Background

"Preserving the past for the future generations of Australians"

Background

Cutting-edge archaeological field research requires digitally-based recording methods to facilitate rapid, cost-effective data acquisition. These data must be stored in robust, organised, searchable databases to facilitate analyses, publication and research. Archaeological data are complex and are varied in format (texts, photographs, videos, audio clips, satellite imagery etc) and in content (artefact attributes, spatial coordinates, dates etc). They are stored in different locations on different media, some of which cannot be accessed or integrated easily. It is difficult for researchers to explore, compare and analyse their own data with other data that are available in other groups. This absence of coordinated digital resources and tools for the access, curation and analysis of data is an ongoing impediment to the Australian archaeological and cultural heritage industries. Professionals and researchers are either unaware of the existence of data sets, or aware of them but unable to access them for a particular project. Their ability to work collaboratively is hampered by a lack of tools to access and share data stored in different formats and/or stored across different sites.

To date there is no mechanism to make these data available in a ‘grid environment’ for wider access. It is critical to facilitate and automate many basic data management processes. ‘Data grids’ can provide these functions by providing infrastructure and tools needed to facilitate discovery and analysis, and long-term preservation of data.

Benefits

This increased efficiency has direct economic benefits for the Australian community in terms of cost savings in data access and manipulation, particularly in the assessment of cultural heritage resources for development proposals. For example, this initiative has the potential to expediate development proposals of large-scale activities (e.g. mining) and thus contribute to regional economic development. Social benefits include an enhanced ability to interpret archaeological data, thus contributing to a more complete understanding of the human past. This initiative will also contribute to the operation of organisations such as the EPA and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services, which are involved in the management, and conservation of archaeological sites such as Mill Point.

This initiative builds on existing developments made overseas and through strategic collaborations between UQ and ANU and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego.

References

Foster, I. 2003 The grid: Computing without bounds. Scientific American 288:78-85.

Foster, I. and C. Kesselman 1997 Globus: A metacomputing infrastructure toolkit. International Journal of Supercomputer Applications 11(2):115-128.

Foster, I. and C. Kesselman (eds) 2003 The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Kaufmann, W.J. and L.L. Smarr 1993 Supercomputing and the Transformation of Science. New York: W H Freeman and Company.

Ulm, S. (ed.) 2004 Mill Point Archaeological Project Field Season Report 2004:1-4. Brisbane: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland.

Ulm, S. (ed.) 2005 Mill Point Archaeological Project Field Season Report 2005:1-4. Brisbane: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland.
Ulm, S. and J. Reid 2000 Index of dates from archaeological sites in Queensland. Queensland Archaeological Research 12:1-129.

University of California, San Diego 2006 The Storage Resource Broker. Retrieved 15 June 2006 from http://www.sdsc.edu/srb/index.php/Main_Page.

Westcott, C., I. Lilley and S. Ulm 1999 The archaeology of Cania Gorge: An overview. Queensland Archaeological Research 11:15-28.