McG. Gibson / C. Reichel
(Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, USA)
At the Oriental Institute, serious use of computers for archaeological purposes began in the early 1980s. The advent of compact computers (Otrona, etc.) made it possible to utilize computers in field situations (Iraq and elsewhere) for both mapping and data base management. Landsat and Spot images were soon incorporated for regional analysis in most countries of the Near East. In the 1990s, the ubiquity of powerful laptops, coinciding with the avialability of GPS devices and the release of Corona imagery made possible tremendous strides in regional studies both in the laboratory and in the field. An important project, related to remote sensing, is the Oriental Institute/Argonne joint project to model ancient Mesopotamian society and environment. During the past ten years, advances in computing have greatly enhanced our capacity to enter, store, and manipulate data, making it possible to carry out innovative programs of publication on paper and on line. this capacity made it possible for the Oriental Institute to respond quickly to the crisis in Iraq in a number of ways. In this presentation, I will be outlining all of these developments, putting into context the reports to be delivered here by other Oriental Institute personnel.
keywords: remote sensing, field recording, database management, on-line publication, modeling