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Congress of Cultural Atlases: The Human Record
May 7-10, 2004
University of California, Berkeley

Registration Form | Congress Home
Registration closed May 6, 2004

Congress Schedule*

* Locations and times are subject to change. Please check Congress schedule periodically for updates.

ECAI Committee Meetings

Friday, May 7
314 Hearst Memorial Mining Building (map) - updated April 26, 2004

10am - 12pm	Scholarship and Content
2pm - 4pm	ECAITech
4pm - 5pm	Open Source Consortium - by invitation

Saturday, May 8
103 Stephens Hall (map)

5pm - 7pm

Interactive Historical Atlas for Schools Consortium - by invitation (If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact Ian Johnson - johnson@acl.arts.usyd.edu.au.)

Sunday, May 9

12 - 1:30pm	ECAI Iraq Advisory meeting - by invitation Location - 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
5:15pm - 6:30pm	Executive Committee & Institutional Board - by invitation Location - 103 Stephens Hall (map)

 

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Session Descriptions

Digital Gazetteers for Cultural Atlases:
See program and abstracts

Digital gazetteers are the tools that allow place names to be linked with locations on the earth. They can be used to relate different names of the same place to one another, to distinguish places with the same name, to locate places, and to catalogue information about them. They are the basis for dynamic map display, and for geographic information systems that allow spatial analysis to be performed. Through the use of digital gazetteers, access to geographical information and map-based display are becoming more common features of digital libraries and archives, and digital scholarship in history and the humanities as well.

However, there are still many barriers to wider adoption of gazetteers. For example, humanists and heritage managers will use and develop digital gazetteers only when they can readily record historical information about places and their changes over time, information about places derived from texts of many kinds and varying accuracy, and information about the same place in multiple languages. Gazetteer content standards do not yet adequately accommodate such information or the forms of citation associated with them.

This workshop is an introduction to efforts in gazetteer development for cultural atlases. It will focus on the emerging Religious Atlas of China and the Himalayas. Researchers are creating gazetteers of places pertaining to Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, as well as Daoism, Christianity, and the other religious expressions in China. The workshop will discuss issues including standards development, languages and encoding, uncertainty, and citations.

This workshop is funded in part by the Henry Luce Foundation.

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Beyond GIS: Mindscapes, VR and Cultural Landscapes
See program and abstracts

The landscape is a dynamic context of different transformations intelligible through the time: cultural, historic, political, social, geomorphologic, geographic, anthropological.

The study and analysis of the archaeological and cultural landscape involve a multidisciplinary approach in order to reconstruct cultures, paleo-environments, mental maps (mindscapes), geomorphology, and settlements in diachronic way. Therefore the diachronic and dynamic reconstruction of the landscape needs to implement different methods and advanced digital technologies: GIS (Geographical Information Systrem), remote sensing, virtual reality, predictive modelling, and multimedia applications.

The main goal of the workshop is to start a multidisciplinary discussion of the digital methods of analysis and 3D representation for the reconstruction of the cultural and archaeological landscapes, from both epistemological and technological perspectives. The complexity of these kinds of contexts tests the most advanced digital technologies in the effort to understand cultural identities, issues and differences through time. The integrated use of GIS, remote sensing, virtual reality and multimedia applications is a fundamental approach for understanding the past and the present and, in the case of this workshop, for interpreting cognitive models of the landscape.

The interpretation or reconstruction of previous cognition is not a simple process. Knowledge is cognitively processed information, and is both represented and the basis of action. Cognitive archaeology, the study of past ways of thought as inferred from material remains, still presents so many challenges to the practitioner that it seems if not a novel, at any rate, an uncertain endeavour.

One goal is to show that people had preferences independent of economic necessity. A second goal is to demonstrate how ideals may be altered or transformed by reality into an amalgam. Settlements and housing location are the results of a series of personal and cultural decisions. The ideal pattern of settlement, in the mind of the ancient people, may be tempered, adjusted and transformed by topographic reality. These ideal forms are grounded in such economic realities as trade and transport, or established upon such cultural realities as heritage, aesthetic norms, or social and religious rules. As archaeologists, one of our ultimate goals is to extract the cultural ideals from the complicated reality in the complex patterns of prehistoric material remains. The interpretation and the knowledge of archaeological landscape is the result of numerous compromises between ideal and real.

Fundamental to archaeology is the interpretation of human behaviour over space and time. Increasingly, spatial aspects of past human activity have been discussed through the theories and methodologies that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have brought to the subject. GIS is typically used to provide a series of hypothetical scenarios of, and alternative perspectives on, the spatial inter-relationships that exist between people and their environments.

Archaeological research has therefore emphasised the need for an integration of anthropological, cultural and social values within ecological variables. Especially the agency debate has re-emphasised the importance of human volition within the creation of an archaeological landscape. Human action is influenced by how groups perceive their worlds and, indirectly and only in part, structured by the accommodation of affordances created by the dynamic interplay between humans and their animate and inanimate surroundings. But human landscapes are really generated through unique human action and interpretation, using both environmental characteristics and socio-cultural understandings. Human social and material interaction is fuelled by habitus and agency. Human agency, representing unique viewpoints based on material culture and landscape (structure) and unique history (narrative), is crucial for human choice and action. It is therefore argued that it is the effects of human agency that structure landscapes and reveal how dynamic surroundings are interrogated and interpreted.

Topics

• Remote Sensed Archaeological data and 3D visualization;
• 3D GIS in archaeology: tools and software;
• Cybernetics and cultural landscapes;
• Virtual museums and territory;
• Digital Ecosystems;
• Artscapes, taskscapes, mindscapes;
• Virtual Reality Systems and Visual Geographic Information;
• 3D databases in Archaeology;
• VR devices for the advanced visualization of spatial data;
• Virtual Reconstructions of Archaeological Landscapes;
• Multilayered analyses of Spatial Data;
• DGPS and archaeological surveys for monitoring and reconstructing;
• 3D archaeological landscapes;
• 3D GIS and Geophysics;
• 3D Web Interfaces for Visualizing GIS archaeological data;
• 3D Virtual Libraries of Georepherenced Cultural Data;
• Archaeological Spatial Analyses and 3D Visualization;
• OpenGl Technologies in Archaeological VR GIS;
• Epistemology of VR GIS in Archaeology;
• VR GIS, Communication and Cultural Tourism.
  

This workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

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Cultural Atlas Development Workshop

The fee for this workshop is USD$100. Payment of the fee can be made by check or cash at the reception, plenary or workshop. We apologize, but credit card payment will not be accepted.

As of April 1, 2004 all seats for the workshop are full. If you would like to be placed on a wait list, please indicate your interest in the workshop on the registration form. We will contact you if a seat becomes available.

See the workshop schedule.

This workshop is co-sponsored by the GIS Center, UC, Berkeley.

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Poster/Demo Session: updated May 1, 2004

Developers of Cultural Atlases or Cultural Atlas components such as information systems, software, or virtual reality reconstructions are invited to participate in a poster/demo session. The session is intended to allow informal conversation among the delegates at the Congress, to showcase a wide range of Cultural Atlases, and to provide the greatest opportunity for user feedback to Cultural Atlas developers.

Presenters may bring wall displays, handouts, and/or computer demonstrations. Presenters must provide their own computers and projectors, if needed. Information about network connections will be available later. Posters and demonstrations will be up during the lunch break at the Plenary Session on Saturday, May 8, and throughout the workshop day on Sunday, May 9. People who are interested in making a presentation at the poster/demo session must register on-line. http://ecai.org/activities/congress2004/registration_home.

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All events have been generously supported by CITRIS.