MVAP 2000 Technology

2000 TECHNOLOGY AT POGGIO COLLA
Report by Director Gregory Warden

An important component of the Poggio Colla Field School is the computer lab that we have set up in the Podere Vigna, our main excavation house. This house is a spacious converted "casa colonica," an old farm house that has six bedrooms and large common areas. One of these common areas serves as our lecture hall and is outfitted with a projector and screen. One end of this room houses the computer facilities, a place where students and staff can send and receive e-mail, and even more important, the place where our Webmaster, Kathy Windrow, updates the web site that you are now browsing.

Left: Director, Gregory Warden. Right: Web designer/administrator, Kathy Windrow

Our main computer is a Dell Dimension 266 that was provided to the excavation by a President’s Partners grant from Southern Methodist University. Also new this year is a Hewlett Packard Pavilion 8240 purchased through our regular excavation budget. Our graphic capabilities this season have been enhanced by a generous Instructional Technology grant from SMU. This grant allowed us to purchase a Canon Optura digital video/still camera, a Polaroid SprintScan 35/Plus slide/film scanner, Macromedia software, and a Peace Rivers VR tripod head. We have also purchased a Kodak DC210 digital camera for still photography. The whole package is rounded out by a brace of portable computers and printers that are used by the director, architect, assistant field director, and cataloguers.

Gregory Warden using the Peace Rivers VR tripod head for virtual reality photography.

Left: Setting a point to put on the plan to locate one of the VR nodes. Right: Shooting.

Why so much equipment for a single excavation? And does this kind of equipment really make a difference in terms of the quality of archaeology that goes on at Poggio Colla? The answer is yes and no. Yes, the equipment makes a real difference in the quality of our work when it allows us to use sophisticated survey equipment and correlated databases, for instance our Foresight system. No, the other equipment does not readily enhance the actual field work which is still carried out with traditional tools, recorded with pen and notebook, documented with black-and-white or color film. The most important material is the eye and the mind, the experience and talent of the archaeologists and students working at the site. But all the extra hardware makes a difference in another way. It allows us to image what we do and to make it available quickly to other professionals and to a steadily growing lay audience. If archaeology is to survive as a discipline into the next millenium, if archaeology is to be more than a discipline practiced and appreciated by an elite few, it must avoid restricting itself to the increasingly arcane venues of academia. One of our goals for next year is to try and provide a distance learning course that combines traditional course work with the experience of actual field archaeology. We are still working out the details, but we would greatly appreciate input from anyone who has tried this kind of thing before. We would also appreciate input from anyone browsing this web site. How are we doing? Are we communicating the experience of archaeology, and if not, what else could we do?

Jane Walters and Jess Galloway downloading survey data.

Kathy Windrow shooting digital video
of excavation in Trench PC 20.

Excavation Houses: Vigna, Selve, and Guardia

Casa di Giotto: cataloguing, conservation, illustration, and photography

Operations: daily life of the Operations Manager and Housing Manager

The Environs: a photo journal of the Mugello Valley and its people.

Director, P. Gregory Warden gwarden@mail.smu.edu
or during the excavation season: mvap@dada.it

While the team is in Italy during the summer field season, send e-mail to: mvap@dada.it
To email an individual on the team, put that person's name in the subject heading.
Excavation house phone: 055-844-9834, or, when calling from the US: 011-39-55-844-9834.