Here’s an interesting tech solution in a surprising place. This is reasonably topical, as it’s something that’s been in the traditional media quite a lot recently:

Archaeology

In particular, we’re going to look at an online resource for what is shaping up to be one of the most important excavation sites in north-western Europe, the Walbrook Discovery Programme.

For those of you that aren’t aware, the Walbrook site is currently being excavated just to the north of Cannon Street station in the square mile (London, UK). They are about 8-10 metres down below ground level and have been discovering all kinds of amazing things underneath our feet. This, however, is not the news. Archaeological works take place every day in the city of London, Greater London, and indeed across the entirety of the UK. What makes this site so interesting, is its use of social media and in particular a WordPress blog to keep the public informed.

Very rarely do you see tech being used to such an end-user friendly degree within heritage, and the WDP does a very good job of keeping the tone light, but the content interesting. There are videos about how to clean, record and then excavate a Roman floor (with quite an interesting sound track), and articles about different types of artefacts; about different structures; about all kinds of interesting pieces of archaeology.

I’ve never seen information presented so well in an ongoing excavation, and think this is a great model for other archaeological companies, and possibly even academic departments to consider. And it just goes to show, that tech solutions aren’t just limited to 21^st century problems!