Overview

Giorgio Buccellati – November 2025

Utilities

A standard search function, and a topical index help in finding specific items of interest. The shortcuts lead to specific items of recurrent interest within the overall UGR system.

Editorial

Besides links to the wider system within which the UGR is situated, the Front Matter section gives the fulll bibliographical information for this website understood as a “digital book” and information about its successive versions, or editions.

Introduction

A general presentation of the website as a whole. This is in line with the notion of the website as a meaningful and organic epistemic entity, i. e., a vehicle for the structuring and communication of the data and of an overall core argument, also with reference to my own personal involvement in the publication process of the full system.

UGRS: The UGR series of websites

An overview of the publication series, with full list of all websites in the system that are either completed, in progress or planned for future publication.

Part One. Theory

The full theoretical implications will be given in the Digital Discourse website: they go beyond the scope of the UGR as such, but they form its basic conceptual foundation.

Here we will expand on the two major methodological aspects that have been mentioned in the preface.

A global record dealing with broken traditions. – At issue is the very notion of archaeology as dealing with a miriad of disconnected pieces that have to be both documented individually and brought together into a meaningful whole. A global record aims for maximum objectivity in giving primacy to the moment of excavation, documenting every element as found in its connection with the other elements with which it is in contact. But it does also strive to provide the full interpretive argument that the archeologists develop in the course of the excavation, an argument that is developed in concomitance with the formulation of the strategy that governs the very process of excvation. We will thus see how the archaeological record, understood in the sense we develop here, may be seen as natively suited for such a structuring.
Browser edition and the notion of interplanarity. – The website format is the perfect venue for meeting the substantive needs of the global record: this section presents a discussion of the basic principles that define the configuration of the system and explain its full potential. The data are accessible for the kind of “browsing” we associate with data mining, i. e., searching for what is already known. But in addition to that, the UGR digital browsing entails a confrontation with the argument that encases the data and is developed on multiple levels, developing an interplanar function that correlates structurally discursive levels and specific data and data sets.
Operational frame. – As the system is actually set into motion, there are practical aspects that have to be taken into account in the implementation of the theory. The technical details are covered in a separate website; what I discuss here are the concrete factors that affect, and may limit, the effective carrying out of the theoretical aims in practical terms.

Part Two. System design

The UGR system rests on a cluster of websites that share the same format. This section of the UGR website serves as an introduction to the use of these websites, a guide for the perplexed, so to speak. While the format is meant to be intuitive, its novelty is such that an introduction to “website reading” becomes a requirement. It is in fact also meant to serve as an introdcution to “website writing” for those who are involved in that task.

The four major sections of Part Two are as follows:

Analysis and synthesis. – The interaction between data and argument corresponds to the age long distinction between analysis and synthesis. The website model allows a closer itegration between the two than was ever possible, with the development of a special new type of narrative that makes interplanarity possible.
Format. – The websites in the system use a uniform format, that allows for greater trasparency in viewing the ineraction among them. This section describes the details of this format, particularly with regard to the sidebars that allow the reader to be oriented at all times within the wider framework of each “digital book.”
Pages. – An essential component of a website is the “page” – the only component to be designated with a term borrowed from the analogical world of the printed dimension. This section focuses on the page format in the UGR system.
Authorship. – An intrinsic difficulty in rurrent website design is the attribution of credit and responsibility, i. e., of authorship. This section deals in great detail with the problem and with the solutions proposed. These are especialyy significant in view of the great number of contributors in the UGR series.

The more technical aspects underlying the system will be found in three special websites also included in the system:

The Grammar deals with the conceptual categorization system that makes it possible for all the discrete input entries to emerge as meaningful elements of the UGR seen as a whole.
The Operation Manual gives the details of how to handle files and programs.
The Mozan sitewide website shows how the individual excavation units behind the websites fit togetehr spatially in the site of modern Tell Mozan.

References

Detailed bibliographical references with links to abstracts within the system and to external sources.