Nabonidus

On Hannibal's Trail - BBC Documentary

2010-06-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

The first glimpse of the forthcoming BBC documentary - On Hannibal's Trail - presented by my brothers and I. In this clip we race each other up Mont Ventoux:

New fields on Special Finds form

2009-06-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

We have added a few new fields on the special finds form. Please see the screenshot below for details:

Data import is in the works too - we are hoping to get it live in the next few weeks.

New Export Data Function

2009-03-07T16:30:00.000-08:00

In case you were worried that your data was stuck in Nabonidus forever we have added a new Export Data function. So you can now export any or all of your Nabonidus excavation data to CSV or XML. You'll notice a new "Export Data" link in the left hand navigation above Reports:

You can choose any Area of your site(s) and any or all the data for that Area. If you choose just one Area and one data type you will receive the relevant CSV or XML file. Otherwise you will asked to download a zip archive containing all the data you requested.

The general consensus from our user group was that they didn't want this functionality available to everyone with access to your excavation data so only "Excavation Administrators" have access to the new Export Data function.

As always if you have any questions or encounter any problems please get in touch (Contact Us).

View Context as PDF

2008-08-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

We've just added a "View as PDF" option to the Context list:

So you can now save a copy of a Context as a PDF document to your machine and print it too.

Additional URL - http://nab.onid.us

2008-08-20T02:04:00.000-07:00

For some reason we registered this domain name - it will save you 6 key strokes next time you want to visit Nabonidus:
http://nab.onid.us

Our original address still works too...
http://www.nabonidus.org

Change of Hosting Service

2008-08-20T01:35:00.000-07:00

Along with the recent additions to Nabonidus we have also changed our hosting service.

We hope that this will mean the site runs faster and is more reliable but please tell us if you have speed or connectivity issues (Contact Us). The thing is the servers that host the site are in Australia (previously they were in Colorado) so it runs lightening fast for me here in Sydney but I know Sam in London didn't notice any difference!

As part of the process we had to take all the data from the orginal database and copy it across to the new database. We've compared the two databases and they are exactly the same but if you feel like perhaps some data was lost somewhere along the line then please let us know (Contact Us).

Additions to Nabonidus Complete

2008-08-20T01:18:00.000-07:00

We have finished making the additions to Nabonidus mentioned in this blog post.

The major changes are basically a whole bunch of new fields on the Context Sheet, Artefact sheet, Pottery sheet etc. But we have also rebuilt the "Manage Typologies" section which is now called "Pottery Classes". You can now Add/Edit and Delete Pottery Classes and search by date range for one too.

We've done a few little Ajax update things too to make the data entry experience a little nicer.

We have tested the additions but please tell us if you encounter any problems.

Context Sheet Additions Complete

2008-07-27T08:49:00.000-07:00

We've just finished deploying some new additions to the Context Sheet. Like all the other fields on the Context Sheet they are configurable:

If you select one of the new fields they will then appear when you Edit a Context:

They will also appear in the Print View:

We have tested these additions but if you come across any problems or have any questions please get it touch (Contact Us).

Scheduled Downtime

2008-07-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

As part of the changes to www.nabonidus.org that will be happening over the next few weeks we will need to bring the site down briefly (10 - 15 minutes only) at certain times. The plan is to deploy additions at Midday GMT over the coming 4 Sundays:
- 12:00PM Sunday 27th July 2008
- 12:00PM Sunday 3rd August 2008
- 12:00PM Sunday 10th August 2008
- 12:00PM Sunday 17th August 2008

If you attempt to use the site you will receive the above test pattern but there is no need to worry we are not touching any data just adding functionality.

If this downtime is going to cause you problems don't hesitate to get in touch and we can easily reschedule (Contact Us).

Thanks, Ben.

Planned additions to Nabonidus

2008-07-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

After a long hiatus we are back and about to start some new development work on www.nabonidus.org. We've been encouraged by some helpful suggestions by Chris Mundigler and his colleagues who run excavations all over the place but have setup some of their excavations from Israel and the Ukraine in Nabonidus. They have been really nice and suggested ways in which Nabonidus could be more useful for Middle Eastern excavations and thats what this new work will focus on.

You may or may not know this but Nabonidus was originally built for a Pompeiian excavation so does have quite a classical "tilt". So we hope these additions will make Nabonidus more usable for Archaeologists working on Middle Eastern sites.

So here is the list of additions we are going to make - essentially a whole lot of new fields. They will be free text unless otherwise stated:

Context (locus) Sheet:
- Comment on Accumulation
- Particle Size
- Compaction
- Contents
- Explanation of Contents
- Critical Bucket(s)
- Other Samples Taken (checkbox)
- Explanation of contamination
- Excavation Date Opened/Level/Reason
- Excavation Date Closed/Level/Reason
- Interpretation By/Date/Contact Info
- Drawing Numbers
- Appears in which baulk drawings
- Other Reports
- Height or Depth
- Top and Bottom Elevation
- Appears in which baulks

Pottery Sheet
- Sherd Identification Number
- Bucker Identification
- Type
- Function
- Parallels
- Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info
- Also give the ability to search for pottery classes by date range

Artifact Sheet
- Registration number
- Field number
- Bucket ID
- Description
- Object drawn (checkbox)
- Object photographed (checkbox)
- Object sampled (checkbox)
- Observations Size/Weight/Colour/Other
- Provisional identification
- Start date range
- End date range
- Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info

Special Finds Sheet
- Registration number
- Bucket ID
- Description
- Photograph ID
- Drawing ID/Drawn By
- Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info

Relationships Sheet
- Description of Context
- Tentative Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info

Sample Type Sheet
- Registration number
- Bucket ID
- Spatial Location
- Purpose for sample
- Sent to
- Date sent
- Date Received
- Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info

Ecofact Sheet
- Registration number
- Field number
- Bucket ID
- Description
- Observations Size/Weight/Colour/Other
- Provisional identification
- Description
- Interpretation/By/Date/Contact Info

And as always please feel free to get in touch to suggest more (Contact Us).

Ben Wood
Nabonidus Administrator.

GeoRSS Feed

2007-04-15T04:03:00.000-07:00

We now produce a GeoRSS feed which includes all excavations in the Nabonidus database that have longitude and latitude coordinates defined. Online Archaeology is consuming this feed to create their Nabonidus layer on their Google Map which we blogged about recently.

Collaboration with Online-Archaeology

2007-04-15T03:34:00.000-07:00

Online Archaeology are now very kindly displaying all the Nabonidus Excavations on their site using their Google Maps server.

The map is here. Just click on the layers icon and check the Nabonidus checkbox to display the excavations.

Online Archaeology have also posted instructions here.

CAA Presentation slides

2007-04-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Here is our presentation from the recent CAA conference in Berlin in case anyone is interested:
http://www.nabonidus.org/documents/CAA2007.ppt

Nabonidus Search Web Service

2007-04-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

We've recently exposed a web service to allow other applications to search Nabonidus' public data. If you would like to use the web service please email us (administrator at nabonidus dot org) and we will send you the WSDL or alternatively pick it up here:
http://www.nabonidus.org/SearchService.asmx?WSDL

We are using it in our Desktop version of Nabonidus and it works quite well. It is free to use and hopefully will help to provide a way for archaeologists to easily search across multiple online datasets.

Regards, Ben.

Update 2007-04-15: We have added some extra fields to the web service. It now returns the longitude and latitude (if they exist) for each search result. Online Archaeology have very kindly implemented the search here: http://www.online-archaeology.co.uk/Home/SearchNabonidus/tabid/112/Default.aspx

Archaeological Computing Newsletter

2007-03-05T04:48:00.000-08:00

We have just been published in the December 2006 issue of the Archaeological Computing Newsletter. You can get a copy here: http://www.edigiglio.it/scheda.asp?ctg=1&keyw=636

Enjoy.

Nabonidus Desktop

2007-03-05T00:24:00.000-08:00

We are about midway through the development on what we are calling Nabonidus Desktop. It is essentially an installable desktop application that will allow you to record excavation data locally on a laptop or a PC rather than needing to have an Internet connection and access to the Nabonidus website to record your data. We are building it primarily to solve the problem of remote excavations that have no Internet connection.

Data will be able to be synchronised between Nabonidus Desktop clients and the "master" database online at http://www.nabonidus.org/. So for example you could have 4 trenches in your excavation - each with their own laptop with Nabonidus Desktop installed. They will be able to record all their data independently and then when they are happy with their data and an Internet connection becomes available they can upload all that data to Nabonidus Online. The excavation supervisor may then decide that she wants to download all the newly uploaded online data and can do so to her laptop running Nabonidus Desktop as well.

The first release of the desktop client will have pretty basic recording capabilities. We hope that if a good interest is shown in it we can expand it's functionality to at least match what you see online. One big advantage we see is data security. We know a lot of users are worried about their data being "online" and this desktop client means users can take care of their own security until they are happy that their data is "publishable" and not rely on us so much to secure their data.

We also hope to include peer-to-peer functionality into the first release - the search function on the desktop client will search not only the local database but the online database at http://www.nabonidus.org/ and also any "peer" Nabonidus Desktop clients it can find on the Internet with publicly available data. Our vision for Nabonidus is more and more leaning towards this sort of standalone application. One that will work in connected and disconnected environments, one that is decentralised but with the ability to locate peers to share and compare data.

Anyway there is still lots of work to do on the application but we hope to demo it at the Computing Applications in Archaeology conference in April this year.

As always the desktop client will be free to download and install. We will also post the source code to somewhere like CodePlex so any interested developers can enhance and alter the application as they please.

We will post up links to the application installer and screenshots as soon as they become available.

Ben Wood.

The Computing Applications in Archaeology Conference

2007-03-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

I am off to Berlin for the Computing Applications in Archaeology conference in April. Along with Ben Wood, the technical lead on Nabonidus, we will be presenting a workshop on how to set up an excavation using Nabonidus. We will also be demonstrating for the first time our new "Nabonidus Desktop" application which is currently in testing. We hope to demonstrate the full excavation "life cycle" with Nabonidus from:

Creating an excavation online, configuring your context sheet and the fields you need to record.
Recording data whilst on excavation with an available internet connection via www.nabonidus.org.
Recording data whilst on excavation with no internet connection on a laptop with the Nabonidus Desktop client installed.
Synchronising that local data from Nabonidus Desktop with the online database once an internet connection becomes available.
Analysing and publishing that data online.

We hope to see you in Berlin.

All the best, Sam Wood.

Microsoft Research

2007-03-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

In January we presented Nabonidus to Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. We had a good two hour session convened by Alexander Braendle and attended by some of the technical researchers and the head of department was there for the first hour too.

It was excellent, lots of smart and difficult questions to answer and lots of interest shown by the Microsoft guys in what we are trying to do. Unfortunately Microsoft does not directly fund archaeological research but they agreed to help us in any way they can with software and development advice and perhaps a joint project when we begin development of a mobile interface for Nabonidus.

They were very helpful with licensing for Nabonidus too. We are aiming for an open source license and when we are happy with our code we will publish it all to CodePlex so everyone can help themselves to it and essentially do whatever they want with it.

We also tentatively agreed upon a timetable for the development of a Nabonidus smart client application (April 2007) and a mobile interface (June 2007). We are still on track with these deadlines and presented the Nabonidus Desktop version at the Computing Applications in Archaeology conference in Berlin earlier this month.

So all in all a very productive day with Microsoft Research. They gave us a mountain of things to think about and lots of new ideas which we hope to implement in future versions of Nabonidus.

Nabonidus Release Beta 1.1

2006-09-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

We have just published a minor version of Nabonidus with these extra bits:

We have added a Reports page. There are a couple of reports in there that you can run against your excavation data but we hope to add many more so please give us your suggestions for reports you would find useful. (We do have an issue pending with our hosting service regarding the PDF report so you may get a security error when you run it - we apologise for that but hopefully our hosting service will fix it soon).
We fixed a bug on the Area Elevations page that stopped you saving data (thanks to Steve W from www.online-archaeology.co.uk).
We added a link to our blog from Nabonidus. We hope to post the latest information about Nabonidus here and get feedback from you as to how best to improve the application. Please subscribe to the RSS feed if you would like to keep informed of the latest news about Nabonidus.
We have put quite a lot of effort into making the site "HTML standards compliant". This is just to ensure that Nabonidus works on all flavours of operating system and browser. There is still some work to do but we have gone a long way towards a standards compliant site.

As always please feel to comment.

All the best, Sam Wood.

Data Privacy and Ownership

2006-09-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

We have had a few queries about the privacy and ownership of data in Nabonidus so we thought we would make it clear here that we claim absolutely no ownership of the data you store in Nabonidus. If at any time you want to remove it then you are totally welcome to. All your data is private to your excavation users only until you actually mark it as public - which you never need do.

Our hope is that in 10 years time when we have a lot of published excavation data in Nabonidus that it will become a very useful research tool for cross excavation analysis. A tool that archaeologists have never had at their disposal.

Future Functionality

2006-09-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who has replied to our emails and made comments and suggestions about Nabonidus. A lot of people asked about what we were planning for future versions of Nabonidus so we felt we would post something here so everyone can get a feeling for where Nabonidus is going.

Desktop/mobile version for use onsite. We aim to build a version of Nabonidus that you can install on your laptop or mobile device and use to input data whilst on an excavation. When an internet connection becomes available you will be given the opportunity to upload your data to the website.
Integration with GIS applications
Data Import and Export functionality. We realise a lot of users currently have data in other databases and formats and would like to import that data to their Nabonidus excavation. We also realise that a lot of archaeologists have tools and applications they use to analyse their data and it would be useful for them if they could export data out of Nabonidus and into their other applications. We are working on a solution to both these scenarios.
Survey component. A independent sheet on the same level as the context and wall context pages for the recording of survey data. The data, as with all Nabonidus data will be adaptable to individual excavation needs.
More reporting. Distribution of pottery classes across whole areas and sites. Cross Excavation analysis. .PDF output for reporting.
Public facing page for excavations to publish information about their dig to the general publc.
Document repository. Allow excavations to store all their documents online along with their excavation data.
EVE - Estimated Vessel Equivalent.
Perhaps some sort of integration with Google maps/Windows live

Please feel free to comment and if you have ideas for things we haven't covered here then please tell us.

Nabonidus Beta Release

2006-09-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Nabonidus is a free tool for the archaeological community - it is a website for the storage, management, manipulation and publication of excavation data. It is currently used by the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia run by the University of Michigan and Stanford University and has the capacity to be used by 1000’s of excavations. All data is secure and private, accessible and malleable and the system can be adapted to any excavation’s needs. Nabonidus saves enormous amounts of work and time for archaeologists both onsite and during post excavation research. Even if you are currently using a database for your excavation, all information can be easily imported from this into the Nabonidus system.

We have started this blog to keep everyone involved and interested in Nabonidus informed of new releases, bug fixes and to allow users to post suggestions about what they would like to see in future versions of the product so please feel free to add comments whereever you like.

All the best,
Sam Wood.
Nabonidus Administrator.