3/5 Lecture: Digital Humanities and studying Pompeii
Pompeii as a Platform: The Present and Near-Term Future of Reusable Data from a Roman City
Presented by Dr. Sebastian Heath (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University)Ìý
ABSTRACT: This talk reports on the work of the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project (PALP), which was a Getty Foundation funded collaboration between the speaker and Prof. Eric Poehler of UMASS Amherst, and on the current Pompeii Linked Open Data (P-LOD) initiative, a more open-ended effort under the same direction. PALP produced a website that supports sitewide investigation and P-LOD is now focused on the long-term availability of reusable data, on developing new computational approaches to exploring that data, and on delivering new forms of public interaction with its resources. The talk will follow this same arc.
The PALP website demonstrates that applying the principles of Linked Open Data (LOD) to Pompeii enables both sitewide and detailed exploration of the contents of Pompeian wall-painting. Our goal is to make issues of association and distribution easily browsable by all. Myth, natural history, daily life and other topics can now all be explored. PALP is, however, just a website. P-LOD is engaged in delivering reusable data with a particular focus on using it in modern, low-cost computational environments that many people can access. This will be demonstrated, with an emphasis on the ability to conceive and implement new research agendas. It is also the case that change is in the air. Generative AI is an opportunity to explore new forms of interaction with large datasets.
This talk takes the point-of-view that it is archaeologists (or classicists or historians) who should be exploring these tools to see what contribution - if any - they can make. Such early - though results oriented - explorations will be shown in the context of the massive dataset that PALP and P-LOD have compiled for Pompeii.
PALP:
P-LOD: