I have been in San Diego since Sunday, participating in the fascinating conference MedArchNet 2008, which is the First International Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure for the Mediterranean Archaeology Network, whose aim is to produce the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land (DAAHL), part of an envisioned Mediterranean wide project. For more information, go to the DAAHL website (and the conference website was well).
The conference was organized by Prof. Tom Levy of UCSD and was hosted at the absolutely unbelievable CALIT2 institute.

In addition to a truly excellent collection of very exciting papers relating to methods, theory, data and potential of this atlas, we also had an opportunity to see some of the extremely high tech digital media technology that is being created at CALIT2. Some of this stuff is so unbelievably sophisticated, that one feels that you are watching a science fiction movie…

Here is a picture of me lecturing, earlier today… (courtesy of Gal Avraham)


The Israeli contingent included quite a few people from BIU and the Tell es-Safi/Gath Project in particular, including Itzik Shai (Area supervisor, Area A), Gal Avraham (who is doing his PhD on a GIS analysis of the finds from Area A), Yigal Levin (who is the educational director at the dig), and Jessie Pincus (who conducted GPR surveys at the site in previous seasons).

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