Recording a fragile past The Portable Antiquities Scheme

Daniel Pett

Who am I and what do I?

• I work for the Portable Antiquities Scheme

• Responsible for Scheme’s ICT• Run the largest

archaeological database of artefacts ever created online (that we know of!)

• Have access to over 338,000 objects and176,000 images

• I provide advice to the British Museum on web technologies and GIS

• Try to provide innovative applications for our audiences

What do we do?

• Founded in 1996, in 6 pilot areas• Went National in 2003 with 36 recording

officers known as Finds Liaison Officers• Record objects found by members of the public• Run outreach events to promote best practice• Work with National bodies to promote

archaeology• Employ 50 people in archaeology with a huge

range of talents

Why is the Scheme important?

• Provides unique research material for England and Wales (in one place!)

• Has a proven track record for attracting AHRC funding for second and third degrees

• Records data that would otherwise be lost to archaeologists

• It is the only project of its type in the world

Is it any good?

Awards

• In 2000, the Scheme won the Silver Trowel at the British Archaeology Awards

• In 2008, the Head of the Scheme was awarded an OBE for services to Heritage

What people say!

David Lammy MP, Former Minister for Culture, said‘Metal detectorists […] Thanks to the responsible approach they display in reporting finds and the systems we have set up to record them, more archaeological material is available for all to seeat museums or to study online.’

Neil MacGregor Director, the British Museum said‘This huge increase in finds is testimony to the success of the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme and makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of our past.

Mark Fisher, MP (Lab.)‘Over the past 10 years, the field of antiquities in England and Wales has been transformed-there is no other word for it-by the Treasure Act 1996 and by the portable antiquities scheme.

Mike Heyworth, MBE, Director of the CBA‘Too good to become history…’ British Archaeology 100

Research in progress

• 12 PhDs - 5 funded as CDAs

• 3 AHRC projects - 1 at UCL

• 28 Masters

• 13 Undergraduates

• 12 internal projects

• You could join these researchers - ask me afterwards

Objects by period

Objects by year

Note 2007 - After 3 months, nearly 30K objects - extrapolated that makes 120K for this year (very unlikely!)

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are needed to see this picture.

Treasure cases by year

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are needed to see this picture.

Foot & Mouth outbreak

What do we record?

A typical record

High quality description

Multiple images

Reference material

Spatial data if you have the correct acess rights

Metrics and discovery

Mapping public discovery

How many people do we reach via the internet?

Year Unique Visitors Number of visits Pages viewed Pages per visit

2004 84,174 289,595 4,847,892 162005 152,711 555,289 9,639,621 182006 247,103 720,369 15,469,127 21

Steady increase all round - estimated 8-10,000 detectorists so we reach

thousands of people per annum who do not indulge in collecting or discovering artefacts

The Scheme as a content provider

Reuse of our data

Data feeds

• Since 2003 RSS feeds have been offered for nearly everything we produce

• JSON feeds and XML now available

• Database being rebuilt in 2008

• By December an api will be available

• All data and the database itself will become more accessible

Licenced data:Content provided under

Where else is our content used?

Online:BRICKS - finds identifierPeople’s Network Discovery ServiceOffline:Academic journals, papers, original research, desk basedassessments, etc

Where else could our content be used?

The new British Museum website - for example, departmental pages could have recent finds that relate to their period (RSS or OAI-PMH to search our dbase)

The 24 Hour Museum - for example local museum pages could have feeds of local finds (RSS)

Local society websites

Historic Environment Record - XML or OAI-PMH

Web mashups - plot PAS finds, against Oxford Archaeology WMS, vs Megalithic Portal vs Museum locations (not done yet before you ask!)

http://twitter.com/bm_pantsLatest Scheme updates sent to Twitter;

e.g. Finds of noteLatest blog posts (www.finds.org.uk/wordpress)Updates from theyworkforyou.com relating to us

The Scheme has a group and a page. It accounts for >2% of our incoming referrers.When our funding troubles began, the public created a “Save the Portable Antiquity Scheme” group (700+ members) and 2 petitions on the Parliamentary site (>2000 signatures)

Image dissemination

Photos from annual reports, press launches etc are released under CC at:

http://flickr.com/photos/findsFeel free to tag or annotate them.

Example usage of flickr feed

Leveraging our data

• Each staff member has their own profile page

• Their latest records and stats are presented on their pages

Roman coin guide

High res image

Reece period of coin

Number of coins of this issuer (dynamic update)

Coin knowledge

Database tells us what denoms possible

Active mints under this issuer

Last 1o examples of their coins recorded

Zoom & pan

Mapping our data on the web

Google mapping

Same data – google maps

Data viewed in Google Earth

External archaeological use

This is where it gets interesting…..

The end.Visit our website

@ www.finds.org.ukContact me:

dpett@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk