Editorial

• Main Author: Judith Winters
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of York 2003-04-01
• Series: Internet Archaeology
• Subjects: archaeology; editorial; subscription; software; staff
• Online Access: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue13/editorial13.html

The first article to be published in this issue was a research article by Symonds and Ling on concepts of time and travel in early medieval England. The authors focus on the production and consumption of artefacts, specifically pottery, in Anglo-Scandinavian Lincolnshire and used approximations of distance based on road and river routes, as well as the estimations of the time it took to travel along those routes during the early medieval period, to analyse the pottery distribution in Lincolnshire. An interesting element of the publication was the inclusion of a 'Java' map interface designed by the authors which mimics the interactive abilities of a GIS and allows readers to investigate the patterns of data for themselves. The other articles in this issue could be termed technical papers and their focus is more on the tools and methods of analysis. Very different in scope, they range from software developed for recording animal bones (Harland et al.), to the recording of human bones (Roksandic) to Internet software developed for radiocarbon wiggle-matching (Christen) and making internet resources interoperable (Fernie). In retrospect, the underlying theme of all of these articles is the importance of standards in exploring from the same platform a variety of data and information. It is something of a truism these days to acknowledge the burdgeoning wealth of digital data, but implementing standards in our tools and methods of analysis is of such obvious importance. We are bound to see more developments in these fields but the articles published here take up the challenge. As the tools and methods described are adopted, they will surely form the solid foundations of future archaeological investigation.