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Three aspects of the UGR
The term “Urkesh Global Record” refers to three interrelated entities:
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1. A system and its underlying theory
The system was designed to produce a type of publication capable of accopunting more objectively and definively for ah archaeological excavation. A description of this system is the primary goal of this UGR website.
Underlying the whole project is a broadly conceived theoretical effort, which I have articulated in a volume entitled A Critique of Archaeological Reason. The main thrust of that 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.
A synthetic overview of the axioms that underlie the system is given separately. This overview dates back to the earliest stages of my effort, when its full implications could not yet be fully understood. It is indicative of the coherence with which the system has developed over time.
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2. A cluster of websites
As applied to the specific data from the excavations at ancient Urkesh, the system developed into a number of websites, or digital books, which present, in full detail, the entire record resulting from the excavations. While work is in progress, beginning with the first day of excavation at any given unit, these websites are available in a beta format. All the components of the cluster are listed in the right hand side of this website.
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3. A publication series
When any one of the websites in the cluster is ready for publication, it is formally published as a volume in the UGR series.
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A “global” record
The aim of this project is to present the data of the excavations at the ancient site of Urkesh in their entirety – as first observed and recorded during the excavation process. I call this a “global record” in the specific sense that nothing is omitted.
At the same time, the presentation is so articulated that I trust it will be possible to grasp the overarching threads that hold the details together, while at the same time allowing for full capillary access to the most minute of details.
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A “digital” record
This is not the electronic version of a printed book, nor is it only a data base. It offers instead a radically new approach because the data are very explicitly “born digital”: the UGR proposes 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, although it is hoped that both the basic categorizaion of the material and the digital presentation may be readily appropriated as intuitive. The goal is that one should learn to “read” rather than “using” a website, in the same way one studies (“reads”) a printed book or article.
The resulting publication differs substantially from what is standard in the field, and we may refer to it as a browser edition
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A “final” publication
An important goal of the Urkesh Global Record is to address the problem of the chronic delay in the publication of excavation reports. The solution proposed rests on methodological more than any other consideration – in particular, 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.
A fundamental corollary is that 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.
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.
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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..
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Database and argument
The conventional undertanding 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 whant is normally found in archeological 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.
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