Anna Maria MARRAS

(University of Siena, Trento, Italy)

Outline:The mind maps in archaeology to organize the data set and compare the archaeological field processes.

A Mind Map is a diagram (tree diagram, fishbone diagram, etc) to represent words, ideas, tasks ort other items linked to a central key word or idea. The Mind Maps are used to generate, visualize, and classify ideas. The ideas (elements of Map) are arranged according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into branches with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information.. There are a lot of Mind Map software, many are open source and cross platform like FreeMind, WikkaWiki, Vue, Xmind. This kind of software are user friendly, online collaborative, ability to upload/export images, it’s possible to use all kind of software format.
The aim of this poster is how to use the Mind Map theory and the Mind Maps software to:

  • Field Project planning
  • Organize the field archive data
  • Compare the different field projects with the different projects Maps
  • Communicate with the image Map the Field Archaeological survey steps

Often, unfortunately, the archaeological research, especially in Italy, became a private research, the single project, methodology and data are available only for department or researcher they self, Often is show only the final data of the project, but the different processes of field archaeology such as planning, acquisition and elaboration of data are not standard. Since there are so many variables, it is difficult to find two projects that use the same methodology. In order to evaluate different field archaeological projects we have to compare their final data? Is it more important to consider what kind of data was collected or how it was collected?
Planning a field archaeological survey Mind Map is like to build a diagram of romance , the scenes and chapters are organized to follow a chronological development of the story. The scenes of romance are different than other romance, but the organize of chapters are the same. The Mind maps is able to represent the scheme of work and compare different work step-by-step. It is important to have a temporal or associative hierarchy. Is it correct to force the data collector to use a complex data-base or would it be enough just to follow a standard scheme showing the development of the project step-by-step and how the gathering of data was planned, acquired and processed? How useful would be a Mind Map in order to build a standard tree processing scheme, and how helpful would it be to compare the methodological applications?
An Archaeological Mind Maps is able to compare the methodology used in each archaeological survey project, in this way is possible to show the different methodology steps and give a scientific comparison.
It’s possible to create a different default diagram about different project planning and then compare the projects. Also then you are creating a project and your collaborative partners are away it is most simple to show and work to distance with a mind map, the map create is an image of your way to work and is most simple to understand than a write report.
There is an important book for classical archaeologist of Paul Zanker “The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus”, the images and the representations are witnessed and wrote the ancient history. Archaeology use images to describe the past, to show their, communicate their through a Mind Maps is possible to offer a different and new approach, easier and simpler than traditional way.

Keywords: mind maps, archive, compare data and processes