the Scheme won the Silver Trowel at the British Archaeology Awards
• In 2008, the Head of the Scheme was awarded an OBE for services to Heritage
What people say!
David Lammy MP, Former Minister for Culture, said‘Metal detectorists […] Thanks to the responsible approach they display in reporting finds and the systems we have set up to record them, more archaeological material is available for all to seeat museums or to study online.’
Neil MacGregor Director, the British Museum said‘This huge increase in finds is testimony to the success of the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme and makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of our past.
Mark Fisher, MP (Lab.)‘Over the past 10 years, the field of antiquities in England and Wales has been transformed-there is no other word for it-by the Treasure Act 1996 and by the portable antiquities scheme.
Mike Heyworth, MBE, Director of the CBA‘Too good to become history…’ British Archaeology 100
Research in progress
• 12 PhDs - 5 funded as CDAs
• 3 AHRC projects - 1 at UCL
• 28 Masters
• 13 Undergraduates
• 12 internal projects
• You could join these researchers - ask me afterwards
Objects by period
Objects by year
Note 2007 - After 3 months, nearly 30K objects - extrapolated that makes 120K for this year (very unlikely!)
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Treasure cases by year
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Foot & Mouth outbreak
What do we record?
A typical record
High quality description
Multiple images
Reference material
Spatial data if you have the correct acess rights
Metrics and discovery
Mapping public discovery
How many people do we reach via the internet?
Year Unique Visitors Number of visits Pages viewed Pages per visit
2004 84,174 289,595 4,847,892 162005 152,711 555,289 9,639,621 182006 247,103 720,369 15,469,127 21
Steady increase all round - estimated 8-10,000 detectorists so we reach
thousands of people per annum who do not indulge in collecting or discovering artefacts
The Scheme as a content provider
Reuse of our data
Data feeds
• Since 2003 RSS feeds have been offered for nearly everything we produce
• JSON feeds and XML now available
• Database being rebuilt in 2008
• By December an api will be available
• All data and the database itself will become more accessible
Licenced data:Content provided under
Where else is our content used?
Online:BRICKS - finds identifierPeople’s Network Discovery ServiceOffline:Academic journals, papers, original research, desk basedassessments, etc
Where else could our content be used?
The new British Museum website - for example, departmental pages could have recent finds that relate to their period (RSS or OAI-PMH to search our dbase)
The 24 Hour Museum - for example local museum pages could have feeds of local finds (RSS)
Local society websites
Historic Environment Record - XML or OAI-PMH
Web mashups - plot PAS finds, against Oxford Archaeology WMS, vs Megalithic Portal vs Museum locations (not done yet before you ask!)
http://twitter.com/bm_pantsLatest Scheme updates sent to Twitter;
e.g. Finds of noteLatest blog posts (www.finds.org.uk/wordpress)Updates from theyworkforyou.com relating to us
The Scheme has a group and a page. It accounts for >2% of our incoming referrers.When our funding troubles began, the public created a “Save the Portable Antiquity Scheme” group (700+ members) and 2 petitions on the Parliamentary site (>2000 signatures)
Image dissemination
Photos from annual reports, press launches etc are released under CC at:
http://flickr.com/photos/findsFeel free to tag or annotate them.
Example usage of flickr feed
Leveraging our data
• Each staff member has their own profile page
• Their latest records and stats are presented on their pages
Roman coin guide
High res image
Reece period of coin
Number of coins of this issuer (dynamic update)
Coin knowledge
Database tells us what denoms possible
Active mints under this issuer
Last 1o examples of their coins recorded
Zoom & pan
Mapping our data on the web
Google mapping
Same data – google maps
Data viewed in Google Earth
External archaeological use
This is where it gets interesting…..
The end.Visit our website
@ www.finds.org.ukContact me:
dpett@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
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