Citizen Archeologists, You Can Now Help Digitize 30,000 Bronze Age Tools

Everyone who has seen an Indiana Jonesmovie—and to a lesser extent, probably a few who saw National Treasure—has probably considered archeology as a career option. But any real examination of those careers reveals that while there is occasionally international travel, there is also a lot of asking for money, applying for permits to dig, and pooping outside yurts, which is why so many people end up going on to exciting careers in accounting or latte art.

But the British Museum isn't ready to let you let that dream die. If you want to help with real-life archeology, you can, without the dangers of snakes, Nazis, grant-writing, or even the world outside your home. A new joint project by the museum and the University College of London's Institute of Archaeology is asking the public to help digitize a major collection of over 30,000 Bronze Age tools and weapons that were discovered during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Interested parties can get started, like, right now. You have a choice of helping create high-quality 3D models by outlining and photo-masking an artifact, which is pretty cool, provided it doesn't bother you that you have no idea what you're outlining—I did this small iron scuba-diving flipper, for instance (just kidding, I know it's a palstave).

Other fun tasks include transcribing hand-written index cards. Initially, I thought this would be totally fun—like, maybe there'd be wry 19th century British observations on all the cards or something. But alas, those cards are either reserved for more advanced contributors, or just plain don't exist.

Is it dry? Maybe a little, but it's not unpleasant. If you find yourself bored on the internet, there are worse things you could do.

“Once we have digitized the thousands of objects in this catalogue, they can be incorporated into the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) website,” said Neil Wilkin, the curator of Bronze Age collections at the British Museum. “The result will be the largest national database of prehistoric metal finds anywhere in the world and a near-comprehensive view of what we currently know about such finds in the UK. This will allow rethinking of almost everything we currently know about the use of metal in Bronze Age Britain, giving us a far more comprehensive view of our prehistoric past."

Very cool, and what's better, the results will be returned to the public, for people to "conduct their own archaelogical research or to make use of 3D models in computer-based environments and games.”

The next Tomb Raider could use this very data achieve unprecedented levels of realism. Just think: Lara Croft could meticulously uncover and catalog palstaves based on real, actual palstaves. No, seriously, think about that.

Now, wake yourself up—either because you're literally dreaming about it or because you've bored yourself to sleep. Maybe this isn't the most exciting part about being an archeologist, but it also definitely isn't the worst. Besides, when you really get down to it, Indiana Jones was a pretty wreckless guy who wasn't doing much for the discipline of archeology.