In this quarter’s column there is the usual mixed bag of web sites. One new useful library resource I came across is the Anthropological Index of the Royal Anthropological Institute (http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/AIO.html). Based on the library of the Ethnography department of the British Museum – which older readers will remember as the Museum of Mankind, it is a searchable database of anthropology journals. Fortunately anthropology has a wide remit and plenty of archaeology journals are indexed here from all over the world.

The European Convention On The Protection Of The Archaeological Heritage (the Valletta convention) came into force in the UK on 20th March 2001. You can read the full text at http://conventions.coe.int as well as the text of all the other Council of Europe conventions, including the one on the European Landscape, to which the UK has not yet signed up.

CAIRN is a new service is available from the RCAHW (http://www.rcahmw.org.uk/). It combines the Welsh National Monument record with the Sites and Monuments Records’ of the Welsh archaeological trusts. With the Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Database also online (http://www.ehsni.gov.uk/BuiltHeritage/) there is now a large England shaped hole in online sites and monuments records. There are plans to put some of the English sites and Monuments Records online in the near future but ahead of the field is County Durham at the snappy address of http://www.durham.gov.uk/DurhamCC/usp.nsf/web/pages/archaeology+in+County+Durham

More and more of the registered archaeological organisations are developing their web sites. I shouldn't mention CKC archaeology (http://members.aol.com/ccurrie260/) as I designed the site.

As I said above the SMR of the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust is available through CAIRN but they also have a web site of their own (http://www.cpat.org.uk/).

It is well designed and very fast to load and I was particularly impressed by the excellent set of leaflets (bilingual of course) for local schools, relating to the National Curriculum.

An intriguing use of graphics and animation can be found at GSB Prospection (Geophysical Surveys of Bradford) site at http://www.gsbprospection.com/. It links to the Adventures in Geophysics site at (http://ourworld.compuserve.co.uk/gsbprospection/timeteam.htm). Where else can you see the Teletubbies doing geophys?

Happy Surfing.

© Mark Bell 2001