Books by Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert
A brief monograph on the West Bank Archaeological Database project, published in 2007. Co-authore... more A brief monograph on the West Bank Archaeological Database project, published in 2007. Co-authored with Adi Keinan
Effective protection and management of cultural heritage resources in a specific region requires ... more Effective protection and management of cultural heritage resources in a specific region requires planning strategies and policies, which rely on the sum of existing information about archaeology and cultural heritage. The role of archaeological inventories in the process of heritage management is, therefore, central and critical, as they are supposed to convey our present state of knowledge and be the basis on which management priorities are decided. This dissertation examines existing Israeli and Palestinian archaeological and architectural inventories covering the occupied West Bank, as well as assessing the role of Geographic Information Systems for heritage management in this region. Its main objectives are twofold: first, it explores the nature of archaeological records and the way they reflect particular research interests and heritage management priorities; and second, it examines variability in data quality, coverage, accuracy and reliability. By examining recording emphasis in West Bank inventories, this research interrogates the ways in which social, political, ideological or cultural values may affect different aspects of data collection and management. The assessment of different inventories through comparison, analysis and fieldwork, sheds light on current Israeli and Palestinian approaches to documentation and data management, as well as broader issues associated with the collection and use of information about the past in contexts of cultural conflict. Framed within the political context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this research has theoretical considerations and practical implications. On the theoretical side, it raises awareness of personal, academic and national interests, the ways they are manifested in archaeological inventories, and the means by which they dictate the process of cultural knowledge production. On the practical side, it provides a set of recommendations for ways to improve current data management and dissemination strategies, and thereby encourage more efficient decision-making processes and better protection and preservation of heritage sites in the West Bank.
This publication provides the first unified source of information on surveys and excavations cond... more This publication provides the first unified source of information on surveys and excavations conducted under Israeli license in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from 1967 to 2007. It encompasses nearly 6000 archaeological features, 1600 excavations, and 1000 referenced publications. Derived from published and unpublished sources, the database provides as full an account as possible, within the authors’ limitations, of the extent of archaeological knowledge accumulated by Israeli research since 1967 in the occupied territories. Prepared under the auspices of the Israeli-Palestinian Archaeology Working Group, it is an important source of information on the cultural inventory of the Central Highlands of ancient Israel/Palestine and a contribution to the ongoing project of recording and mapping the deep history of the Near East.
Papers by Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert
Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 2024
This archive lists ~8000 Bronze Age British axeheads, alongside associated compositional analyses... more This archive lists ~8000 Bronze Age British axeheads, alongside associated compositional analyses, isotopic measurements and radiocarbon dates. It integrates several major existing data collection efforts and published catalogues, whilst also providing a self-consistent basic typology. It is archived as four related flat-sheet text files and could be reused to support quantitative assessment of geographic and temporal patterns in metalwork style, deposition, recovery, hoard co-occurrence and/ or metallurgical compositions to name just a few salient topics.
Authors:
Andrew Bevan, Peter Northover, Peter Bray, Chiara Bonacchi, Sue Colledge, Rachel Crellin, Adam Gwilt, Heather Hamilton, Paul Hart, Robert Kaleta, Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Matthew Knight, Kathy Laws, Mark Lodwick, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Stuart Needham, Brendan O’Connor, Laura Perucchetti, Daniel Pett, Jennifer Wexler, Neil Wilkin
Museum Management and Curatorship
Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, 2015
Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2015
Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2015
Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, 2020
One of the British Library Digital Scholarship team’s core purposes is to deliver training to Lib... more One of the British Library Digital Scholarship team’s core purposes is to deliver training to Library staff. Running since 2012, the main aim of the Digital Scholarship Training Program (DSTP) is to create opportunities for staff to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to support emerging areas of scholarship. Recently, the Library has been experimenting with a new format to deliver its training that would allow flexibility and adaptability through modularity: a “season”. The Digital Scholarship team organized a series of training events billed as a “Season of Place”, which aimed to expose Library staff to the latest digital mapping concepts, methods and technologies, and provide them with the skills to apply cutting-edge research to their collection areas. The authors designed, coordinated and delivered this training season to fulfill broader Library objectives, choosing to mix and match the types of events and methods of delivery to fit the broad range of technologies that constitute digital mapping today. The paper also discusses the impact that these choices of methods and content has had on digital literacy and the uptake of digital mapping by presenting results of an initial evaluation obtained through observation and evaluation surveys.
Museum Management and Curatorship, 2019
This paper draws upon the experience of several years of running a multi-application crowdsourcin... more This paper draws upon the experience of several years of running a multi-application crowdsourcing platform, as well as a longitudinal evaluation of participant profiles, motivations and behaviour, to argue that heritage crowdsourcing cannot straightforwardly be considered a democratising form of cultural participation. While we agree that crowdsourcing helps expand public engagement with state-funded activities such as Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums, we also note that both in our own experience and in other projects, the involved public cohort is not radically different in socio-demographic make-up to the one that physically visits such institutions, being for example financially better-off with high levels of formal education. In shedding light on issues of participation and cultural citizenship, through a both theoretically and empirically rich discussion, this paper light casts on the current impact of heritage crowdsourcing, in terms of both its strengths and weaknesses. The study will also be useful for cultural heritage policy and practice, museum management and curatorship, to potentially guide the choices and strategies of funders and organisations alike
Since their occupation in 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been subject to extensive a... more Since their occupation in 1967, the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been subject to extensive archaeological surveys and excavations, carried out mostly by Israeli archaeologists. Data on thousands of surveyed and excavated archaeological sites has been compiled into one comprehensive source of information, the West Bank and East Jerusalem Archaeological Database. This database is as complete a synthesis as possible of the archaeological activity conducted by Israel in the occupied territories from 1967 to 2007. This paper presents the database’s sources, structure, and data, accompanied by a few search and query examples using ArcGIS. It also engages in a critical discussion on the database’s contents and its limitations as a regional archaeological database, which in turn opens a window into Israeli archaeological practices in the West Bank.
This paper presents and discusses an assessment of the scope, priorities, and coverage of existin... more This paper presents and discusses an assessment of the scope, priorities, and coverage of existing archaeological datasets, via database comparison and on-the-ground re-survey of all accessible known sites in one region of the West Bank, the Etzion Bloc. The main goal of this survey was to assess the current inventories listing archaeological sites in the Etzion Bloc, an area that brings together an interesting range of archaeological and geographical issues that result directly from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This database assessment and review of listed archaeological sites included the verification of site existence and the examination of sites’ modern context, accessibility, current condition, potential threats, and the accuracy of their recorded location. The results of this fieldwork demonstrate the importance of keeping data up-do-date, provide suggestions on how to enhance the structure and contents of current inventories, and help prioritize and inform plans for further archaeological fieldwork in this region.
The British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts is one of the most significant in the worl... more The British Library’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts is one of the most significant in the world. Funded by The Polonsky Foundation, the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project has been digitising 1,250 manuscripts since 2013, in line with the Library’s commitment to digitisation and opening up access to its collections. The main aim of this paper is to describe the project’s digitisation experiences and challenges. It outlines the workflow of our digitisation process, and the implementation of tools and techniques using specialist knowledge across the Library. We specifically discuss the considerations needed at each stage of the workflow with relation to the creation of digital surrogates of historic manuscripts, the challenges we faced and how they were resolved. A special focus of this paper is the digitisation of Hebrew scrolls, and the particular challenges of dealing with sacred manuscripts as digital objects with complex viewing requirements. We also look at the impact this project has had on digitisation infrastructure at the Library. By building digital scholarship and engagement directly into the workflow of this project we have been able to create new interactions and opportunities to this unique and significant collection.
Palestine Exploration Quarterly 147(3): 173–175, Sep 1, 2015
This paper reviews existing case studies in the ‘crowd-funding’ of community archaeology, as well... more This paper reviews existing case studies in the ‘crowd-funding’ of community archaeology, as well as offering preliminary results from a small-scale experiment conducted alongside the wider crowd-sourcing efforts of the MicroPasts project (micropasts.org). In so-doing, it also considers the possible role of a hybrid reward- and donation-based model for micro-financing collaborative archaeological research. The article concludes with a summary of the key lessons that might be drawn from experiences of crowd-funding archaeology so far, highlighting their particular implications for community archaeology.
JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHAEOLOGY, 2015
This paper will look at the ‘media’ used to record and store archaeological data over the last ce... more This paper will look at the ‘media’ used to record and store archaeological data over the last century, in particular reference to the National Bronze Age Index (NBAI) housed at the British Museum now being digitized as part of the MicroPasts Project (http://micropasts.org). Developed in 1913 as one of the first catalogues to document British and European prehistory on a large scale, this corpus took the form of an illustrated card catalogue containing around 30,000 double-sided cards, serving as a sort of proxy for the objects they recorded. While wide-scale dispersal of archaeological archives has not been generally possible, new forms of media and digital engagement perhaps now offer us some innovative inroads into some of these issues. This paper will examine how we can ‘excavate’ these antiquated media sources to both draw meaning and data from these overlooked archives as well as how by employing new technologies, such as the open-source crowd-sourcing platform utilized by MicroPasts (http://crowdsourced.micropasts.org), we can open up new avenues of research and public engagement to make these collections relevant to modern communities.
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Books by Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert
Papers by Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert
Authors:
Andrew Bevan, Peter Northover, Peter Bray, Chiara Bonacchi, Sue Colledge, Rachel Crellin, Adam Gwilt, Heather Hamilton, Paul Hart, Robert Kaleta, Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Matthew Knight, Kathy Laws, Mark Lodwick, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Stuart Needham, Brendan O’Connor, Laura Perucchetti, Daniel Pett, Jennifer Wexler, Neil Wilkin
Authors:
Andrew Bevan, Peter Northover, Peter Bray, Chiara Bonacchi, Sue Colledge, Rachel Crellin, Adam Gwilt, Heather Hamilton, Paul Hart, Robert Kaleta, Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert, Matthew Knight, Kathy Laws, Mark Lodwick, Marcos Martinón-Torres, Stuart Needham, Brendan O’Connor, Laura Perucchetti, Daniel Pett, Jennifer Wexler, Neil Wilkin
MicroPasts is a collaboration between the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the British Museum, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (2013-2015). The project has leveraged web-based technologies to foster collaborations between researchers based in higher education and heritage institutions and members of the public to study the human past. Together, we have been creating new open archaeological data via crowdsourcing (crowdsourced.micropasts.org), discussing their value and micro-financing community archaeology and community history projects (crowdfunded.micropasts.org).
Speakers will include the MicroPasts team*, Stuart Dunn (King's College London), Meghan Ferriter (Smithsonian Institution Transcription Centre), Daniel Lombraña González (Crowdcrafting and Pybossa), Helen Miles (Aberystwyth University), Andrew Wilson and Katharina Moeller (Bangor University).
*Andrew Bevan, Chiara Bonacchi and Adi Keinan-Schoonbaert (UCL Institute of Archaeology); Daniel Pett, Jennifer Wexler and Neil Wilkin (British Museum); Hugh Fiske and Lisa Cardy (MicroPasts collaborators).