Crowd- and Community-Fuelled Archaeological Research

This project develops a web platform called MicroPasts where full-time academic researchers, volunteer archaeological and historical societies and other interested members of the public can collaborate together. It is a place where enthusiasts of any background can not only create high-quality research data together about our human history, but also collaboratively design and fund entirely new research projects. In a technical sense, MicroPasts supports (a) modular applications for massive online data collection about archaeology, history and heritage, as well as (b) a micro-funding model for supporting new, not-for-profit research projects where collaboration between academic institutions and volunteers is a key feature. The software used to build the platform is entirely free and open source, and the data created via the platform is required to be open-licensed and publicly available.