Preface to the UGR system

Giorgio Buccellati – January 2008, April 2025

For full bibliographical information about this site see Front Matter.

For a disambiguation of the term UGR see the page about the three UGRs.

Two main goals

Broken traditions: a “global” record

Archaeology deals primarily with data recovered from the matrix of the soil: for the most part, they were not placed there as witnesses to culture from which they stemmed; they are rather loose fragments of a tradition that has no more living carriers, hence a broken tradition.

We focus first on the “brokenness,” i. e., on the disjointed fragments as they are being recovered from the ground, in order to arrive then at a reconstruction of the living tradition from which they stem.

To this end, the first aim of the UGR project is to present the data as first observed and recorded during the excavation process – specifically, the data found at the site of ancient Urkesh. And these data are published in their entirety, constituting a “global” record in the specific sense that nothing is omitted.

In this type of publication, primacy is given, therefore, to the record of the excavation units: every observation ever made by the excavators is effectively “published” as of the first day it has been made.

Browser edition: “interplanarity”

The great amount of data thus recorded is not published as just a database, but is rather so articulated as to offer overarching threads that hold the details together, while at the same time allowing for full capillary access to the most minute of details.

As a result, the global record is not the electronic version of a printed book, nor is it only a data base. It offers instead a radically new approach to digital publishing,an inter-planar system of websites, which are “written” in function of each other and expect to be “read” in the same way.

As such, it will require a certain effort for the “user” to develop a full familiarity with its characteristics: the goal is that one should learn to “read” rather than to just “use” a website, in the same way one studies (“reads”) a printed book or article.

Implementation

A “digital” publication

The browser edition of the Urkesh data aims to provide a type of publication that differs substantially from what is standard in the field. While fulfilling the same goals as the normal final publication of an archaeological project, it goes beyond that aim by addressing the issue of digital publishing.

A UGR Website not the electronic version of a printed book. It offers instead a radically new approach that is very explicitly “born digital.” The “user” is addressed as a “reader,” and this will require a certain effort developing a full familiarity with the characteristics of the system, although it is hoped that both the basic categorization of the material and the digital presentation will easily be appropriated as readily intuitive.

A “final” publication

A major aspect of the Urkesh Global Record is that it is produced on an ongoing basis in the field during the excavations, from the normal input provided by all members of the project. This is a central goal of the project and it adds considerably to the broader significance of a browser edition in three respects.

The data portion of the Global Record (the one accessed from the black sidebar to the right and from the lower red sidebar to the left) is processed on a daily basis, and is therefore available instantly to the archaeologists during the process of excavation. This impacts greatly on strategy, because it provides constant and instant access to the full universe of data. Hence the value of the project should be judged not only for what it offers at a later date and a remote location, but in view of the fact that the Global Record is constructed in exactly the same format during the very process of excavation.
For this very reason another major goal of the project emerges clearly: the remote user has access to exactly the same observations as the excavator (if not the same physical data). The goal here is to allow to come as close as possible to the ideal objective of allowing the repetition of the original experiment. While the excavation cannot be duplicated as such, conclusions can be drawn on the basis of exactly all and the same observations that have guided the excavator.
Finally, we address thereby the problem of the chronic delay in the publication of excavation reports. The solution proposed rests on two considerations that are purely methodological – the sharp distinction between emplacement, deposition and typology on the one hand and, on the other, the application of a rigorous grammatical approach to the data as observed.

In the future, it is expected that publication of any given unit may appear within a span of a few months following the close of excavations.

A Grammar of the Archaeological Record

Underlying the whole project is a broadly conceived theoretical effort, which I have articulated in a printed volume and a correlative website entitled: A Grammar of the Archaeological Record. The main thrust of my effort is the development of a specific theory of excavation. While how-to manuals abound, research on theory is lagging behind, and mere techniques are often presented as methods.

The full description Grammar is presented in a dedicated website.

A synthetic overview of the axioms that underlie the Grammar is given separately. This overview dates back to the earliest stages of my effort, when its full implications could not yet be fully understood.

Authorship

Special attention is given in the UGR system to crediting authorship in all its many facets. The number of people involved is very high, and the task of giving proper credit is corresponding complex: a full description of our crediting standards will show how seriously the problem has been considered.

Corollaries

Objectivity

This approach to producing a “final” publication at the end of any given day of excavation illustrates another major goal of the project: the remote user has access to exactly the same observations as the excavator (if not the same physical data). The goal here is to allow to come as close as possible to the goal of repeating the original experiment, which is at the basis of any scientific endeavor..

Database and argument

The conventional understanding of a website used to publish scholarly data in general, and those of an excavation in particular, is that the website serves as a repository of data to be mined – a database.

In the UGR there is, to be sure, a full database – one, in fact that is fuller than what is normally found in archaeological databases, every single observation is retained as part of the record.

But the database is thoroughly integrated with an interpretive argument presented in a properly digital manner, the one described through the concept of interplanarity.