Holyrood Park Stone Tools Mobile Application

Danielle Goetz

Context

This project looked at the feasibility of creating an Android App that connects stone tool artefacts back with their site location within Holyrood park in which they were found. To do this the Project partnered with the National Museum of Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Three different integrated Development environments for android were explored these include: IntelliJ, Eclipse, and App Inventor. The project explores the benefits of each IDEA and the draw backs of each and why App Inventor was used to create the Holyrood Park Stone Tool Mobile Application. It compares other Archaeological Apps and what they offer and the benefits of reconnect artefacts held in museums displays and in their collections stores back to their site locations within the landscape.

The Research Questions:

1. Is it necessary to connect artefacts back to the landscape in which that they were found?

2. Do the tools that are being displayed provide an accurate representation to the user about that archaeological landscape?

3. What other research tools could be developed for informing the public, considering alternatives to a mobile application that could provide the user with more accurate knowledge than that provided in the application?

4. Is there a better application programming interface to give the user interface (UI) a more appealing environment that would engage more users?

5. Will the application substantially benefit the general public?

Methodology

Holyrood Parks archaeological field survey data held by the RCAHMS which held 494 points. There were 21 stone tool artefacts used to create a point of interest map. There were three main artefact classes: Arrowheads, Axeheads and Scrapers that were made into distribution maps. There were also photos taken by the NMS of 10 artefacts that were used to show the importance of seeing an artefact location but also being able to visualize that artefact while seeing where the site was that the artefact was recovered.

Results

A series of 5 Maps were created using the points from the RCAHMS. These maps were made in Googles Fusion Table Map. The HPST app navigates its users from their location to the artefact location using google Maps API V3. Combining Google Drive apps with the App Inventor 2 IDEA users are able to access valuable information about the stone tool artefacts found in Holyrood Park.

Discussion

AI2 has been shown to have many advantages for Non-programmers to be able to create an App that is affordable and easy to create and fix errors. It has proven to be reliable once being downloaded onto an android device. Further work would be required to add all 494 points from the survey, which would provide the user with more distribution maps that would be a base for analysis for research. There would need to be two types of logins for the public and the researcher who has been given full access of the protected data. It would also be beneficial to have app that could be download on any device, this would call for a webpages for laptops and desktops where the app could be download to mobile devices and provided more in-depth information about Archaeological landscape of Holyrood Park.

Conclusion

This project focused on two main sources of data for association of those sources to create a proof-of-concept mobile app of Holyrood Park Stone Tools. This project demonstrates that communication between different data sources can be useful. For example, the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland focuses on site records and location, while the National Museum of Scotland focuses on preserving artefacts and performing research about the objects. By staying in a close working relationship, different sources of data can create a knowledge base that would be unmatched in terms of size, accuracy, quality and completeness. This would allow for an open source of information for education, research, and general knowledge for the public, providing a unique and exciting way to visualize past cultural heritage, reconnecting with the generations that have gone before, and keeping this connection so that future generations do not forget. The growth of technologies for the retrieval, handling, and visualisation of geospatial data has brought with it the demands on automated cartography to provide theory and methods that will allow their coherent operations (Meng, 2003), described in Edwardes et al. (2005).

Below are some of the key points resulting from this project:

▪ This research acts as a base study to create mobile applications with GPS recordings of archaeological sites within Holyrood Park; this work can be extended further in the future, with various additions. The future of education is in digital technology

▪ Future work would be to add the complete 494 data points to the application

▪ Eventually, the goal is to create a complete virtual reality of the entire landscape and to connect it with archaeological databases

▪ Much work remains to be performed to create a fully functional and complete archaeological database

▪ Applications should be designed to be compatible with all device types so that anyone can access and use

▪ Just because the artefact is connected to a point does not mean that is where it was originally located or manufactured; the quality of data and accuracy of the site location would need to be stressed within later versions of the mobile app

▪ The application would specify how the artefact was discovered and how the coordinate location connected to the artefact was documented

▪ Not all artefacts are in situ to their original location where they were used or manufactured. This will be clearly stated in future apps created by the Scottish public archaeology societies.

References

Cowie, T. and McKeague, P. (2010). Mapping material culture: exploring the interface between museum artefacts and their geographical context. Scottish Archaeological Journal, [online] 32(1), pp.73-93. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/saj.2011.0009 [Accessed 31 Jul. 2014].

Royal Commsion on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland., 1997. Holyrood Park: the archaeology of the Royal Park, Edinburgh, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Android Developers 2014, Dev Guide, Available Online at: http://developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.html [Accessed: April, 2014].