Thursday, March 19, 2009

When on Google Earth, No. 14

I am the winner of When On Google Earth, No. 13. When On Google Earth, No. 14, is here:



That should be pretty easy!



Q: What is When on Google Earth?
A: It’s a game for archaeologists.

Q: How do you play it?
A: Simple, you try to identify the site in the picture.

Q: Who wins?
A: The first person to correctly identify the site, including its major period of occupation, wins the game.

Q: What does the winner get?
A: The winner gets bragging rights and the chance to host the next When on Google Earth on his/her own blog! Tag it with "WhenonGE".

WhenonGE #1.
WhenonGE #2
WhenonGE #2.1
WhenonGE # 3
WhenonGE # 4
WhenonGE # 5
WhenonGE # 6
WhenonGE # 7
WhenonGE # 8
WhenonGE # 9
WhenonGE # 10
WhenonGE # 11
WhenonGE # 12
WhenonGE # 13

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hatshepsut

National Geographic has carried a story about Hatshepsut: Chip Brown, "The King Herself. What motivated Hatshepsut to rule ancient Egypt as a man while her stepson stood in the shadows? Her mummy, and her true story, have come to light", National Geographic April 2009.

Ancient Fish Trap in Wales

The BBC (March 16, 2009) has carried a report about an ancient v-shaped fish trap off the coast of Pembrokeshire. The story has a short video about the discovery.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Scholarly Communication Program to Host Christine Borgman on Scholarship in the Digital Age

-For Immediate Release-
Contact: Diana A. Price
212-851-7338, dp2065@columbia.edu

*Scholarly Communication Program to Host Christine Borgman on Scholarship in the Digital Age*
/The fifth in a six-event series on today's pivotal issues in scholarly communication /

(NEW YORK, March 3, 2009) Christine Borgman, Professor of Information Studies at UCLA and author of two widely praised books on digital technology and scholarship, will speak at Columbia University on "Scholarship in the Digital Age." The talk, sponsored by Columbia University's Scholarly Communication Program , will take place on Tuesday, March 24, 2009, at 3 p.m. in Butler Library Room 203 on Columbia's Morningside Campus. This event is free and open to the public, though anyone without a Columbia University ID must RSVP to kp2002@columbia.edu .

Borgman is the author of more than 180 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication, including the award-winning /Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet /(MIT Press, 2007) and /From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World/ (MIT Press, 2000). She is a lead investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked Systems (CENS) at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and chaired the NSF’s Task Force on Cyberlearning.

Today’s research and scholarship is data- and information-intensive, distributed, interdisciplinary, and collaborative. However, the scholarly practices, products, and sources of data vary widely between disciplines. Some fields are more advantaged than others by the array of content now online and by the tools and services available to make use of that content. Borgman's talk will provide an overview of new developments in scholarly information infrastructure, including policy issues such as open access and intellectual property. The event will also address the implications of e-science for cyberlearning, drawn from the NSF Task Force Report, /Fostering Learning in the Networked World/.

The talk "Scholarship in the Digital Age" is part of an ongoing speaker series on today's pivotal issues in scholarly communication, /Research without Borders: The Changing World of Scholarly Communication/ , organized by the Scholarly Communication Program of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services. Follow the live event remotely via Twitter at http://twitter.com/ScholarlyComm. Video of each event will be available on the Scholarly Communication Program site and Columbia University's iTunesU page. For information, please email Kathryn Pope at kp2002@columbia.edu , or visit http://scholcomm.columbia.edu/events/.
*
*The *Scholarly Communication Program* is an initiative of the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' Center for Digital Research and Scholarship . Established in April 2008 to encourage discussion about and innovative solutions to scholarly communication issues, the Program aims to support faculty members, librarians, staff, and students as they consider their options for creating, distributing, evaluating, reusing, and preserving new knowledge in a rapidly changing communications environment.

*Columbia University Libraries/Information Services* is one of the top five academic research library systems in North America. The collections include over 10 million volumes, over 100,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 25 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 550 professional and support staff. The website of the Libraries at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb is the gateway to its services and resources.

Monday, March 9, 2009

NEH Grants in Ancient Studies - March 9, 2009

This morning the National Endowment for the Humanities announced twenty million dollars in grants to projects enriching humanities research, education, access, and public programming. Well over two million dollars went to projects realting to the ancient world.

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $254,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Niek Veldhuis Project Title: Royal Lexicography: From Scholarship to Politics Project Description: Digitization of lexical texts (bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian dictionaries, synonym lists, and sign lists) found in the library of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal (668-630 B.C.). The project would make available cataloging information and images of all cuneiform tablets coupled with transliterations and translations of the texts.

University of California, Berkeley Outright: $186,000
Matching: $40,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Deborah Anderson Project Title: Universal Scripts Project Project Description: A research and development project to incorporate seventeen historical and minority language scripts into the Unicode standard for character representation.

University of California, Los Angeles, Outright: $100,800 Fowler Museum of Cultural History [Fellowships at Digital Humanities Centers] Project Director: Diane Favro Project Title: Statues of the Late Antique Roman Forum: Historical Memory and Digital Reconstruction.

Unaffiliated Independent Scholar Outright: $50,000 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants] Project Director: Amy Gansell Project Title: Identifying Regional Design Templates of Ancient Near Eastern Ivory Sculptures of Women Using Computer Technology Project Description: Development of pattern-recognition software that will be tested against ancient Near Eastern ivory sculptures of women.

American Schools of Oriental Research Outright: $300,903 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Eric Meyers Project Title: ASOR- Near East Archaeology Archives Project Description: Arranging and describing the contents of three geographically dispersed archives that focus on archaeological excavations and the history of archaeology in the Middle East from 1871 to the present, as well as creating finding aids and mounting digitized materials on the Internet.

Harvard University Outright: $235,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Peter Bol Project Title: China Biographical Database Project Project Description: Expansion of a Chinese biographical database of prominent political and cultural figures since ancient times. To expedite the incorporation of biographical data, the project would combine human editing with automated programs for extracting information from relevant sources.

Peabody Essex Museum Outright: $380,000 [America's Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation] Project Director: Daniel Finamore Project Title: Fiery Pool: Maya and the Mythic Sea Project Description: Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a catalog, a Web site, and educational and public programs that will offer new perspectives on the centrality of water in ancient Maya art and culture.

Michigan State University Outright: $49,575 [Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants] Project Director: Ethan Watrall Project Title: Red Land/Black Land: Teaching Ancient Egyptian History Through GameBased Learning Project Description: The development of a modification of the game Civilization IV that would allow students to explore ancient Egypt.

Bard College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: James Romm Project Title: Afghanistan after Alexander the Great

Columbia University Outright: $200,000
Matching: $150,000 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Ehsan Yarshater Project Title: Encyclopaedia Iranica [EI] Project Description: Preparation of the "Encyclopædia Iranica," a multi-disciplinary reference work and research tool on Iranian history and civilization from prehistory to the present.

Oberlin College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: Cynthia Chapman Project Title: The House of the Mother: The Identity and Function of the Natal Family in Ancient Israelite Kinship Structures.

Bryn Mawr College Outright: $6,000 [Summer Stipends] Project Director: Yonglin Jiang Project Title: Negotiating Justice: Local Adjudication and Social Change in Late Imperial China.

American Research Institute in Turkey Outright: $244,800
[Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions]
Project Director: G. Kenneth Sams
Project Title: Advanced Fellowships for Research in the Humanities in Turkey
Project Description: The equivalent of one and a half fellowships per year for three years.

University of Pennsylvania Outright: $39,996
[America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning]
Project Director: Loa Traxler
Project Title: The Ancient Maya City
Project Description: Planning for a traveling exhibition, a web exhibition, a publication, and programs on the Maya city of Copán.

Brigham Young University, Provo Outright: $349,155 [Humanities Collections & Resources] Project Director: Roger Macfarlane Project Title: Multispectral Imaging Project Project Description: Multi-spectral imaging of 400 illegible, or legibly problematic papyri from collections at the University of Michigan; University of California, Berkeley; and Columbia University. The resulting images would be disseminated via the Web-based Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS).