Nuove frontiere della ricerca archeologica. Linguaggi, comunicazione, informatica / New Frontiers of Archaeological Research. Languages, Communication, Information Technology

Since the beginning of the publication of "Archeologia e Calcolatori", the tradition has been to devote at least one issue every five years to a specific theme of current interest in the field of archaeological computing. The idea for this 15th special issue comes from the observation that the problem of language, together with that of descriptive standards - which have characterised the pioneering work of scholars who attempted the recording and classification of archaeological data using computers - has significantly come back into discussion in light of today's consolidated diffusion of multimedia communication. The web has therefore become a transmission tool, which makes use of international standards, solving old problems in innovative ways. As in the past special issues, the purpose is that of furthering debate and highlighting some of the theoretical aspects of archaeological computing. On the basis of current research projects, scientists involved in the application of computer methods to archaeology have been brought together to discuss the phases of data acquisition and representation to their processing, interpretation and diffusion. In fact, the changes due to Information Technology have given rise to a series of new concerns to which the authors of this publication have offered various answers. Therefore, the volume has taken on six different sections, each displaying a convergence of purpose and originality of applications: I. Writing or rewriting archaeology: theory, technology and information society II. Languages, standards and metadata: methodological and terminological problems III. Data encoding, formalisation and analysis: comparison of experiences IV. Between time and space: the geographical dimension of knowledge V. From reality to virtuality: towards an augmented communication? VI. Communicating archaeology through the web: uses and usability