Whew, it’s been a busy and eventful week or so. More detailed posts to follow, but here’s a brief roundup of all that’s new in the world of Archaeogeek. Finally got Mapguide Open Source compiled and working on Ubuntu My presentation on Portable GIS has been accepted for FOSS4G 2007 My southern counterpart is off to do his PhD On that last point, we will be advertising soon to fill Leif’s post (more about it on his blog) and are always on the lookout for archaeological computing types at both offices, so if you’re interested then get in touch and let’s talk!

In Lancaster last week, we hosted a seminar reporting on the results of a project for English Heritage that we’ve been working on since 2003 on managing archaeology in the upland peat areas. The reason for the project was that in the UK and particularly in the North West we have rich archaeological landscapes in and around areas of upland peats. In the Lake District for example, there are prehistoric settlements spreading over wide areas, most of which are covered and protected by a thick band of peat.

I have just stumbled upon the ESRI Mapping Center and, while I had been following their rss feed for a while, I didn’t know about the wealth of useful information that they have been putting together for creating attractive maps. A lot of the tips can be applied to other software packages too- not just ESRI. I particularly like the article on historical maps, or how to create an authentic looking treasure map.

Five years after warnings that the war in Iraq would damage some of the world’s most important archaeological finds, the Guardian reports that the Americans have come up with a sure-fire way of protecting the monuments. The most powerful military in the world has issued another set of playing cards, with such exhortations as “Drive around, not over, archaeological sites” (Five of Clubs) Good work guys. That will do the trick.

A simple test: Find a copy of Microsoft Excel Format the fist column as a date Type 18/12/1901 in the first cell. Excel will recognise that as 18 Dec 1901 Type 18/12/1564 in the next cell down. Excel will think this is a string and leave it as it is Go figure… Luckily, Open Office realises that history goes back further than 1900.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK has recently decided to withdraw funding from the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). The AHDS has been fundamental in developing best practices for the storage and preservation of digital data for use by researchers in the humanities over the last eleven years. Not only that, but the AHRC appears to have taken no steps at all to ensure the long term preservation of the AHDS data.

Leif has a thought-provoking post up that raises the idea of an ecosystem approach to data-dissemination. In other words, that we should be building a communities of standards-compliant data-providers who can all share each other’s data. Both the new Heritage Gateway, and Swish (representing Scotland and Wales) are planning to allow dissemination of data via web-services at some point, depending on the setup of the individual councils that are providing the data.