Books by Adam Rabinowitz
by Derek Counts, Erin Walcek W Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, Steven Ellis, Adam Rabinowitz, Matthew Sayre, Christopher F Motz, Brandon R . Olson, Gabriela Ore Menendez, Samuel B Fee, Shawn A Ross, María Libertad Serrano Lara, Andrew Fairbairn, Matthew Spigelman, and J. Andrew Dufton Mobilizing the Past is a collection of 20 articles that explore the use and impact of mobile digi... more Mobilizing the Past is a collection of 20 articles that explore the use and impact of mobile digital technology in archaeological field practice. The detailed case studies present in this volume range from drones in the Andes to iPads at Pompeii, digital workflows in the American Southwest, and examples of how bespoke, DIY, and commercial software provide solutions and craft novel challenges for field archaeologists. The range of projects and contexts ensures that Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future is far more than a state-of-the-field manual or technical handbook. Instead, the contributors embrace the growing spirit of critique present in digital archaeology. This critical edge, backed by real projects, systems, and experiences, gives the book lasting value as both a glimpse into present practices as well as the anxieties and enthusiasm associated with the most recent generation of mobile digital tools. This book emerged from a workshop funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities held in 2015 at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. The workshop brought together over 20 leading practitioners of digital archaeology in the U.S. for a weekend of conversation. The papers in this volume reflect the discussions at this workshop with significant additional content. Starting with an expansive introduction and concluding with a series of reflective papers, this volume illustrates how tablets, connectivity, sophisticated software, and powerful computers have transformed field practices and offer potential for a radically transformed discipline.
Individual chapters are available for free download, here:
http://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/
The Legacy of Byzantine Cherson
Journal Articles by Adam Rabinowitz
Making sense of the ways we make sense of the past: the PeriodO project
It’s about time: historical periodization and Linked Ancient World Data
Excavations at Cosa 1995: Atrium Building V and a New Republican Temple
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Jan 1, 1996
The campaign of 1995 was intended to be the last season in a cycle of excavations started in 1990... more The campaign of 1995 was intended to be the last season in a cycle of excavations started in 1990 and dedicated to the investigation of imperial and medieval Cosa.'Large areas were opened around the Atrium Building V on the forum and on the Eastern Height, in order to ...
Lease of Part of a House and Workshop
BASP, Jan 1, 2001
Publication View. 26531562. Lease of Part of a House and Workshop (1964). Rabinowitz, Adam. Publi... more Publication View. 26531562. Lease of Part of a House and Workshop (1964). Rabinowitz, Adam. Publication details. ...
Book Chapters by Adam Rabinowitz
Rabinowitz, Adam. “Response: Mobilizing (Ourselves) for a Critical Digital Archaeology.” In Mobil... more Rabinowitz, Adam. “Response: Mobilizing (Ourselves) for a Critical Digital Archaeology.” In Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology, edited by Erin Walcek Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, and Derek B. Counts, 493-518. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2016.
Cultural Practices and Material Culture in Archaic and Classical Crete, 2014
Cosa V: An Intermittent Town, Excavations 1991-1997
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volumes, 2003
The link provides access to the website (created with Adam Rabainowitz) that publishes the strati... more The link provides access to the website (created with Adam Rabainowitz) that publishes the stratigraphy: much of the book is available on Google Books.
B. Olson and W. Caraher, eds., Visions of Substance: 3D Imaging in Mediterranean Archaeology (The Digital Press @ The University of North Dakota), 2015
This is the published version of a post for William Caraher's blog, The Archaeology of the Medite... more This is the published version of a post for William Caraher's blog, The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World. It discusses the implications of the easy, rapid creation of three-dimensional digital surrogates of archaeological objects for our engagement with the past. The current situation is compared to another major moment for the creation of archaeological surrogates: the 19th and early 20th centuries, when plaster casts and photography were embraced by practitioners of archaeology and the general public.
The Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation (Proceedings of the International Conference: UNESCO, 2013), 2013
As the documentation of archaeological research is increasingly born digital, the preservation of... more As the documentation of archaeological research is increasingly born digital, the preservation of archaeological knowledge is more and more dependent on the documentation and long-term curation of those digital files themselves. Because archaeological investigation is destructive, excavation records provide the only source of evidence for contextual relationships. Digital archaeological records are threatened not only by technical change and equipment failure, but by insufficient metadata. This paper describes the collaborative efforts of the Institute of Classical Archaeology and the Texas Advanced Computing Center to develop strategies to ensure the preservation and accessibility of the digital archaeological record in the long term. He has more than twenty years of archaeological experience at Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sites in Italy, England, Israel, Tunisia, and Ukraine. His current projects include the publication of recent excavations at the site of Chersonesos (Ukraine), which will involve an online, GIS-enabled database of primary documentation.
, a spatial timeline focusing on the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean, is an attempt to u... more , a spatial timeline focusing on the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean, is an attempt to use accessible, familiar online visualisation tools to help students understand synchronisms and material connections between cultures, while also serving as a study aid in support of the absorption of facts about time, space, and objects in the ancient world. Based on timemap. js, an open-source Javascript library that mashes up Google Maps and SIMILE timeline APIs, GeoDia provides an interactive interface that combines periodised archaeological sites, image resources, historical events, and attributes like culture and region. This paper presents the theoretical considerations involved in the creation of the structure of GeoDia and reviews survey data from several hundred students who have used GeoDia either during beta-testing or in the course of formal class assignments. It also addresses linked data issues and the reusability of the dataset independent of the interface.
Awareness is increasing, if not yet universal, of the need for long-term preservation strategies ... more Awareness is increasing, if not yet universal, of the need for long-term preservation strategies as a major priority in archaeological research. The focus so far has been on final results and tidy datasets. This paper discusses bridging the gap between raw data and final results as part of a sustainable preservation plan. Collaboration between the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the Institute of Classical Archaeology has resulted in strategies and a cyberinfrastructure model for the management and preservation of 1) primary data, 2) the process history generated as those data are used, and 3) final interpretive results. This project draws on the concept of reflexive archaeology to map the lifecycle of research and the evolving archive that it creates to provide a richer view of data and process that allow easier reuse of data and evaluation of interpretation.
A collaboration between the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the Institute of Classical Archae... more A collaboration between the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin has resulted in the development of strategies and a cyberinfrastructure model for the management and preservation of 1) primary archaeological data, 2) the process history generated as those data are analyzed, manipulated, and interpreted, and 3) the final interpretive results. This project draws on the concept of reflexive archaeology to map the lifecycle of archaeological research, and the evolving archive that such research creates, to provide a richer view of both data and process that will make it easier for the data to be reused and to evaluate the interpretations.
Il titolo di questo convegno, in apparenza così chiaro e intuitivo, è in realtà molto ambiguo e p... more Il titolo di questo convegno, in apparenza così chiaro e intuitivo, è in realtà molto ambiguo e pieno di difficoltà interpretative. 1 Come gli antichi si immaginavano il "mondo di Ade", e che ruolo vi giocava il banchetto? Per rispondere a questa domanda, se ne deve porre un'altra, ancora più importante: quali antichi, e in quale periodo cronologico? Queste domande diventano fondamentali quando si sposta il discorso dal campo del banchetto in genere al campo del simposio greco in particolare. Ma è il simposio greco, più che qualsiasi altro modello, che va applicato in modo sincronico e generico come quadro interpretativo ai corredi funerari del mondo mediterraneo arcaico e classico, e soprattutto ai corredi dei popoli anellenici. La nostra immagine della pratica stessa del simposio si è plasmata sugli affreschi vividi e vivaci delle tombe etrusche di Tarquinia, e la maggioranza dei vasi attici simpotici che ci sono giunti proviene da tombe delle popolazioni indigene dell'Italia. Bisogna solo guardare queste scene e questi vasi per il vino, e si rimane colpiti dalla forte impressione che l'oltretomba, per i popoli italici, non era solo un banchetto, ma una bevuta eterna Graeco more. Una considerazione più precisa di quando e come gli oggetti simpotici sono impiegati nelle tombe arcaiche e classiche della Sicilia e la Magna Grecia, però, ci dà una visione molto più sfumata, non dell'oltretomba, ma della società, delle pratiche rituali, e forse dell'organizzazione politica di comunità particolari. Un'ottica più microche macroscopica, e più quantitativa che qualitativa, rivela trasformazioni significative nell'"eterno simposio" tra culture, tra comunità, e attraverso il tempo.
This paper explores the tension between authority, interpretation, and data dissemination in curr... more This paper explores the tension between authority, interpretation, and data dissemination in current archaeological publication. Digital technologies have irrevocably changed the way we conduct archaeological research. The tools we use in the field generate an exponentially larger quantity of primary data, much of it only in digital form. At the same time, web-based interfaces make it possible to present these data easily and contextually to a vast audience. These developments are reflected in discipline-wide discussions about field methods and in the proliferation of archaeological data and gray literature on the web. Yet synthetic and specialist interpretation by recognized authorities remains the standard for print publication, and the separation of these publications from online datasets is increasingly dividing data from narrative. We examine the problem in relation to our decisions about the publication of excavations at Chersonesos (Crimea, Ukraine), and argue for the embedding of explanatory narrative in online datasets.
This paper documents a joint project of the Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICA) of the Unive... more This paper documents a joint project of the Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICA) of the University of Texas at Austin, Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI), and the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos in Crimea, Ukraine. The project centered on a workshop in which staff of the National Preserve learned to use Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to document unique objects from the Chersonesos museum. RTI creates interactive relightable images with 3D content. The Chersonesos project serves as a case-study of the potential of this technique for a sustainable, locally-directed program of heritage imaging and documentation at a site without independent access to complex and expensive digital resources. In the West, developments in archaeological documentation are now frequently driven by technological advances: digitally-minded archaeologists are quick to adopt new and ever more powerful tools, even in the absence of specific questions these tools might help to answer, plans for sustainable digital preservation, or strategies for the dissemination of the results to the public. Approaches to the digital documentation of cultural resources thus often rely on equipment and software available only to a minority of well-funded projects, and disproportionately concentrated in Europe and the United States. When these technologies are applied to sites with limited resources outside Europe and the US, they are usually deployed by teams of Western specialists using software and equipment that are neither affordable nor locally available. Local collaborators can rarely continue such documentation programs without ongoing support, and in some cases, they cannot even use the digital information that has already been generated. Even more often, this digital heritage information is unavailable to the citizens of the country in which the site is located. At Chersonesos, the joint project of ICA, CHI, and the National Preserve centered on the use of relatively inexpensive, easily available equipment and software to create images that capture information interesting for both specialists and the general public, and that can be viewed with conventional web software. The goal of the project was to equip local participants to carry out independently further Reflectance Transformation Imaging of the rich but little-known collection of inscriptions, coins and gems at Chersonesos so that these interactive images could be shared with the Ukrainian and international public. We discuss the results of the workshop, the reactions of the participants and the National Preserve community, and perspectives on the future role of this imaging technique in the on-line dissemination of heritage information at the site. The applications of Reflectance Transformation Imaging for the monitoring of the condition of unstable objects and for the exchange of information between conservation professionals are also considered.
Uploads
Books by Adam Rabinowitz
Individual chapters are available for free download, here:
http://dc.uwm.edu/arthist_mobilizingthepast/
Journal Articles by Adam Rabinowitz
Book Chapters by Adam Rabinowitz