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Posted 2007/08/01

Bulletin Article

Emma ad I submitted an article to the Uni Bulletin. This should appear in the August edition, I have appended the text below.

The Archaeology Department and the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading are pleased to be part of the Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology (VERA) project. This exciting collaboration with the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College London, aims to produce a fully-fledged virtual research environment for the archaeological community.

The project is funded by JISC as part of phase 2 of the Virtual Research Environments programme, and runs from April 1st 2007 until March 31st 2009. It aims to provide archaeologists with a means to share their research and results before, during and after excavation. The project will find out how archaeologists currently use computers in everyday work with the ultimate aim being to develop a system that uses cutting edge technology and ideas but can be used by everyone - even archaeologists still dealing with the prehistoric!

The test bed is the Silchester Town Life project, which is now in its eleventh season. The excavation site is a portion of what was once a large, bustling Roman town, but is now a quiet field in Hampshire. The aim of this research and training dig is to trace the site's development from its origins before the Roman Conquest to its abandonment in the fifth century AD. The quality of finds and settlement evidence from the excavation (both small finds and environmental data) provides excellent material to test this kind of research environment, as well as a good quality excavation site to investigate the use of advanced Information Technology in an archaeological context.

The VERA project wants to make the information flow more readily between researchers and excavators and is experimenting with technology including wireless broadband in the trenches, handheld PDA's, i-pens, digital paper and video conferencing. The use of this type of technology is something new and exciting in the field and it is hoped that the project can find practical solutions to enable fast yet accurate data collection and processing. Fieldwork this season has been hampered by the unseasonal weather but will continue behind the scenes until 2009, hopefully with the excavation season 2008 a lot better than this one!

For more information see the project website http://vera.rdg.ac.uk/.