The Internet, images, and archaeology: a tutorial

Frances Condron, Learning Technologies Group
Pamela Wace, Donald Baden - Powell Quaternary Research Centre

Tutorial on Aegean civilizations and the Near East

Getting into the subject: several resources are available for you to find your way into this tutorial topic. You can see how other departments teach the Aegean civilizations through their online course material; you can run searches on Argos; explore online articles and site reports.

Read all of these things carefully. Because anyone can put pages on the Web, you have to take a critical approach to online resources.

1. Can you find out who has written these documents?
2. What evidence can you find to show that the documents are reliable, quality sources of information?
3. Do you find the arguments convincing?
4. What information would you like to find but don't have from these resources?

When looking through these resources, consider the following questions:

1. What does the term 'civilization' mean?
2. Are terms such as village, town, palace, city useful? Why could their use be problematic?
3. How are civilizations manifested archaeologically?
4. What are the differences archaeologically between the civilizations of the Near East and the Aegean?
5. Are archaeological approaches to these two areas different, the same?
6. What environmental differences are there between the Aegean and the Near East? How do the human responses to the environment, and environmental change, differ in these two areas?

| Online course materials | Articles, Excavations, Artefacts | Gateways to the Aegean and Near East | Searching the Web |

Online course materials

• 'Aegean civilisations' from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
• The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean
• Minoans, Mycenaeans, Greek Dark Age
• Mesopotamia
• Egypt

Articles, Excavations, Artefacts

• Pylos Regional Archaeological Project
• Mochlos, Crete
• The Marki Alonia Project, Cyprus
• Megiddo, Israel
• Around the Indus in 90 slides
• Archaeological Projects, Oriental Institute, Chicago

Gateways to the Aegean and Near East

• Exploring Ancient World Cultures - look at the sections on the Near East and Greece.
• SCIEM 2000 - the synchronisation of civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BC.
• ABZU - Guide to resources for the study of the Near East.

Searching the Web

Try using the same term on different search engines to locate sites or topics on Aegean civilizations - results vary.

• Argos - search engine for the ancient and medieval worlds
• AllTheWeb
• AltaVista
• Google

© Internet Archaeology URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue12/7/tutorial/pwfctut_example.html
Last updated: Wed Aug 21 2002