Having just finished writing a 'paper and ink' guide entitled ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE NET: AN INTERNET RESOURCE LIST, I thought it might be worth summarizing what I have found. This is my first attempt at writing a resource list, and I probably haven't found every relevant resource. Those I have found are not necessarily straightforward to classify, and my selection of resources, particularly of those 'closely related', but not archaeology per se, has been (inevitably) subjective. So far I have found few non-English language resources, though doubtless they exist. Nevertheless I think it may be worth reporting on what I have managed to turn up. *************************************************** RESOURCES DEVOTED TO ARCHAEOLOGY As of September 1st, I had found 50 resources devoted to archaeology. The United States contributed 33 of these, Australia 9 (all of them at ANU), Britain 5, Canada 2 and Greece 1. Seven resources were for the archaeological sciences, the rest for 'general' archaeology. By subject area, 13 resources were devoted to Mediterranean and Classical archaeology, 6 to the Americas, 3 to the Near East, 2 each to Oceania/Pacific basin and East Asia, and 1 each to southeast Asia and northern Europe. In terms of the different internet services, there were 12 electronic mail listserver common-interest discussion groups, 9 Gopher servers, 9 on-line databases, 8 World-Wide Web servers, 4 combined Gopher/World-Wide Web servers, 2 Internet Usenet common-interest discussion groups, 2 electronic newsletters, 1 on-line museum catalogue, and 1 specialized network services provider. ARCHEOLOGICAL PUBLISHING ON THE NETWORK I located 7 special archaeological World-Wide Web publishing projects on the network. The United States was responsible for 5 of these, the other 2 were Italian; 6 of them devoted to Mediterranean/classical archaeology, the other one to the Near East. 'CLOSELY-RELATED FIELDS' I identified 45 key resources for fields "closely related to archaeology such as anthropology, geography (especially Geographical Information Systems), history, museology, and conservation". Of these 29 were in the United States, 4 in Canada, 3 in Britain, 2 in Australia, and 1 each in New Zealand and Switzerland. Ten resources were science related. By subject area, 5 resources were devoted to Mediterranean and Classical archaeology, 3 to the Americas, 2 to East Asia, 1 to the Near East, and 1 for northern Europe. In network service terms, there were 19 electronic mail listserver common-interest discussion groups, 8 World-Wide Web servers, 7 on-line documents, 4 on-line databases, 4 combined Gopher/World-Wide Web servers, 3 Internet Usenet common-interest discussion groups, 2 electronic journals and newsletters, and 1 Gopher server. *************************************************** SOME TENTATIVE / RANDOM OBSERVATIONS 1. East coast academic American classical/Mediterranean archaeologists (with facilities at Michigan, Brown, Cornell, and Harvard universities, Bates and Colby colleges etc.) are using the network far more creatively than any other group. 2. The number of students, academics and dirt archaeologists using the net is difficult to estimate. There were 1377 individuals subscribed to one or more of the three lists - AIA-L, Arch-L and Arch-Theory - on the19th of September. However there are probably a significant number of archaeologists who use the network, but who are not on the listservs. My guess is that there are less than 2000 archaeologists now using Internet facilities. 3. The optimum size for a list seems to be about 250 to 500. These medium-sized lists can be both lively and reasonably intimate. I was very impressed recently when 20 or so 'lurkers' on ARTIFACT 'came out' and introduced themselves one by one. On the other hand there are some small intermittent lists with under 150 subscribers, and I doubt whether these are viable. 4. There is a marked lack of British participation on the net, relative to the substantial British contribution to archaeological research, publishing and teaching. Apart from one lively electronic mail listserver common-interest discussion group (Arch-Theory), the facilities I included were generally there for their potential rather than for any substantial present offerings (and possibly because I am British myself). The impressively conceived multimedia archaeology project known as the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) Archaeology Consortium Project, (in which most if not all of the British university archaeology departments are participating), is apparently NOT cross-platform, and NOT being put on the net. 5. The Australian resources at ANU while plentiful, have been very difficult to access during the past year. I haven't been able to discover why this is, but I assume the ANU system can't handle much traffic. *************************************************** ARCHAEOLOGY ON THE NET: AN INTERNET RESOURCE LIST by Simon Holledge Descriptive list complete with subject index and appendix describing Internet services [electronic mail (e-mail), file transfer protocol (FTP), Gophers, Listserv common-interest discussion groups, telnet, Usenet News, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), and the World-Wide Web]. 80 pages, B5 size. Price: US$ 22.50 / 15 pounds sterling / Australian $ 30 Please note that this is INCLUSIVE of postage and packing. 1st edition: September 1994 (25th anniversary of the Internet!). Published by WESSEX INTERNATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY, Cambridge, England European distribution: Wessex International Archaeology, 33 Herbert Street, Cambridge CB4 1AG, England E-mail contact: [log in to unmask] North America (until October 6), rest of the world, : E-mail contact: [log in to unmask] North America (from October 7): E-mail contact: [log in to unmask] Australia / New Zealand: E-mail contact: [log in to unmask] _________________________________________________________ Is this a commercial? Well, yes. My apologies to anybody who feels unhappy about this. It would be euphemistic to call this project non-profit making. We actually expect to make a loss (of money, not to mention sleep.) But I hope that by publishing it we can at least save a few people from the perils of nocturnal 'net-surfing' to which I unfortunately succumbed. If, to my surprise, we do make a profit $@Q (J and the publication survives in one form or another, we intend to reduce the price of the next issue by a substantial amount. _________________________________________________________ Simon Holledge, 1-8-3 Takada, Toshima-ku, Tokyo 171, Japan E-mail [log in to unmask] Fax +81-3-3232-5278, Phone +81-3-3985-6317 HRA: Institute of Archaeology, University College London