An Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word was my first necessity, and I was pleased to find that it downloaded smoothly, without crashing my computer as so often happens when I try to stretch the limits of my capabilities.
I then had to sit down and add hyperlinks to the existing text. This was a question of providing the reader with the means of jumping to different, but related, parts of the paper. It was a relatively straightforward business once I had grasped exactly what I had to type in, but some caution was necessary because the blue links are distracting and I did not want too many on any one page. Nor did I want to link down to text that lay only a few lines away from the reader's position. I had, therefore, to try and identify all possible links, but exercise moderation. The hyperlinks did tell on my right hand, however: never had I clicked the mouse so much in such a short space of time and I began to see why people get repetitive strain injury.
At the same time, I was starting to prepare the lithic catalogue for scrutiny by Alan Vince. He would then integrate it into the paper. As the original catalogue was written with Access, I had to provide a version without any queries, forms or reports. Alan went through the data in detail to check for errors and omissions, totals that didn't add up, and general misunderstandings. I have been working on lithic material for over twenty years, but none of my catalogues has ever been taken apart in such detail. Luckily, there were only a couple of problems and Alan could get down to converting the material into a format suitable for readers to consult on-line.
There were no other finds from the site, and because the stratigraphy was very simple this information was not added to the published report. With hindsight I think that this was an oversight. A complete record of the excavation really requires the inclusion of all data, and this is neither difficult nor space consuming with electronic publication.
We decided to use all of the line drawings that had been prepared for the paper publication. In addition, we would supplement these with photos of selected flint artefacts. Many of the lithics were very small and so the photos were tricky but we produced a series that seemed to be satisfactory and they were scanned for digital reproduction. This was harder than anticipated, however, mainly because the photos were not as good as we had thought. Small pieces like microliths are particularly difficult to photograph in the necessary detail for on-screen images and a digital camera, or professional help would be in order next time. The finished result in the Internet Archaeology paper is not 100% satisfactory.
Scanning of the line drawings was easier, though the end result could also have been improved upon with experience.
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URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue7/wickham/edit1.html
Last updated: Mon Sept 6 1999