The Portable Antiquities Scheme's Database source code
- Submitting institution
-
University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 9028
- Type
- G - Software
- Name of software house
- Portable Antiquities Scheme
- Month
- June
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
3
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Pett’s work as software architect, developer and researcher on the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and MicroPasts is submitted as a single multi-component output, comprising the following components: code, data repositories and two journal articles, alongside contextual website information. These projects record, democratise and enhance the accessibility of cultural heritage.
PAS (https://finds.org.uk) has recorded 1.52 million archaeological objects found by 40,000 people in England and Wales. This project responded to the loss of archaeological information due to metal detecting and was a reaction to the Treasure Act (1996). A national, centralised database was developed, with digital research questions underpinning analogue methodologies:
- how could over 500 object types be recorded systematically using data standards developed collaboratively with the sector?
- how could GIS and user access systems be developed to provide privacy and security of findspots?
- how could open-source code sustain the project?
- how could numismatic theory be applied by non-specialists to produce a database for researchers to use and build on?
The research software, documentation, code and publications that he produced enabled over 700 projects to reuse these data.
MicroPasts (https://micropasts.org) is a collaborative citizen science and crowdfunding project established to co-create/co-produce research within museums and archaeological organisations globally. This project leveraged nascent web technologies, enhancing the degree to which academics, other organised archaeological communities, and a 'crowd' of contributors collaborated to co-produce archaeological knowledge; develop a long-term crowdsourcing platform for transcribing hitherto fragile and unsearchable archaeological archives; capture research-quality 3D information about large numbers of archaeological objects via participatory methods; explore, through crowdsourcing, the co-design and sustainable micro-funding of projects that arise from existing community collaborations and utilise co-produced data; and scope what kinds of relationships in archaeology are forged or altered when communities of interest, academics and new contributors collaborate.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -