The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project based at the Universities of Oxford, Leicester, and Durham uses remote sensing to record archaeological and cultural heritage landscapes across twenty countries from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen. The project has developed an online heritage database built by adapting the open-source Arches heritage inventory platform developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund. This paper discusses the process of customization of Arches v.3 adopted by EAMENA, particularly with regard to the development of new CIDOC CRM resource data models, reference data, and modifications to the Arches codebase.
Since 1997, the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) to the 1997 U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, has limited the availability of high-resolution satellite imagery over Israel and Palestine. Although this law only applies to the United States of America, as this country dominates the commercial market for satellite imagery, its impact is global. Since 2012, the KBA has become increasingly anachronistic, as non-U.S. satellite firms, utilizing increasingly sophisticated satellite technologies, have begun retailing highresolution imagery of Israel and Palestine. This major shift has, however, largely gone unrecognized, because the application of the KBA has become institutionalized in the commercial satellite imagery market. Nevertheless, the removal of these practical restrictions offers a major opportunity for all forms of remote-sensing analysis, whether for archaeological research as undertaken by the authors of this paper, as well as geographers, humanitarian organisations or others interested in landscape and settlement change across Israel and Palestine. Earth. Although the two sites are only 35 km apart as the crow flies, the Tell al-Sultan imagery in Palestine was probably captured at 0.5 m and down-sampled to ca. 2 m.
ABSTRACT:The heritage of the Middle East and North Africa is under growing threat from a variety of factors, including agricultural expansion, urban development, looting, and conflict. Recording and documenting this heritage is therefore a key priority to a id heritage practitioners tasked with protecting sites and evaluating their condition on the ground. The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project has developed a methodology for the identification, documentation, analysis, and monitoring of sites across the region to aid heritage professionals in these efforts. The project uses remote sensing techniques along with traditional archaeological research and prospection methods to collect data, which are stored and managed in a customdesigned database adapted from open-source Arches v.3 software, using CIDOC CRM standards and controlled vocabularies. In addition to these activities, the EAMENA project has initiated an international conference series and training workshops to s upport and establish partnerships with heritage professionals and institutions across the region.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.