Digitizing the Past to Protect and Preserve History
Using supercomputers to help protect and preserve ancient
sites and artifacts
In previous eras, researchers logged their data in
notebooks, which were preserved along with photographs, maps and objects, in a
physical archive. Rabinowitz can still access the notebooks and negatives of
people who conducted research more than a hundred years ago at the same sites
he is exploring. Today, archaeologists are more likely to take thousands of
digital photos, make notes in a database on a laptop or a tablet, and record
careful, geographically referenced information that only a computer can interpret.