Data processing methods and politics for urban excavations and heritage management

Call for papers

Session A1

Chairs| Wolfgang BÖRNER, Austria / Benjamin DUCKE, Germany / Benno RIDDERHOF, The Netherlands

Most of our towns and cities occupy locations that are as favourable for urban development today as they were hundreds or even thousands of years in the past. As a result, urban excavations frequently uncover some of the densest, most complex archaeological remains.
Exploring, documenting and preserving this uniquely important cultural heritage is perhaps one of our discipline’s greatest challenges. This challenge is being addressed by new innovations as well as a substantial transfer of digital surveying and recording technology into field archaeology.
Urban archaeologists work in an environment of rigid financial regimes and political frameworks, at the same time facing the extreme pressure of modern property development and the high expectations of urbanites who wish to learn about and preserve their own roots. Currently, our profession is standing its ground with a mixture of regulations, sophisticated technology and highly formalised workflows. However, there is a wide-spread feeling that even this is just barely enough to keep up with the ever increasing complexity and magnitude of urban development projects.
This session’s aim is to discuss and discover the challenges and promises of the current (and future) uses of computer technology in urban archaeoloy.

To this end, we invite papers that contribute innovative, insightful and controversial aspects to the topic of processing complex data in urban archaeology, including but not limited to…

– Integrated digital solutions (hardware and software) for data recording in the field,
– efficient methods for structuring, visualising and analysing complex excavation data,
– information systems for data storage, archival and retrival,
– software tools for spatial planning and decision support,
– strategies and methods for data mining and dissemination,
… as well as policies, licenses, guidelines and standards for the digital age.