OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007

Silchester: A Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology (OGHAM)

Final Report

Michael Fulford ([email protected] ) Michael Rains ([email protected])

February 2007

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements...... 1 2. Executive Summary...... 2 3. On-Site Data Gathering...... 2 3.1 Background...... 2 3.2 Aims and Objectives...... 2 3.3 Methodology and Implementation...... 3 3.4 Outputs and Results...... 3 3.5 Conclusions...... 4 4. Post-Excavation Research...... 5 4.1 Background...... 5 4.2 Aims and Objectives...... 6 4.3 Methodology...... 6 4.4 Implementation...... 6 4.5 Outputs and Results...... 7 4.6 Conclusions...... 8 5. Cross-Server Interoperability...... 8 5.1 Background...... 8 5.2 Methodology and Implementation...... 8 5.3 Results and Conclusions...... 9 6. Outputs and Lessons Learned...... 9 7. Dissemination...... 9 8. Conclusions...... 10 9. Implications and Sustainability...... 10

1. Acknowledgements

This project was funded by JISC as part of its Virtual Research Environments programme. The project partners were the University of Reading and York Archaeological Trust. The project was undertaken by Professor Michael Fulford (Project Manager - Reading), Michael Rains (Project Officer - York), Amanda Clarke (Research Officer - Reading) and Klare Tootell (Database Manager Reading). The project team are grateful for the considerable assistance of Stephen Gough (IT Liaison), Dr Stuart Dunn (Consultant), Dr Jon Blower (Consultant), and the members of the project steering group, Professor Vince Gaffney (University of Birmingham), Professor Jeremy Huggett (University of Glasgow), Dr William Kilbride (Archaeology Data Service) and Dr Gary Lock (Oxford University).

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2. Executive Summary

The Silchester VRE Stage 1 project was designed to address three particular problems experienced by archaeologists involved in archaeological excavation and research in the context of the well established Silchester Insula IX Town Life Project at the University of Reading (see http://www.silchester.reading.ac.uk). Each of these problems related to a perceived 'bottleneck' in the flow and management of data through the life of the project from excavation through to publication. The first strand of the project examined possibilities for improving the initial on-site data gathering through the establishment of a wireless network with full Internet access and the use of handheld tablet PCs and PDAs. The introduction of Internet access to the site has had a major positive impact on many aspects of the management of the excavation, whereas the tablet PCs and PDAs proved technically disappointing. The second strand of the project aimed to foster greater engagement and closer involvement in the project amongst a large group of project co-workers, many of whom are geographically remote from Reading and Silchester, through the development of a virtual collaborative working environment within the framework of the Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB - see http://www.iadb.co.uk). In its second incarnation, this has now been used successfully in the collaborative preparation of a major web publication of one aspect of the Silchester project. The final strand of the Silchester VRE project examined ways of providing interoperability between the various independent IADB servers to enable cross-server searches to be performed. By following an innovative client-side based approach to the problem, the feasibility of such searches has been demonstrated.

Each of the three strands of the project are described separately below.

3. On-Site Data Gathering

3.1 Background

During previous excavation seasons at Silchester, the Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB) server computer had been removed from its normal base in the University of Reading and taken to temporary accommodation on site where it was connected to a small (wired) network of desktop and laptop computers. Whilst this allowed excavation workers to access existing project records and create new ones in a "near-site" situation, it meant that other project workers, not present on site, were denied all access to the project records for the during of the excavation each year. Also, on-site workers had no computer access to the wider outside world.

Silchester is situated in rural Hampshire approximately mid-way between Reading and Basingstoke. The excavation itself is a "green field" site approximately 0.6km from the nearest habitation. The excavation area (55m square) is not impeded by trees or standing walls or buildings. A range of temporary buildings (Portakabins) is provided along one side of the excavation area. A fixed line telephone connection is not available and not practicable. At the present time, the site is not covered by a 3G mobile network and 2G coverage is variable.

3.2 Aims and Objectives

The principal aim of this part of the VRE project was to explore possible improvements to on-site data collection and management through the provision of on-site Internet connectivity and a small scale trial of hand-held Tablet PCs and PDAs. It was also designed to contribute to the wider VRE project aim of closer integration and collaboration between all project workers both on and off site, particularly during the annual excavation season.

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3.3 Methodology and Implementation

For the 2005 excavation season, a wired BT ADSL broadband connection was installed, with the permission of the farmer, in a farm building approximately 0.6km distant from, and within line-of-sight of the excavation temporary buildings. The ADSL connection was extended to site by the use of small directional aerials mounted on the gable end of the farm building and the roof of one of the site Portakabins. A standard wireless access point and router was then used to provide wi-fi coverage over most of the excavation site.

As in previous seasons, several desktop and laptop computers were used within the site Portakabins, but now with direct Internet access, including to the IADB server in Reading. In addition, over the 2005 and 2006 seasons, a number of hand-held Tablet PCs and PDAs were tested for use in direct on-site digital data gathering.

An ADSL broadband Internet connection was established to a small network of laptop and desktop computers in the site Portakabins. A wireless access point was provided on the roof of one of the Portakabins. A small number of wireless enabled PDAs and Tablet PCs were used to test the feasibility of direct on-site digital data gathering.

By their nature, the Tablet PCs are able to access all aspects of the IADB but because only a small number (one or two) would be available each season, it was decided that one particular aspect of archaeological site recording, the drawing of individual Context plans, would be used to test the reliability, usability and efficiency of the Tablet PCs. The 'traditional' way or recording individual Context plans, would involve each plan first of all being drawn on site in pencil on a sheet of Permatrace (waterproof translucent plastic film). Later, usually in the post-excavation phase, the plans would be digitised by being traced on a standard graphics digitising tablet. This is a time consuming, tedious and error-prone process. The idea of Tablet PCs replacing the Permatrace and removing the need for subsequent digitisation offered the potential for great savings of time and, therefore, money.

In the case of the PDAs, the small screen size and the limited functionality of the built in web browser software meant that new user interface software needed to be developed to allow users to access a small subset of the IADB. Finds recording was selected as an area of the IADB where simple but useful data entry could be undertaken without the need for extensive text input.

3.4 Outputs and Results

The ADSL connection proved mainly reliable. Problems which did arise were largely not technology related and were outwith the control of the project team. For example, failure by the University of timely payment of the BT bill resulted in a brief interruption to service in 2006.

The availability of Internet access, including, most importantly, access to the main IADB project database, from the site Portakabins proved a major benefit both archaeologically and in terms of the general management and administration of a large excavation project. For example, the significance of on-site staff having access to their usual email system should not be underestimated. Anecdotal reports of site staff finding parallels for, and thereby identifying, newly excavated objects by doing a quick search on eBay may or may not be true.

The continued availability of the IADB to off-site project workers, for example, remote finds specialists, throughout the excavation was another very significant improvement over previous years and was an essential requirement for the second pillar of the VRE

Page 3 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 project concerned with improved data flow and collaborative working involving all members of the project team.

Although offering great potential, in practice, the Tablet PCs were a failure. There were a range of minor problems, including reliability of the wi-fi network and user-interface design, all of which could easily have been resolved. The major technical problem which effectively rendered the Tablet PCs unusable was the poor contrast and brightness of the screens which made them unreadable in strong sunlight (surprisingly plentiful at Silchester in July 2005 and 2006) and very difficult to use even in overcast conditions. Initially two Tablet PCs were tested: a ruggedised military-style metal-cased machine with no keyboard costing c. £4000, and a Toshiba machine costing c. £1200. This functions as a standard laptop computer until the screen is rotated to lie flat on the keyboard. Despite the large price difference there was little to choose between the two in terms of screen readability. A third Tablet PC, a Samsung Q1, was tested in 2006 and this, the cheapest of the three at £800, was probably marginally the best or, more accurately, the least bad. A number of ideas for shading the screens while in use were tried including umbrellas, cardboard boxes, etc., but none of these proved effective and workable.

Despite the overall failure of the Tablet PCs, a number of other aspects of their use were noted. The Toshiba machine used an active pen for writing/drawing on the screen, whereas the ruggedised and Samsung machines used passive pens. It was noted that while the cost and inconvenience of losing an active pen is greater, it did lead to more accurate working because with a passive system, unintentional cursor movement can often occur through, for example, the user resting his or her wrist on the edge of the screen as they write or draw.

Presumably to make it more water and dirt resistant, the number of external connection ports on the ruggedised Tablet PC has been kept to a minimum and so there is no simple way in which a keyboard, mouse and external monitor can be connected to it. The Toshiba machine has a permanent keyboard and the Samsung has a detachable keyboard. Both have a full range of standard laptop ports and so can be used as standard laptop computers. Despite being by far the most expensive of the three, the ruggedised machine has in fact proved to be the least useful.

The same screen readability problems were encountered with the PDAs but here, the most interesting issues were those concerned with the integration of new technologies and, more particularly, new ways of working into existing on-site methodologies that had been developed and refined over a number of years. For example, The PDA trial involved unique Find accession numbers being generated and assigned by the IADB server in response to requests from excavation supervisors using their PDAs. In the past, these numbers had been issued manually by Finds staff working in the Finds recording Portakabin and later input to the IADB database. This change raised issues of 'ownership' of process, and status, particularly among Finds staff.

Other elements of the PDAs were more positively received. For example, the built in digital cameras , which in quality terms were somewhere between a typical mobile phone and a typical consumer digital camera, were thought to be useful for taking 'record shots' of features and finds as they were excavated. This requirement has often addressed in the past on archaeological sites through the use of Polaroid photography.

3.5 Conclusions

Whilst the actual on-site use of Tablet PCs and, to a lesser extent, PDAs was not a great success, this in no way implies failure in this part of the VRE Project which was specifically designed to test and evaluate the usefulness, or otherwise, of these devices

Page 4 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 within the context of a large scale archaeological excavation with limited time for experimentation and a very limited budget. In simple terms, the question posed was: "Has the technology of these devices reached a level at which they can make a significant contribution to excavation recording at a price which archaeologists can afford?". In equally simple terms, the answer is "Not yet".

Looking to the future, a range of technologies are on the horizon which should start to address the screen readability problems, and the long term downward trend in technology prices is unlikely to be reversed. Archaeologists should remain aware of these devices as they develop and should also be looking at other emergent technologies which may have a role in on-site data gathering. One example might be digital paper and forms which have the big advantage from the user's point of view of looking very familiar and 'low tech' - you use a pen to write in what appears to be an ordinary notebook or pre-printed form. It is hoped that a trial of these devices will be undertaken at Silchester in 2007.

Whilst the Tablet PCs and PDAs were the most high-profile part of the on-site element of the VRE project, the aspect which has had the most significant, and entirely positive, impact on the excavation has been the less glamorous underlying infrastructure of the wireless network and ADSL Internet connection. The benefits of maintaining full access to the IADB for all users, on and off site, throughout the excavation, and of providing wider Internet access for on-site users cannot be overstated. This will be a lasting benefit to the Silchester project and will play a key role in realising the core VRE project aims of improved data management and closer collaboration.

4. Post-Excavation Research

4.1 Background

The Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB) has been used by the Silchester Insula IX Town Life Project as its primary excavation recording system since the project began in 1997. The IADB, developed initially at the Scottish Urban Archaeological Trust (SUAT) and subsequently at York Archaeological Trust (YAT), began as a relatively simple excavation recording database. The word Integrated in the title of the IADB referred to the integration of a range of archaeological records (textual descriptions of Finds and Contexts, Context plans, site photographs, stratigraphic matrix diagrams, etc) into a single desktop environment with emphasis placed on the links between the various types of records. The aim was to provide an accessible archive of the excavation records, primarily as a resource for the post-excavation process of analysis and research. If we consider a typical archaeological data flow as having three key stages, running from initial data gathering and recording (excavation), through analysis and research (post- excavation) , to eventual publication and archiving (dissemination), then the early IADB was seen as a tool for use in stage one which provide a resource for use in stage two.

Over the course of the Silchester project, the scope of the IADB has expanded to include a wider range of archaeological records and it has become a fully web based environment. However it is only in recent years, as much of the focus of archaeological publication, both at Silchester and elsewhere, has moved from print to the web, that the role of the IADB has expanded to cover the complete archaeological data flow. This has happened primarily through the development of new analytical or synthetic data structures in the IADB (for example, IADB Objects) and , perhaps most significantly, the incorporation of Documents as fully integrated and linked records within the IADB framework. Documents created within the IADB are in HTML format and so can directly form the building blocks, along with the other IADB records to which they are linked, of one or more web publications. Whereas the IADB began as a resource available to the post-excavation and dissemination stages, it has developed into the environment in

Page 5 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 which those stages are undertaken, the factory floor of archaeological research and publication.

4.2 Aims and Objectives

The second stage of the Silchester VRE project aimed to build on this foundation to develop a fully integrated collaborative working environment within the IADB. In particular this was designed to address a major problem long recognised within archaeology. Any archaeological project of the size and scope of Silchester involves a large number of people, both on-site and off. Some of these can be considered the core team, closely involved with the project, often on a full time basis. In addition to the core team, the project also involves a much wider group of people who together provide a pool of expertise at all stages of the project. Members of this group might include, for example, specialists in pottery or Roman building materials. Most of these experts will only be involved 'part time' with the project, and may in fact be working on a number of unconnected projects simultaneously. Many will be geographically dispersed, both from each other, from the site, and from relevant information held elsewhere. Some will work within institutions, academic or otherwise, while others will work alone outside of any institutional framework. This makes the exchange of ideas and interpretations which are critical to the research process, very cumbersome. This stage of the Silchester VRE project was aimed at developing the basis for a virtual solution to this problem.

4.3 Methodology

The initial approach to this stage of the VRE project centred around the twin concepts of virtual research domains and virtual seminars.

The research domain concept was seen as a way of encapsulating particular issues, research topics, or sub-projects within the larger Silchester project. Examples might include the dating of a particular rubbish pit excavated on site, or a sub-project to produce an interim report on the results of a particular excavation season. Research domains would in effect be subsets of the wider IADB, wrappers for selected resources from the IADB relevant to the particular issue, topic or sub-project. Research domains might overlap and share resources, or they might be hierarchical, with one research domain forming part of a larger or wider one. For example, a research domain devoted to the issue of the dating of a particular pit might form part of a wider research domain concerned with rubbish pits across the site.

4.4 Implementation

To implement the research domain concept, a new data structure, called IADB Views, was developed. An IADB View is a simple structure which consists of a Title, a textual Description, and a Membership. The membership can include any number of any other type of IADB data record (text records, images, plans, matrices, etc), including other Views. In user interface terms, IADB Views appear as graphical structure diagrams, rendered in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. An example may be viewed at http://www.silchester.reading.ac.uk/i2/i2_support.php?Action=ShowView&VID=184 (to view this link requires the Adobe SVG Viewer - see http://www.adobe.com/svg).

Virtual seminars would take place on-line and would involve the participation of invited project workers, including external specialists. At the core of the seminar would be one or more IADB Views presented on a virtual 'whiteboard', linked to an online 'chat' facility. Seminar participants would be able to explore and annotate the whiteboard and converse with other participants through the chat facility either in real time at a time arranged by the seminar organiser, or on an ad-hoc basis. A full record of each seminar,

Page 6 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 including whiteboard annotations and a transcript of the chat conversations, would be retained as a data record in the IADB so that it could be 'replayed' or continued at a later date, and would then form part of the project archive.

A prototype software solution for the virtual seminars was developed. This was a browser based solution making extensive use of browser scripting and the then emergent AJAX programming techniques.

4.5 Outputs and Results

User testing of the prototype virtual seminars in summer 2005 revealed that, although the individual elements of the package (IADB Views, online chat) could be useful, the overall approach was not what users wanted, perhaps mainly because it did not produce or contribute to the end product that users needed. As was noted earlier, the end product for most archaeological research is publication, and that increasingly on the web. Moving on from the concept of virtual seminars, it became clear that what was needed was more a series of possibly overlapping or hierarchical collaborative working environments, each addressing a particular issue or theme, and leading to, or contributing to, a web publication.

In response to this the concept of the research domain was redefined to contain two different collections of IADB records or resources. The first of these collections, termed Key Resources, consists of existing IADB records relevant to the research domain. The Key Resources list provides instant access to plans, images, stratigraphic matrix diagrams, Finds records, etc to which researchers might need to refer whilst working within the research domain. This is particularly useful for those researchers who might only work in the IADB on an intermittent basis and who are not as familiar with the techniques for resource location and retrieval within the IADB. At the same time, implementation of the research domain within the IADB, means that the full resources of the IADB are available to those who need them. IADB Views have been retained as useful visualisations of potentially complex inter-relationships between IADB resources and, where appropriate, they may be included as items in the Key Resources list.

The second collection, referred to as Research Topics, also consists of a list of selected IADB records, but these records will normally be Documents and they will normally, initially, be blank. These are the building blocks of the end product of the research domain. For example, in a research domain directed at the production of an interim report, the Research Topics list might contain Documents for each of the main categories of Finds. The job of workers in the Research Domain is to write or complete these Documents. The Research Topics list provides the 'factory floor' on which the purpose of the Research Domain is carried forward.

Within the IADB, the Research Topics list has been implemented as a development of the IADB Document record type. Using AJAX programming techniques (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)) pioneered by, for example, Writely (now part of Google Documents and Spreadsheets http://docs.google.com), an HTML rich text editor has been developed which offers a wide range of word-processor like text formatting options. Most significantly, because of its integration as part of the IADB, it allows use to link to or embed the full range of IADB records within their documents. This document itself was created and edited within an IADB Research Domain.

The chat facility developed as part of the Virtual Seminars concept has been retained within Virtual Research Domains. It has been found useful more as a noticeboard facility, where messages of general interest to participants in the Research Domain are posted, than for its original purpose.

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4.6 Conclusions

Although the initial concept of the Virtual Seminar proved not to be an appropriate way to foster and enable greater integration of all workers, particularly part-time external workers, into the Silchester project, two of its core elements, IADB Views and the on-line chat facility, have gone on to find a place in the subsequent Research Domains framework.

During the second half of 2006, the Research Domain framework was extensively tested in a real world situation when it was used to produce a web publication covering one aspect of the Silchester project as part of the Archaeology Data Service/Internet Archaeology "Making the LEAP" programme (see http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/project/leap ). "Making the LEAP" is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the ICT Strategy Programme. This involved three members of the core Silchester team plus twelve external specialists collaborating on the production of over 25 documents, all richly illustrated and with numerous links to other IADB items, within a LEAP Research Domain established within the IADB. Given that this was happening while the Research Domains software implementation was being developed, the results were highly positive. Significant improvements in data flow and handling were easy to see and there was closer collaboration with, and integration of, external specialists, especially those who fully adopted the Research Domain methodology. Particularly notable towards the end of the LEAP project was the efficiency of the process by which the completed pages were moved out of the IADB and on to Internet Archaeology. Taking into account the meaning of the Making the LEAP acronym (Linking Electronic Archives and Publications), it is particularly appropriate that this should have been the first practical test of the VRE Research Domain concept. The Silchester LEAP publication, entitled "Silchester Roman Town Insula IX: The Development of an Urban Property c. AD 40-50 - c. AD 250", will appear in Internet Archaeology (see http://intarch.ac.uk) in 2007.

5. Cross-Server Interoperability

5.1 Background

The third stage of the Silchester VRE project aimed to address the issue of cross-server interoperability. At the start of the project there were independently owned and managed IADB servers in York (YAT), Reading (Silchester Town Life Project) and Norwich (The Butrint Foundation - see http://www.butrintfound.dial.pipex.com ). These have since been joined by servers in Southampton (Noviodunum Project - see http://www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Fieldwork/default.asp? Division=6 ) and Kemble (Cotswold Archaeological Trust - see http://www.cotswoldarch.org.uk ) with others in the pipeline. If we take as an example, Roman samian pottery, then it is likely that detailed records of samian pottery exist on each IADB server. But prior to this project, there was no means by which a simple search query for samian pottery records could be run across all the servers. In fact to take this a stage further, until recently only limited facilities were available for running such a query across all the projects on a single server. Although this was of little importance to Silchester, where the Reading IADB server is essentially a single project server, the York server contains records of over 1000 separate archaeological projects, ranging in size from small scale watching briefs to large excavations of national significance.

5.2 Methodology and Implementation

The major technical impediment to providing cross-server interoperability, was the wide variety of firewalls and other barriers in operation on the various servers. Rather than follow the more traditional route of a server-side solution in which the servers 'talk' directly to each other, it was decided to explore the possibility of a client-side solution in which individual browser clients talk directly to each

Page 8 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 of the servers. What this envisaged was a browser script, in response to a user request, requesting data from each available server and then integrating the results into a coherent 'answer' for presentation to the user. However, the 'same origin policy' enforced by browsers (see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/jssec.html ) prevents a web page script from interacting with pages fetched from other domains. To circumvent this restriction, an AJAX technique known as 'Javascript On Demand' has been used to load Javascript code with embedded data in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format (see http://www.json.org/ ) from the different servers. The embedded data obtained from each server can then be integrated with that from the other servers and formatted as a search response to the user. All of this is transparent to the user who only has to indicate which servers he or she wishes to search.

5.3 Results and Conclusions

The implementation of cross-server searches within current versions of the IADB were designed to serve as a demonstrator of the feasibility of using the techniques outlined above for this purpose. This has revealed that in principle, the techniques work but that there are problems when searches return large amounts of data. Further work is needed to develop more refined resource discovery methodologies which will produce more targeted searches producing more manageable result sets, which is normally what is required. Where large data sets do need to be retrieved in this way, then techniques for packaging result sets into manageable 'chunks' need to be developed.

Within the current implementation of cross-server searches, access control is at the server level. Each server grants, or excludes, search access to all its resources to all registered users of one or more other servers. Further work needs to be undertaken to bring this access control down to at least the level of individual users having access to particular projects, and perhaps to particular resources within projects. Such access rights would be different to a users rights within projects on his or her own server.

6. Outcomes and Lessons Learned

The overall approach to this project has worked well. In particular, undertaking the VRE project in parallel with and within the framework of the Silchester archaeological project has provided ‘real world’ feedback which has shaped the VRE project as it has progressed and has allowed it to produce practical ‘real world’ outputs which have both improved the VRE project and been of great benefit to the Silchester project.

In overall terms the aims and objectives of the project as set out in the Project Plan were achieved. The first major aim of the project was to evaluate the usefulness (or otherwise) of handheld Tablet PCs and PDAs for direct digital data gathering on-site. The fact that these particular devices were found to be generally unsuitable, as detailed in the Project Final Report, as well as being a valid result in itself (‘no’ was always a possible answer to this question), should not be seen as a deterrent to future work with emerging digital data gathering technologies.

The second strand of the project was the development of software based collaborative research environments within the framework of the IADB. This was seen as an iterative process and initial concepts of Views and Online Seminars were successfully refined and developed over the course of the project to become Virtual Research Domains.

The final strand of the project has demonstrated the feasibility of using client-side techniques to perform cross-server searches of multiple IADB servers.

7. Dissemination

An interim report on the project was presented at the Computer Applications in Archaeology (CAA) conference in April 2006 (http://www.caa2006.org). A full paper covering all aspects of the project has

Page 9 of 10 OGHAM – Final Report – 1.0 – 06/02/2007 been accepted for CAA 2007 (http://www.caa2007.de). This will subsequently be published in the conference proceedings.

Prof Michael Fulford and Michael Rains took part in a programme in the BBC Radio 4 series The Material World on 22nd September 2005 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20050922.shtml).

8. Conclusions

Potential beneficiaries if the project outcomes include not only the Silchester project team, where the benefits, particularly of the Virtual Research Domains, have already been demonstrated, but also the wider archaeological field and research communities in which many of the problems of efficient data gathering, management, integration and dissemination which underpinned this project are well known.

During the latter stages of the VRE project, the Silchester project has been collaborating with Internet Archaeology and the Archaeology Data Service within the AHRC funded ‘Making the LEAP’ programme. In this project, the Virtual Research Domains framework developed within the VRE project has been used as the development environment for a web-based publication addressing one aspect of the Silchester project. This has clearly demonstrated the utility of the Virtual research Domains concept.

9. Implications and Sustainability

The IADB database and software is hosted on the servers of the University of Reading and will continue to be so for at least the duration of the Silchester Town Life Project. At the end of the project, the complete project digital archive, including outputs from this VRE project, will be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service, part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service.

An application has been made to JISC under the VRE2 programme for further funding to take forward various aspects of the project.

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