TECHNOLOGY AT POGGIO COLLA Report by Director Gregory Warden An important component of the Poggio Colla Field School is based on technology. Our finds catalog is a computer database, our survey and state plan are electronically created and manipulated. We use digital photography for documentation in the conservation lab and in the field. Kathy Windrow, updates the web site that you are now browsing. Left: Director, Gregory Warden sets up to shoot VR nodes. Right: Web designer, Kathy Windrow Why so much electronic 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. 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. Jane Walters and Jess Galloway downloading survey data.   Kathy Windrow shooting digital video of Trench PC 20   Excavation Houses: Vigna, Selve, and Guardia The Lab: 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.