Proceedings from a workshop held at Wolfson College, Oxford in 2017. In light of rapid technological developments in digital imaging, this volume aims to inform specialist and general readers about some of the ways in which imaging technologies are transforming the study and presentation of archaeological and cultural artefacts.

As the prototypical exemplar of modern visual technology, photography was once viewed as a way to enable vision to bypass imagination, producing more reliable representations of reality. But as an achievement of technological modernity, photography can also be seen as a way to realize a creation of the imagination more vividly than can painting or drawing. Photography and Imagination investigates, from diverse points of view focusing on both theory and practice, the relation between these two terms. The book explores their effect on photography’s capacity, through various forms and modalities of imaginative investments and displacements, to affect even reality itself.

The new volume of the CyberResearch series brings together thirty-three authors under the umbrella of digital methods in Archaeology, Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Biblical studies. Both a newbie and a professional reader will find here diverse research topics, accompanied by detailed presentations of digital methods: distant reading of text corpora, GIS digital imaging, and various methods of text analyses. The volume is divided into three parts under the headings of archaeology, texts and online publishing, and includes a wide range of approaches from the philosophical to the practical. This volume brings the reader up-to-date research in the field of digital Ancient Near Eastern studies, and highlights emerging methods and practices. While not a textbook per se, the book is excellent for teaching and exploring the Digital Humanities.

Nel volume 31.2 sono pubblicati gli Atti di due Convegni internazionali. Il primo, “Milano internazionale: la fragilità territoriale dei contesti archeologici” (Milano, 13 marzo 2019), promosso dal Dipartimento di Beni Culturali e Ambientali dell’Università degli Studi di Milano e dal Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani del Politecnico di Milano, è a cura di G. Bagnasco Gianni, S. Bortolotto, A. Garzulino e M. Marzullo. Il secondo, “Logic and computing. The underlying basis of digital archaeology”, è una sessione speciale dell’IMEKO TC-4 International Conference on Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (MetroArchaeo, Firenze, 4-6 dicembre 2019), a cura di A. Caravale e P. Moscati. Gli Atti raccolgono rispettivamente 9 e 15 contributi, introdotti dai curatori che illustrano scopi e risultati delle ricerche presentate, in cui l’uso delle tecnologie informatiche è determinante per l’analisi, l’interpretazione e la diffusione e valorizzazione dei dati. La prospettiva diacronica della sessione dedicata al calcolo e alla logica nella storia dell’informatica archeologica consente di collegare, attraverso un ponte teorico-metodologico, le prime esperienze di informatizzazione dei dati archeologici con le tendenze più recenti dell’archeologia digitale.

Conservation research in libraries is a rapidly growing field. This book places analysis within its context in conservation and provides examples of how this expensive resource can be used. Through a series of case studies, it describes major analytical procedures, including visualization, molecular, elemental and separation techniques as well as chemical tests. It is thus a suitable reference work for library conservators and curators. Please note: Despite careful production of our books, sometimes mistakes happen. Unfortunately, the authorship for some chapters wasn’t correct in the original publication. Chapter 5 was written by Andrew Beeby and David Howell as co-author, chapter 6 by Kelly Domoney and David Howell as co-author, and chapter 9 is authored by Anita Quye. This will be corrected. We apologize for the mistake.

How we understand our shared and individual heritage, interpret and disseminate that knowledge is increasingly central to contemporary society. The emerging context for such development is the field of heritage science. Inherently interdisciplinary, and involving both the Arts and Humanities, engineering, conservation and the digital sciences, the development of heritage science is a driver for change; socially, economically and technically. This book has gathered contributions from leading researchers from across the world and provides a series of themed contributions demonstrating the theoretical, ethical, methodological and technical methods which lie at the heart of heritage science. Archaeology, conservation, museology, the arts, forensic sciences, and heritage management are represented through collaborative research with specialists in applied technologies including object and terrestrial laser scanning, multi-spectral imaging, visualisation, GIS and 3D-printing. Together, the chapters present important case studies to demonstrate the recent advances and best practise within the discipline, highlighting the value of digital transformation across the heritage community that includes objects, monuments, sites and landscapes spanning two million years of natural and cultural history from all over the world. Visual Heritage: Digital Approaches in Heritage Science is aimed at a broad academic and practice-led readership, which extends across many disciplines and will be of considerable value to scholars, practitioners, and students working within heritage and computer science at all levels. The content, which applies heritage science across two million years of cultural history will be appreciated by a general audience, as well as those wishing simply to explore the vast range of potential technical applications across all the disciplines represented in the book.