The Gardens of the Roman Empire Project (GREP) and the NYU Institute for
the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) are collaborating to produce a
digital publication (https://roman-gardens.github.io/gre/), gathering the
known remains of around 1200 ancient Roman gardens and presenting many of
them for the first time. GREP is opening up a vast repository of knowledge
for future scholarship in a free online and open-access format, featuring
content created by Cornell students in landscape architecture and
archaeology. Over the course of an intensive four-week workshop, experts
introduced students and scholars from several universities to the digital
publication tools (Atom, Markdown, Hugo, and Zotero) and linked
vocabularies and databases (Getty, TGN, Pleiades). GREP paired students
with senior scholars of different professional and disciplinary backgrounds
to enhance the exchange of ideas and learn new data visualization skills.
Student interests were taken into consideration with the introduction to
metadata and linked open data, editing and writing entries, conducting
research on recent archaeological excavations, creating illustrations and
artistic reconstructions, mapping, georeferencing, and more. Motivated
students became the authors and/or editors of their entries. The study of
ancient gardens is multiscalar and multidisciplinary, drawing on such
fields as ancient history, urban planning, and environmental archaeology,
demonstrated by our diverse cohort. We faced the usual challenges of
interdisciplinary collaboration: differences in scholarly vocabulary,
unfamiliarity with ancient (archaeological and documentary) source
material, publication standards, along with the steep learning curve of new
web-based platforms. The pandemic made communication an extra challenge.
Collaborators from China to California gathered in flexible small groups
and over diverse communication platforms like Slack. The ISAW team was
particularly prompt in solving queries and coordinating responses. By
developing these flexible workflows, we are on schedule to publish in
spring 2021, following previews at regional and national archaeological
conferences.
