Ancient History Ramblings

Emerging Cypriot Now Complete

The final episode of Emerging Cypriot, PKAP's 2nd documentary, is now available for viewing on-line. This episode, "A Note about Survey," is the most unusual of all our archaeological shorts - it is the most light-hearted short, and serves to remind us that while we are doing research, we are also having fun. Some of this fun, was provided in musical format by a University of New Hampshire graduate student Brice Pierce. (For more about Brice and his band Drake's Folly, check out their Myspace page). Brice was an IUP undergraduate, and a student in one of my very first classes at IUP.

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this project, some more willingly than others. This project was made possible through the generous financial support of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Dakota's Office of University Relations. Special thanks needs to go to Joe Patrow of PatrowVisual, the creative mind that designed and shot this project, and Dr. Bill Caraher, the driving force behind this archaeological documentary.

RSM

GIS/GPS

Today was a day devoted to GIS/GPS. I started my day with a phone conversation with Bill about our GIS plans for the summer. We made some decisions about computer and software needs. Our biggest decision (in my mind) was that we will go with Terrasync instead of ArcPAd for our Geo XH handheld. This afternoon I went with a colleague in Anthropology down to Blairsville and used the R8 to take GPS readings on her summer field school site. While she practiced with the R8 I tried to take points with the Geo XH in Terrasync. I quickly learned one valuable lesson, it is not like ArcPad and I will have to take some time and read the manual for it. I hate doing that, I always feel that I should be able to pick up a program without much work, but I can't afford to make mistakes with our data, so off to the manual I go.

RSM

IUP winding down, PKAP starting up

Sorry for the break in posting, but the end of the semester is always a very busy time. The end of the spring semester also signals for me a change from IUP focus to PKAP focus. My committees are finished meeting for the year and, other than massive amounts of grading, there are only a few administrative things to take care of. PKAP, on the other hand, takes up more of my time each day. Take today for example.

• I started off my morning with a series of emails sent back and forth with Bill on various PKAP issues.
• Then I went to IUP and talked to a colleague in the geography department about some settings in Survey Controller and ArcPad versus Trimble Terrasync for the upcoming field season.
• Next I went and visited my college tech support staff to have them reinstall ArcGIS for this summer - my current version was crashing as I exited it, and I was worried that this was a sign of things to come.
• Then I got an email from Bill about the PKAP 2008 reader and agreed to be in charge of distributing it to the staff and volunteers and spent some time setting that up.
• After finishing this, I went talked to a former PKAP volunteer who wants to go with us again next year, but wants me to collect certain data for her this summer for a geography project she is currently working on for her masters.
• When I got back to my office David called me with a quick question.
• After I got off the phone with David I spent some time looking for an inexpensive photoboard with no luck.
• When I got home I found that both UPS and FedEx had dropped off packages with PKAP equipment I ordered last week - gotta luv the internet.
• Later in the afternoon I set up a phone conversation with Bill for tomorrow morning my time - early afternoon Greek time to talk GIS issues.
• Tonite I took a call from Brandon and we talked about lots of PKAP issues.
• Finally, I spent more time looking for a photoboard - still no luck.

So, as you can see lots of small PKAP issues are cropping up, and it is my signal that I leave for Cyprus in only 2 weeks - the summer field season is almost here.

RSM

Orders, Orders, Orders

I have been putting off ordering the majority of the PKAP supplies until we finalized our list and some of my funds came through. Well, this happened yesterday so for the last 24 hours I have been ordering, ordering, ordering. It is at a time like this that my appreciation for the Internet grows. I have been able to find practically everything we need on-line, and usually I can even comparison shop - except for some of the more specialized items. A procrastinator like myself would have been in trouble without the ability to complete my shopping on-line in the late hours of the night. The only drawback to this is that to order these items on-line I have to create an account with a password and email address. My amount of incoming spam will grow exponentially over the next few weeks due to this spending binge, this happens every summer after I order supplies. The problem is that I don't use my primary email for these accounts and often forget to check on the other email account for weeks, resulting in exploding email inboxes. I am down to my last items which are requiring some searching to find, so that will be my primary task tomorrow between student conferences.

RSM

Episode 12

Episode 12 of Emerging Cypriot, "Sightseeing," is now available for viewing on-line. This archaeological short deals with one aspect of our attempt at being a field school, taking students to visit other archaeological sites on the island. On one hand, my desire to do this stems from having

participated on an archaeological project in the Mediterranean where we never were given the opportunity to see other sites and I think it is wrong to miss out on the opportunity to broaden your experiences. On the other hand, all three of us (Bill, David, and myself) participated for a number of years in the Ohio State University Excavations at Isthmia where Tim Gregory's summer programs included a very good site visitation component. I also think that visiting other sites is important for 2 other reasons: 1) Visiting comparable archaeological sites it can help the students gain insights into our survey area; and 2) it will help the students better appreciate Cypriot culture and better relate to Cypriots. Reason 2 is why we do not only visit Late Roman sites, but try to visit a variety of sites from different periods.

RSM

Harry Potter Internet Trial

For a change of pace (and because today was very busy), I thought I would suggest that if you get a chance, you should read the CNN article  by Sunny Hostin entitled "Harry Potter case brings the law into the Internet Age." I have to admit that I have never read a Harry Potter novel, which makes me a member of a very small group of people. Anyway, this case revolves around the creation of a Harry Potter website which was then published as a lexicon. Harry Potter's creator, J.K. Rowling, is suing to stop the publication. Lawyers are split over the legal issues of the case and many analysts feel that this will be an important case for setting precedent. As the article states:

• "Most likely, the law simply hasn't caught up with the Internet. The Copyright Act of 1976, enacted way before the advent of the Internet and the fan-based Web sites, bestows copyright owners with control of their creative work. A copyright is supposed to protect its owner, and thus, only the author can authorize others to reproduce the work. But that right is not unfettered, as many think. One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of "'fair use'."

RSM

A Good Day

Today was a pretty good day for a Monday. All of my classes are working on presentations or projects so I have a little more free time. My first project after class today was to practice some more with the Trimble R8. I keep practicing with it to make sure I remember how to use it - I would hate to get to Cyprus with it and not remember how to operate it. If that happened, the other guys on the project would never let me forget it. Trust me on that, they still bring up things that happened 6 years ago.

The other reason for practicing with the R8 is that I am going down to Blairsville this Saturday with 2 IUP anthropologists to visit their summer field school site. This is a good opportunity to test out the R8 in the field, as well as teach the anthropologists how to use it. I also had success tonite in getting the data from today's R8 practice off the Survey Controller and into Trimble Geomatics Office where I was able to export it as a shapefile that opened in ArcGIS. This is a huge weight off my mind. I have been having some difficulty in getting the data to transfer properly as anything other than a CSV file. Now on to the Tshirt design.

RSM

More Prep Work

A very busy today between lots of committee work and an 8 year old's birthday. This weekend I have decided to try to finish up a few PKAP related digital items:

• I need to learn how to download the data from the R8 Survey Controller into Geomatics Office. I can export it as a flat CSV file, but need to see if there are better ways to export the data.
• I need to practice some more with the 3D scanner
• Now that we have finalized the sites we plan to take our students to visit this summer, I was planning on scanning in some site plans that Bill could incorporate into his handouts.
• A T-shirt design? Maybe.....or maybe not.

RSM

Odds and Ends, Part II

A couple of quick hits:

• A student arrested in Egypt sent out a twitter message to his friends who were able to get him out of jail after contacting the US Embassy. (the article is on Wired). I was pleased that some of my students from my digital history class emailed me about this story.
• Our new Macintosh for the history department's computer lab arrived this week and is being set up. I haven't used a Mac since the mid 80s when my computer classes used them for programming classes in PASCAL - and yes I realize that shows how old I am and how bright I am for switching from Computer Science in the 80s to classics.
• I realize the PKAP season must be close since I noticed my PKAP email volume is increasing, as well as the fact that I have called David on the phone every day for the last week - I'd call Bill but he's in Greece and I'm cheap.
• The other thing that makes me realize that the PKAP season is approaching is the fact that colleagues at IUP (not in my department) are asking me if I am headed back to my archaeology project this summer. The humorous thing is that some think it is in Crete, others in Greece, and even one thinks it is in Syria. I know one faculty member who for the last 3 years has asked me about my work in Crete. I used to correct him, but I eventually gave up and now pretend to work in Crete when I meet him, and boy have I made some fabulous discoveries there.

RSM

Episode 11

Episode 11, "A Dip in the Sea," of Emerging Cypriot is now available for viewing on-line. When Joe Patrow created these episodes, he sat down with David, Bill, and myself and asked what we were looking for. My only input was the idea of following an artifact from the field through the various stages of analysis it undergoes ("An Artifact's Journey"). We left most of the control up to Joe and he did a very good job of creating these shorts. While my interest was in the teaching aspect to these episodes, Joe wanted to capture the total experience - which he did, and this is one of those shorts. Due to the calendar, for the first few years of our project we missed out on experiencing Kataklysmos (the Cypriot Festival of the Flood). For the last 2 years we have been able to experience this festival in all of its glory. For most Cypriot cities, this is a 3 or 4 day event, in Larnaka where we stay it is a week long affair. For me, the highlight of the event are the loukamades, which I could eat by the bagful....and have.

RSM