W3G conference: Geodata at the British Museum

Geodata use at the British Museum
Enhancing archaeological records
Daniel Pettdpett@britishmuseum.org

Portable Antiquities Scheme
17,900 contributors of data
640,000 objects recorded
400,000 geo-referenced find spots
All available under CC NC-BY-SA
Driving archaeological knowledge of rural areas
Funded by DCMS
Employ 56 people
Deal with public discovery of archaeology
Started in 1997
Costs £1.4mill per annum
IT budget c.£5000

Recording: one chance
Our staff generally have one chance to record
Dissemination online is swift, cheap, easy
There is no other archaeological database of this size
It is underused for research at present
The data it contains can tell a thousand stories of our shared heritage

Objects by year
449,359 objects online @ 23:20 26/2/10 – 400K in 7 years!

Most data is sourced from metal-detecting

GPS co-ordinates if possible

All objects recorded online

The Staffordshire Hoard

Frome (Somerset) Hoard

Crosby Garrett (Lancashire) Helmet

A more normal discovery

Objects referencing place:The Staffordshire Moorlands trulla
This is a list of four forts located at the western end of Hadrian's Wall; Bowness (MAIS), Drumburgh (COGGABATA), Stanwix (UXELODUNUM) and Castlesteads (CAMMOGLANNA). it incorporates the name of an individual, AELIUS DRACO and a further place-name, RIGOREVALI.
http://www.finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/49791

Have you noticed a pattern?
Big discoveries named after place…
Place => sense of identity

Why is the spatial data so important?
Without provenance:
A museum cannot acquire an object
Is it looted?
Did the landowner give permission?
Context has been lost, we don’t know the significance of the location of discovery.

"X" never, ever marks the spot.
Indiana Jones: Last Crusade

All objects we have recorded
1997 – 2010
Topographical features drive discovery
Landowners and regulations can prevent discovery
Biases present in data collection eg. Staff illness, lack of car etc etc

Here be mountains
Staff based here

Using YQL
Reverse geocode for WOEID for each findspot against flickr.places
Get flickrshapefile if exists for WOEID
Obtain a co-ordinate for findspots where only place is known (lower weight for academic use though).
Obtain elevation via the geonamesapi (for viewshed analysis – surprisingly good!)
Find objects within bounding boxes
Query for archaeology images on flickr

Problems
Hit rate limit quickly – now using Oauth calls to Yahoo apis
Had to filter out places eg Copper Alloy, Tamil Nadu was constantly pulled out with Placemaker
Took time to process 400,000 records for geodata

Display problems
Public users can only see find spots at a resolution of 1km sq or 4 figure NGR
Some find spots have to be hidden from public view completely – we give a place a pseudonym
Maps make our finders and landowners jumpy
Zoom level had to be reduced for public users
WOEID can give away find location

Enhanced geo data via flickrshapefiles & Yahoo! geoplanet

This object only has a known place of discovery
So Yahoo! does legwork and produces geodata

Integration of old OS Maps
Layer provided by National Library of Scotland

Water Newton (Cambs) rally
Roman town of Durobrivae

Re-use of OS and EH point data
Both of these datasets came as CSV, now converted from grid refs to Lat/Lng and WOEID (and also elevation for centre point) if anyone wants them.

Data export
All searches can be turned into KML/JSON/CSV/XML (however point data degraded to 1km square unless higher level user)
Can be easily imported into Google maps for instance
One example is a search for objects by Parliamentary constituency (powered by YQL on theyworkforyou and Haversine formula)

Simple YQL query:
select * from twfy.getGeometry where name=‘Stratford-on-Avon’;
Powered by theyworkforyouapi

<results>
<twfy>
<max_e>436973.6</max_e>
<centre_lat>52.168328098</centre_lat>
<area>670735121.325</area>
<max_n>274456.4</max_n>
<min_lat>51.9553938864</min_lat>
<max_lat>52.3680842693</max_lat>
<min_n>228616</min_n>
<max_lon>-1.46139563588</max_lon>
<centre_lon>-1.71287824875</centre_lon>
<centre_n>252253.483284</centre_n>
<parts>1</parts>
<min_e>402695.3</min_e>
<centre_e>419756.726723</centre_e>
<min_lon>-1.96200666642</min_lon>
<name>Stratford-on-Avon</name>
</twfy>
</results>

Objects in David Cameron’s constituency

What archaeologists would like: A database of places – ancient & modern?
Ancient place names
Dates in use
Co-ordinates at that time
Affiliation (political)
Example database – Pleiades, NYU http://pleiades.stoa.org/
Modern place names

The end.
Visit our website : www.finds.org.uk
Contact me: dpett@britishmuseum.orgTwitter: @portableant

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W3G conference: Geodata at the British Museum

by dejp3 on Sep 30, 2010

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W3G conference: Geodata at the British Museum — Presentation Transcript