The Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability (CCAS) was established in 2015 and is located at UC San Diego’s Calit2-Qualcomm Institute. CCAS promotes collaboration among researchers from across a wide range of disciplines with the aim of using emerging technologies to understand the relationships between human behavior, material culture, and the environment. CCAS explores new digital approaches to research, conservation and teaching for world cultural heritage through development of innovative data capture, curation, analysis, and dissemination over the Internet and through scientific visualization facilities that are accessible to the public.
UC San Diego and CCAS are home to the $1.06 million UC President’s Research Catalyst Project “At-Risk Cultural Heritage and the Digital Humanities” (ARCH). This project connects faculty and students across four UC campuses (UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC San Diego) conducting path-breaking archaeological research at locations in Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Morocco. During the 2-year grant period, the researchers will document and safeguard virtually over 10,000 years of at-risk cultural materials, architecture and landscapes. Collaborating Principal Investigators of the project are: Thomas Evan Levy (Lead PI, Distinguished Professor, Anthropology, UC San Diego; Norma Kershaw Chair, Jewish Studies Program), Nicola Lercari (Assistant Professor, Humanities and World Cultures, UC Merced), Benjamin Porter (Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley; Acting Director, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum), Willeke Wendrich (Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA; Editorial Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press; Joan Silsbee Chair of African Cultural Archaeology), and Jurgen Schulze (Associate Research Scientist, Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science, Calit2-Qualcomm Institute, UC San Diego).
