Recovering the Humankind's Past and Saving the Universal Heritage

This course presents an inter-disciplinary perspective to the evolution and change of archaeology. It is offered by Sapienza University of Rome through Coursera, an online education platform.

Within this frame, Ebla, which is the glory of the Sapienza school of Oriental archaeology, will have an exemplary meaning in the course development as a long lasting experience on the field and an excellent example of the scientific results of combined researches and disciplines. In this course, participants will learn the basic techniques to digitize cultural objects and obtain 3D digital copies of a physical objects such as statues, vases or archaeological sites. It will discuss how to structure the raw data in order to facilitate and make effective the access to digital contents. This will be explained by means of the European Data Model, a framework for collecting, connecting and enriching data on cultural objects provided by a number of museum, archives, sites and libraries in Europe.

Some of the course highlights are:

• Discussing how ancient societies kept memory of their own past
• Analyzing archaeological excavation of Ebla (Syria) as a case study
• Digitizing cultural objects and 3D virtual reconstruction