Cutting-edge archaeological field research requires digitally-based recording methods to facilitate rapid, cost-effective data acquisition. These data must be stored in robust, organised, searchable databases to facilitate analyses, publication and research. Archaeological data are complex and are varied in format (texts, photographs, videos, audio clips, satellite imagery etc) and in content (artefact attributes, spatial coordinates, dates etc). They are stored in different locations on different media, some of which cannot be accessed or integrated easily. It is difficult for researchers to explore, compare and analyse their own data with other data that are available in other groups. This absence of coordinated digital resources and tools for the access, curation and analysis of data is an ongoing impediment to the Australian archaeological and cultural heritage industries. Professionals and researchers are either unaware of the existence of data sets, or aware of them but unable to access them for a particular project. Their ability to work collaboratively is hampered by a lack of tools to access and share data stored in different formats and/or stored across different sites.
To date there is no mechanism to make these data available in a ‘grid environment’ for wider access. It is critical to facilitate and automate many basic data management processes. ‘Data grids’ can provide these functions by providing infrastructure and tools needed to facilitate discovery and analysis, and long-term preservation of data.
Digital Collections
Based on our experience in developing data grids for the physical sciences, we are developing a digital collection for the social sciences and humanities communities. Our test cases come from two Queensland archaeological projects (one of these is the Mill Point Archaeological Project, located in the Great Sandy National Park in southeast Queensland). The Australian archaeology digital collection is using demonstrated grid software applications and standards: the Storage Resource Broker, Globus and XML.
SRB Deployment
The SRB is being used in order to connect a variety of different file systems (Linux, Windows etc) and storage resources, as well as to enable queries of SRB-enabled distributed databases. This will ensure maximum access to the data in the collection.Metadata Creation
In order to integrate the collected data with the SRB, a metadata catalog (MCAT) has been developed for the data collected so far. It will also be used for streaming data. |
| Figure 1: Query
form to search metadata |
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| Figure 2: Query
resultsfrom SRB |
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| Figure 3:
Information about one artefact |
As well as funding from QCIF, this project was the subject of a grant from the University of Queensland, as well as a 2005 Special Research Initiative grant from the Australian Research Council.
For more information visit the e-Archaeology webpage on the Vislab website.
Contacts
Nicole Bordes, Terry Simmich, Bernard PailthorpeVislab, University of Queensland
Sean Ulm
Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland
Publications
Bordes, N., S. Ulm, O. Pettersen, K. Murphy, D. Gwynne, W. Pagnon, S. Hungerford, P. Hiscock, J. Hall and B. Pailthorpe. Data grid for the management, reconstruction, analysis and visualisation of archaeological data. In S. Ulm and I. Lilley (eds), An Archaeological Life: Papers in Honour of Jay Hall, pp.251-264. Research Report Series 7. Brisbane: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland (2006).Bordes, N., Ulm, S. et al., 2006. "Towards an Australian Archaeological Data Grid". Submitted to Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (2006).