This workshop will consist of presentations, discussion and hands-on demonstration. We will present advances in robust new conservation tools from the emerging science known as Computational Photography. The common feature of the computational photography imaging family is the purpose-driven, selective extraction of information from sequences of digital photographs. The information is extracted from the photographic sequences by computer algorithms. The extracted information is then integrated into new digital representations containing information not present in the original photographs, examined either alone or sequentially.
We will describe robust photography-based digital techniques for use within conservation and associated research. We will show how the stories of conservators using these tools and the disclosed insights about the art works they care for can be leveraged and digitally presented to their colleagues, visitors to the collections, and the interested public.
The most mature and widely adopted technique for collections conservation and research is Reflectance Transformation Imaging. RTI creates digital representations from image sequences where light is projected from different directions. The lighting information from this image set is mathematically synthesized into an RTI image, enabling a user to interactively re-light and enhance the subject’s surface in incredible detail. An IMLS sponsored training program is bringing a four day RTI training to all six masters programs in art conservation in North America, as well as four regional museum trainings open to museum professionals. As a result of this program over 150 museum professionals and pre-professionals will be fully trained in RTI technology, in addition to the many institutions that are adopting RTI outside of this program.
The workshop will present the latest developments in RTI. We will examine multi-spectral RTI and the hidden topological landscapes disclosing under-painting and drawings in the infra-red and the fine surface information disclosed in ultra-violet wavelengths. We will discuss RTI of subjects under magnification using macro and microscopic optics as well as updates in viewing technology.
New developments in the related technology Algorithmic Rendering (AR), which uses the same data sets as RTI, will also be presented. The development of new AR technology by Princeton University and Cultural Heritage Imaging is supported by a significant grant from the National Science Foundation. The end-product will be an open-source tool which will extract and merge visual information available only under certain lighting conditions, certain wavelengths, or certain imaging modalities. Conservators will be able to generate high quality, comprehensible illustrations for documentation, scientific study, and sharing with colleagues, collection visitors, and the public.
New software tools to better collect and manage the metadata surrounding the creation of RTI and AR will also be discussed. This “digital lab notebook” is a critical element in the generation of scientifically reliable digital representations that enable future reuse for novel purposes, assist the long-term digital preservation of the virtual representations, and aid the physical conservation of the digitally represented museum materials.
Computational photography is a rapidly expanding field generating new tools and methods that can aide conservators in the documentation, study, and widespread understanding of the art works under their care. Note: this workshop is designed to complement the paper session “Advances in computational photography techniques for conservation, research, and public access”.
V-MusT is a EU FP7-funded network of excellence that aims to provide the heritage sector with the tools and support to develop virtual museums that are educational, enjoyable, long-lasting and easy to maintain. This meeting will bring together those CAA2012 delegates involved in the project.
Another in the "Intro to ..." presentations for newcomers to CAA and computing in archaeology.Could be held with workshops before the conference sessions proper.Would dob in my mates Jess Ogden and John Pouncett to run this one if the organisers felt there were a place for it in the program.
A hands-on workshop with a new 3D data-acquisition system from the Metrology division of the Nikon Corporation.
The purpose of the workshop is to explain the technologies and present techniques relating to the mapping of archaeological datasets to the CIDOC CRM and the CRM-EH extension of that ontology. We will demonstrate this using both pre-defined STELLAR project templates and other user-defined templates. In particular we will demonstrate the STELLAR mapping/extraction tools and report on experience with using them, including input at the workshop from the Archaeology Data Service. We will discuss mapping and extraction issues and provide practical feedback on implementation work we have carried out creating archaeological Linked Data. We would also welcome feedback and experiences from participants who have either used the STELLAR tools or who are carrying out similar work.
Heurist is a flexible, web-based collaborative Open Source database with a wide variety of applications, from archaeological data to historical encyclopaedias and text annotation. It has recently become the platform for a major legacy excavation data publication project for the site of Zagora. This had led to the development of models for complex interlinked excavation data and connectivity to ArcGIS (in addition to built-in mapping). In this half day workshop we will introduce participants to the use of Heurist for heterogeneous archaeological data, illustrated with the Zagora database. Since it is web based, anyone with an internet connected computer will be able to follow along and spawn their own live database on our server, import the models from Zagora and import some trial datasets which we will provide. The workshop will proceed from database creation and definition, through data import, online data entry and linking of data, to generation of online published output. At the end of the workshop participants should have the confidence to tackle a new database, eiteh for a site or for other types of data collection. The workshop will not require any special hardware or technical skills. Trial data will be made available via the web.
In the last few years 3D technologies have found in the archaeological studies an important application field and, from niche experimentations, have become a standard tool for the documentation, investigation and presentation of sites, artefacts and excavations.
The aim of this half-day workshop is to present to the archaeological community the various tools offered by MeshLab for the manipulation and use of 3D data in the archaeology field.
MeshLab is an Open Source tool for the visualization and processing of large, unstructured 3D models, developed by the Visual Computing Lab (ISTI-CNR). Born as a university project, MeshLab has steadily grown in features and usability, reaching more than 100.000 downloads in the last year. MeshLab is used by hundreds of research groups and industries, and by thousands of 3D hobbyists. Featuring various state-of-the art 3D processing algorithms (often implemented by their academic authors), it represents a solid and free alternative to commercial tools for 3D scanning data management.
The workshop will cover the various stages of the use of a 3D model, from its creation to its complete exploitation, focusing on the functionalities more interesting from a CH and Archaeological point of view
3D Model creation from raw data: the tools needed to process raw 3D data coming from 3D scanners (triangulation, structured light or time of flight) and 3d-from-images reconstruction tools (like Arc3D, PhotoFly or PhotoScan). Scan alignment and merging. Photographic alignment, color mapping and texture generation.
3D model manipulation: model cleaning and filtering. Smoothing, simplification and format conversion.
Measurement and data extraction: taking measures on a 3D geometry, point picking, model annotation, numerical comparison between 3D geometries.
Visualization and documentation: advanced shading, rendering, image generation.
The Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB) is an open source web based environment for the recording, analysis, archiving and publication of archaeological projects. It has been adopted by several professional field units in the UK and a growing number of academic research projects based at UK universities and operating in the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
This workshop will look at aspects of the use of the IADB at various stages in the progress of different types of archaeological projects. Topics covered will include: Approaches to creating an excavation database; Finds management and “stock control”; Creating and managing a photographic archive; The IADB and the Cloud – putting everything on line; Approaches to post-excavation analysis; The IADB as a platform for web based report and database publication.
More information about the IADB is available at http://www.iadb.org.uk.
The workshop is open to all as no previous knowledge of the IADB will be assumed.
ARK - the Archaeological Recording Kit - is a highly flexible system that you can use to put your archaeological data on the web so that you can work on it collaboratively and share it with a wider audience.ARK is currently in use on a large number of different archaeological and non-archaeological projects around the world and has been available for download for a several years.
Version 1.0 of the system was released in 2011 and we thought that CAA 2012 would be a great oportunity for people to get a hands on introduction to the latest version of the system, it's installation, customisation and setup. Bring a computer to take part in the installation tutorial.
This workshop will introduce the use of Free and Open Source (FOSS) GIS software for archaeological applications. Both Quantum GIS (QGIS) and the Geographical Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS) will be used. There are no prerequisites, and no previous GIS experience is required. The workshop will present an overview of some applications of GIS for archaeologists, and will provide a basic introduction to QGIS and its GRASS plug-in.
Participants will learn how to download the software (Windows, Mac or Linux), where to find help and various online resources for archaeology GIS, and will be provided with specific examples of the use of these for archaeology. The hands-on activities will center on learning the basic use and capabilities of QGIS for the display and analysis of spatial data. The GRASS plug-in will be used to conduct more comprehensive vector, raster, and voxel data display and analysis.
A brief introduction to how these tools fit into the ‘open source stack’ together with other capabilities including python, WGS, R, and Postgis will also be presented. The goal is to have each participant capable of downloading the current version of the code and mastering the basics of using QGIS and GRASS for their own archaeological work.
Workshop Main Theme and GoalsResearch and practice in archaeology often generates and needs to manage a large amount of information, which exhibits complex relationships and categorisation phenomena. The quality of the conceptual models that we use when gathering, organising, processing and reporting this information determines, to a large extent, the quality of the results. Creating explicit, high-quality conceptual models is a crucial task in any information-intensive endeavour, and especially in those where the complexity of the information means that intuition alone is not sufficient.
This workshop aims to introduce the discipline of conceptual modelling, often seen as pertaining to the engineering world, to archaeologists and related professionals. This introduction will be achieved by doing and experimenting rather than through theoretical explanations. The authors have extensive experience in using conceptual modelling in archaeological domains for over 15 years, and will use ConML as a vehicle.
ConML is a simple, high-level, affordable, powerful modelling language specifically designed with the humanities and social sciences in mind. In addition to supporting most of the object-oriented structural modelling constructs, ConML extends them with concerns that are rarely seen in industry-standard approaches but which are extremely important in archaeology, such as the ability to express temporality and subjectivity in conceptual models.
The workshop will assume no previous knowledge of conceptual modelling, although it will assume familiarity with archaeological concepts and practice. It will begin by teaching the basic tenets of object-oriented structural modelling, followed by more advanced concepts and situations. Participants will be asked to undertake an extensive array of exercises and practical cases in the archaeological domain, either or and in small groups, throughout the workshop.
The number of 20 participants is considered maximum.Similar experiences have been carried out internally at Incipit and also in the form of a postgraduate course at CSIC, with excellent results in both cases; archaeologists, historians and architects with no previous exposure to conceptual modelling were capable of creating good-quality models after a few hours of practice.Other Related EventsA related workshop, “Creating Conceptual Models in Archaeology”, was run by the same co-chairs at CAA 2011 in Beijing with excellent results.
The session “Archaeological Information Modelling”, proposed also at CAA 2012, co-chaired by Cesar Gonzalez-Perez and Patricia Martín-Rodilla, is aimed to attract submissions describing the application of theories and methods to create and use information models in archaeology; in this regard, the workshop proposed here would work as the applied counterpart to the more theoretical-oriented session, and participants attending both would benefit from a richer perspective on the issue of information modelling in archaeology.
Another in the "Intro to ..." presentations for newcomers to CAA and computing in archaeology.Could be held with workshops before the conference sessions proper.Would dob in my mates Jess Ogden and John Pouncett to run this one if the organisers felt there were a place for it in the program.
The purpose of the workshop is to explain the technologies and present techniques relating to the mapping of archaeological datasets to the CIDOC CRM and the CRM-EH extension of that ontology. We will demonstrate this using both pre-defined STELLAR project templates and other user-defined templates. In particular we will demonstrate the STELLAR mapping/extraction tools and report on experience with using them, including input at the workshop from the Archaeology Data Service. We will discuss mapping and extraction issues and provide practical feedback on implementation work we have carried out creating archaeological Linked Data. We would also welcome feedback and experiences from participants who have either used the STELLAR tools or who are carrying out similar work.
Funded by the European Commission, Europeana was launched in 2008, with the goal of making Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to the public. It is a hugely significant and ambitious project which enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections through a single multi-lingual portal. The concentration to date has been on content from national libraries, archives and galleries and as such Europe’s rich archaeological resources are currently underrepresented. CARARE is a Best Practice Network, funded under the European Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme, which started on 1 February 2010 and which will run for three years.
CARARE engages and supports Europe's network of heritage agencies and organisations, archaeological museums and research institutions, and specialist digital archives in:
CARARE plays an important role in drawing together Europe's network of organisations responsible for investigating, protecting, informing and promoting unique archaeological monuments, architecturally important buildings, historic town centres and industrial monuments. Lead by CARARE project partners the ADS from York, UK and the DCU based in Athens, Greece, this workshop will offer an opportunity for the international archaeological community to explore the work of the CARARE project and its relationship with Europeana. The workshop will consist of demonstrations of Europeana, the CARARE tools for data ingestion, the CARARE metadata repository, and CARARE data standards. This will be followed by a wide-ranging question and answer session with the CARARE team covering international data aggregation projects and the future directions that Europeana and CARARE might follow. CARARE is an important opportunity for archaeologists, data holders, and data creators to engage with the European Commissions vision for making rich cultural heritage material available to all its citizens.
This workshop will be of interest to everyone who consumes archaeological content online is concerned with public engagement, data management, data sharing and data standards, especially those who hold digital archaeological content, including 3D, and would like to make it more broadly available both to the specialist archaeological community and public at large.
CAA has been meeting annually for almost forty years, so one might expect that we would have a reasonable idea of the nature and role of archaeological computing. Yet some apparently see this as an emerging field (e.g. Bimber & Chang 2011), others suggest the need for a new archaeological speciality: Archaeological Information Science (Llobera 2011). Even the Wikipedia page on computational archaeology describes archaeoinformatics as an emerging discipline. Is this a sign of a lack of confidence in developments over the past forty years, or is it the reverse - an indication of self-assurance and a sense of moving boldly forward through a more formal definition of the subject? Is it connected with the growing appearance of cyber-archaeology in digital research outside of archaeology itself (e.g. Zimbra et al 2010)? What are the implications for archaeological computing? This paper will seek to address these and related questions.
The talk will demonstrate that computational photography can capture rich data about our world and make the means and circumstances of the information’s generation transparent.
Computational photography encompasses a family of digital techniques. They are all based on the computational extraction of relevant information from a sequence of digital photographs. This extracted information can be integrated into new digital representations to yield rich data not found in the original, individual photographs.
The talk will discuss several emerging computational photography techniques that can capture information about our world and track their changes over time. These tools can capture:
Computational Photography tools feature high degrees of automation. The talk will explore this nearly automatic nature and how it enables automatic record keeping of each event and resource involved in the original information capture and all subsequent events that occur in this data’s processing into a final digital representation. These records can be collected into a “digital lab notebook”. The lab notebook’s metadata can be automatically structured using international standards such as ISO21127, the International Council of Museum’s (ICOM) Documentation Committee’s (CIDOC) Conceptual Reference Model (CRM).
The digital lab notebook makes the means and circumstances of the completed digital image generation transparent. Transparency permits scientific evaluation of the digital representation’s quality, reliability and potential for reuse. Transparency is also a key factor for improving the chances of the digital representation’s long-term preservation.
See how computational photography can illuminate the Digital Dark Age!
Short paper (10 min). This case study was conducted as part of a PhD in Archaeology on the production and distribution of stone sarcophagi from the early Middle Ages. The tests were mainly carried out in the quarries of Panzoult in the Vienne valley (Indre-et-Loire, France). The use of photogrammetry is certainly not unique in subterranean environments, but through this communication we would show how it helps bringing new elements for the study of Panzoult's quarries. The study of early Middle Ages sarcophagi quarries presents a number of constraints (low light, readability of tool marks, accessibility and safety) that requires the set up of an appropriate methodology. The analysis of the remains is based primarily on tools marks and blocks' limitations visible on the walls, the floor and the sky of the quarry, which allows to reconstruct the organization and chronology of the exploitation. For a better understanding on the quarry, we must necessarily think in three dimensions. After testing several methods and traditional surveying tools, 3D modelling and especially photogrammetry have come out as a relevant solution. Among its characteristics we find: - Field material is compact and handy - Data acquisition quick and easy - Data available at all times - Almost one centimetre accuracy - Very dense point cloud allowing a high resolution image Automated processing software, freeware or free of charge (123D Catch©, Arcweb 3D© or Meshlab) were preferred. Usually they do not require advanced computing skills; it is a quick and easy solutions to work. They can create, from a large number of photos, a 3D model viewable as a point cloud, a mesh model or a textured model. The 3D model provides many elements for the study of the quarry faces: microrelief features and block limitations are clearly visible with an important accuracy; thus the blocks can be precisely counted and measured. Furthermore, for a better understanding, through detailed visualization, of tool marks, the actions of quarrymen and the extraction order. A second step (in progress) involves the use of GIS and post-processing software for 3D modelling. It will allow a further understanding in the treatment of acquired 3D model, with plans and sections automatically made, an estimation of quarry volume to quantify the volume and the number of blocks extracted and mining waste among other utilities.
The Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 caused immense damage to the cultural heritage and museum collections. Bunkazai Rescue Project, an initiative of the Agency of Cultural Affairs and affiliated institutions, has been providing emergency treatments for tsunami-damaged museum collections [1].
However, thousands of archaeological sites (legally referred to as 'buried cultural properties') and historical built structures are still endangered by construction works, which are being carried to (1) remove the earthquake and tsunami debris, (2) relocate settlements and urban facilities from coastal lowland to higher hinterland, and (3) remove surface soil contaminated by radioactive substances from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In order to provide assistance in the activities for the protection of local heritage, a voluntary initiative--Consortium for the Earthquake-Damaged Cultural Heritage (CEDACH)--was founded by archaeologists, historians, information scientists, and cultural administration specialists after the earthquake [2].
CEDACH is preparing a geospatial information infrastructure, CEDACH GIS, in which local heritage maps and databases are stored and integrated into the nationwide archaeological site database of the Nara National Institute for Cultural Properties. The contents of this database are provided on demand, by means of the autonomous-decentralized Internet GIS, to local administrative offices, researchers, and NPOs for not only planning and executing heritage protection but also urban planning and other restoration processes. Archaeological predictive modelling is also used for consultation. Furthermore, the contents can be used for the education of disaster prevention of cultural heritage, for which an e-learning system will be employed. These activities have long been out of scope in heritage education, and will contribute to forming 'disaster heritage studies', a new, multidisciplinary field of research to theorise the way to inherit memories of tangible and intangible heritage lost and damaged owing to the disaster.
Case studies are being planned and implemented in close collaboration with local municipalities in the tsunami-damaged areas of Iwate prefecture. It is strongly felt in Japan after 3.11 that the meaning and significance of GIS has transformed from being geographical information system (GISystem) and related science (GIScience) to being the formation of a social infrastructure based on geospatial intelligence (GISociety) and being a way to secure individual's safety (GISafety). This paper reviews the activities of CEDACH for twelve months since March 2011 and points out that the significance of GIS for cultural heritage management is also changing along with this trend.
[1] Matsui, A., S. Kaner, and J. Habu (2011) Rescuing archaeology affected by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Antiquity 85. http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/kaner329.
[2] Kondo, Y., A. Kaneda, Y. Fujimoto, Y. Seino, H. Yamaguchi, and T. Uozu (in press) The CEDACH DMT: a volunteer-based data management team for the documentation of the earthquake-damaged cultural heritage in Japan. CAA 2011 Proceedings.
In 2009 the INSPIRE Directive was adopted as a Statutory Instrument by both the United Kingdom and Scottish Parliaments with a view to developing the metadata, Web Map and Web Feature Services, to an agreed timetable, over the next decade. Both the Scottish Government and Geographic Information community in Scotland recognise that although the mandated datasets are helpful in focusing attention on priorities within the context of creating a Scottish Spatial Data Infrastructure and delivering efficiencies across all tiers of Scottish Government, the INSPIRE Directive should be seen very much as a catalyst rather than a checklist.
The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) recognises the need to and value in sharing the information it curates on behalf of the Scottish public with partner organisations and the wider community for the benefit of the promotion and appreciation of Scotland's heritage. Although, the majority of records in Canmore (http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/), the national inventory of the archaeological and built heritage of Scotland and its maritime waters are not protected through statutory designation, RCAHMS has argued that the information it curates is relevant to and should be considered as part of the INSPIRE Annex I Protected Places theme, even if not a mandatory dataset.
To date RCAHMS has released a point-based Web Map Service for the information in Canmore and is developing further bespoke services for maritime losses and the results of its own aerial survey mapping programme, the first in a series of richer datasets. Web Feature Services will be developed on release of guidance documents from the Scottish Government. Promoting the undesignated heritage of Scotland through INSPIRE raises a number of questions over the appropriateness of applying specifications for regulatory environmental data to the wider cultural heritage and how information, so published, could be understood and used remotely by non-specialists.
Archaeological data is difficult; it is ill-defined and incomplete. Would those accessing data remotely necessarily understand the incompleteness, bias and variability of the record in contrast to the fixed boundaries of most designated datasets? Does the information published under INSPIRE meet both non-specialist and specialist audiences - or are separate services required? The information required to inform a land manager about the evidence for, or character of, a site is very different from the detailed evidence revealed through archaeological investigation. A land manager may need to know if a site is extant, known from documentary sources or revealed through aerial photography or remote sensing whereas an archaeologist should consider evidence from investigation and recording of a site. Delivery of richer spatial datasets for most archaeological investigations remains an aspiration as they require collaborative, participatory approaches from across the profession.
Even if the mechanisms to deliver richer datasets are in place, potential barriers include concerns over intellectual property rights and a reluctance to change working practices though inertia may gradually be addressed through demonstrator services and case studies highlighting the potential benefits in the long term.
The Government of Botswana, through the initiative of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), started in 2002, has established an intellectual and practical basis for the use of geographic information and GIS for the purpose of research, monitoring, planning and infrastructure development in the country. As it has been the case in other countries, data that would allow an improved and efficient evaluation of cultural resources, with the aim of allowing their sustainable management, have not been included in the project. The involvement of heritage representatives from the National Museum of Botswana (repository of all archaeological records in the country) was not planned and, as a consequence, not only no input was given on the requirements of cultural heritage data to be incorporated in the infrastructure, but heritage practitioners remained in the dark for what concerns digital data (spatial and not spatial). To date, heritage management in Botswana continues to be mainly paper based. Although some records have been ported to digital platforms no coherent and appropriately documented systems have been created so far to store such data. Why is the state of heritage spatial data digital documentation so far behind when compared to other sectors (land survey and mapping, e-government, etc.) in Botswana? This paper explores the history of the development of the NSDI in Botswana and the parallel universe of the challenges faced by heritage agencies, practitioners and researchers in integrating heritage data and SDI technology.
As one of the largest archaeological units in the UK, Wessex Archaeology create and use a significant amount of digital data. As identified in the session abstract, much of this data has a spatial component. In order to make best use of this data, WA are currently implementing a Spatial Data Infrastructure to underpin much of our work and business processes. This paper presents this SDI as designed, the archaeological processes supported, how it works currently and it will work as modules are added, and how it draws upon and will ultimately provide information to external agencies. The paper will cover the theoretical and practical aspects of design and implementation with emphasis on requirements, workflow, software and hardware platforms. Finally the paper will explore some potential avenues for further improving access to information from third parties more generally (APIs, web services, distributed systems, etc), specifically looking at the ways in which SDI principals and technologies could be applied to local Historic Environment Records and the National Monuments Record, Wessex Archaeology being significant consumers of data from such sources.
The sharing of data via internet technologies is an obvious and basic principle of our information society today. Based on data accessible free of charge by initiatives Open Data or INSPIRE we are able to observe the independent development of thousands and millions of large and small scale internet applications for traditional web or smartphones. In contrary to the growing amount of data accessible in the web and requested by a wide range of users and developers, it can be stated without doubt that archaeological data are still widely unpublished. Even if forward-looking projects can be observed in certain countries or regions the overall development of digital archaeological data across Europe shows no significant step forward towards an active sharing of data. In contrary to this lack of development we can observe that data resp. information from the field of cultural heritage and especially archaeology is particular demanded by the public and private sector. Information from this field may be part of a high number of applications for different use cases such as tourism or education.
On-line resources that reference ancient places are multiplying rapidly, bringing huge potential for the researcher provided that they can be found; but users currently have no way of easily navigating between them or comparing their contents. The Pelagios consortium, a growing international collective of ancient world projects,[1] addresses the problems of discovery and reuse with the twin aims of helping digital humanists to make their data more discoverable, and of empowering real-world users (scholars and the general public) to find information about particular ancient places and visualize it in meaningful ways. While the project focuses on the ancient world, the methodology and tools developed will be of interest to anyone working with data containing references to geo-entities.
The Pelagios collaboration intentionally includes partners maintaining a wide range of different document types including, texts, maps and databases. In doing so we take some of the first steps towards building a Geospatial Semantic Web for the Humanities.[2]
In this paper we discuss two major elements of the recently completed first phase of Pelagios (a second phase, which has recently been granted funding, will run from November 2011 until July 2012). First, we address the method by which the partners prepare their data so that it can be linked together in an open and transparent manner. Second, we consider the various ways in which the results can be visualized, paying particular attention to the tools and technologies used and the problems encountered. This will include a demonstration of a visualization service that we believe demonstrates the value of lightweight Linked Open Data approaches to addressing problems of discoverability, interconnectivity and reusability of online resources. We will follow this discussion with a brief reflection on the process by which the Pelagios community and services have developed, especially the digital services that have made the coordination of such an international initiative possible. We will conclude by outlining some of the challenges that remain to embedding data and practice in an ancient world online infrastructure, as we develop a comprehensive 'toolkit' that will make it easier for anyone to add their data to the Pelagios multiverse.[3]
Throughout the paper we will discuss real-world practical concerns as well as engage in deeper speculation about the significance of this type of approach for escaping the 'siloing' mentality that inhibits many other data integration initiatives.
[1] Pelagios includes: Arachne, http://www.arachne.uni-koeln.de ; CLAROS, http://explore.clarosnet.org ; Fasti Online, http://www.fastionline.org ; GAP, http://googleancientplaces.wordpress.com ; Nomisma, http://nomisma.org; Open Context, http://opencontext.org ; Perseus, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu; Pleiades, http://pleiades.stoa.org; Ptolemy Machine, http://ptolemymachine.appspot.com , SPQR, http://spqr.cerch.kcl.ac.uk; Ure museum, http://www.reading.ac.uk/Ure .
[2] Harris, T. M., Rouse, L. J. and Bergeron, S. (2010): 'The Geospatial Semantic Web, Pareto GIS, and the Humanities'. In Bodenhamer, D. J., Corrigan, J. & Harris, T. M., (eds.), The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Scholarship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[3] A vision that coincides well with Elliott's discussion of the future of Classical scholarship: Elliott, T. (2009): 'Digital Geography and Classics'. DHQ Volume 3 Number 1.
This paper, based on doctoral research, will consider the relative merits of two different visions of the purpose and potential of semantic technologies. The first part of the paper will summarize a number of trends in the development of Semantic Web, including those in cultural heritage and archaeology, and demonstrate that two divergent approaches have been adopted. The first, here dubbed Mixed-Source Knowledge Representation (MSKR), bears many similarities to the Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation research of the 1990s, but takes particular account of Web technologies. The second, Linked Open Data (LOD), is also related to these movements but takes particular account of the philosophy of the Web, as espoused by Tim Berners-Lee. Linked Open Data is concerned with creating a relatively open and strongly interlinked network of resources, whereas MSKR more commonly attempts to locally integrate heterogeneous datasets. A 2010 survey of practitioners applying semantic technologies to Cultural Heritage suggests that both approaches have been influential in this domain but that there is a particularly high correspondence with whether a project is fixed-term (MSKR) or open-ended (LOD). The second half of this paper will be a more in-depth discussion of the MSKR approach and in particular whether semantic technologies can provide beneficial economies of scale within a large but closed consortium. In order to do so, it is necessary to provide suitable and functional infrastructure for both the production and consumption of semantically-formatted data across a community with highly variable technical literacy. Furthermore, the results must arguably be a marked improvement over those that can be obtained from more traditional methods if they are to justify the additional effort from archaeologists. This paper argues that achieving such improvements is likely to be extremely difficult within a closed environment. In particular, it notes that many of the benefits of the Semantic Web rely on network effects which are necessarily curtailed by access restrictions and that the examples of implementation which are so crucial to an emerging technology are also reduced. In contrast, more lightweight approaches are demonstrably easier to implement and build communities around but offer fewer possibilities for inferencing. The paper will conclude by returning to the issues raised at the beginning. What is it that archaeologists (individually and collectively) intend to achieve when they employ semantic technologies and to what extent are they willing to make data their available in order to do so? Until greater clarity has been reached on these topics it may be difficult to evaluate the future potential of digital semantics to the archaeological community.
This paper addresses the ongoing development by the American Numismatic Society (ANS) of an XML ontology for coins, the Numismatic Descriptive Standard (NUDS), and an open-source collections management and publication application, Numishare (http://code.google.com/p/numishare/). Both are greatly influenced by the tenets of linked open data. In order to facilitate interactions between systems, concepts are represented as URIs hosted by http://nomisma.org. Nomisma.org is a collaborative effort to provide stable digital representations of numismatic concepts and entities. It provides URIs for such basic concepts as 'coin', 'mint', 'axis'. All of these are defined within the scope of numismatics but are already being linked to other stable resources where available. For example, URIs that represent mints are linked via the SKOS ontology to the Pleiades Gazetteer of ancient places. Moreover, concepts may contain as many labels in alternate languages as necessary, making it possible to aggregate search results across multi-lingual collections. Numishare leverages APIs provided by nomisma.org to create rich numismatic metadata, but can also use geonames.org URIs for modern places and the Virtual International Authority File (viaf.org) for personal and corporate names.
The ANS project, Online Coinage of the Roman Empire (OCRE), is a proof of concept of this system. Roman coinage is one of the richest bodies of material in existence for the study of the art, economy, and social life of the ancient world. Although ancient coins have been catalogued and classified in print, existing online databases are partial, unconnected or inconsistent with one another. An authoritative and complete type-corpus of Roman coinage is available in libraries in the form of the ten volumes of Roman Imperial Coinage, which identifies 47,000 discrete varieties. But this resource cannot be found everywhere, is extremely expensive to purchase and, since it is split across multiple volumes, is impossible to search easily as a whole. It is the aim of this project to create the first online type corpus of Roman coinage. OCRE will provide an illustrated listing of all known varieties of Roman coinage of the imperial period, from Augustus in the first century BC to Anastasius in the fifth century AD, in a format that can be searched by emperor, place of production, designs, legends, denominations and metals used. Inherent in the design is the ability to append to the basic type record the details of specimens in collections represented online. Thus it will be possible to accumulate quantitative data, such as weights or metal content of individual specimens, to aid in the construction of data sets usable for statistical analysis of Roman coinage.
The system will provide for information about coin hoards and finds, and it will be integrated with the leading online information source for ancient geography, Pleiades, knowing that it could be potentially linked to any relevant electronic platform or database dealing with the ancient world.
The aim of the discussion will be to exchange ideas and practice between practitioners in the fields of archaeological prospection (including near-surface geophysics and remote sensing), data management / information architecture, and archaeological visualisation. Our aims for the discussion are to generate crossdisciplinary contacts and foster co-operation and the adoption of innovative practice.
Technological advances in instrumentation and data processing and storage capacities have meant that archaeological prospection is able to generate exponentially larger data sets, covering large tracts of the landscape. In particular, the arrival of '3D' radar acquisition at very high sampling densities (0.08 x 0.08m cells) has created challenges for storing, interpreting and visualising the data. It is now entirely feasible to study whole landscapes by geophysical means, supported by remote sensing techniques such as Airborne Laser Surveys, Hyperspectral Mapping and Terrestrial Laser Scanning. In the last two years, major projects in the UK (DART- http://dartproject.info/WPBlog/) and Austria (The ArchPro programme at the LBI- http://archpro.lbg.ac.at/) have started. These projects all intersect with GIS, data management, spatial and landscape archaeology, and areas around the visualisation of archaeological interpretations and their presentation to the public. Areas of overlap with the airborne research groups also occur, for example in the field of developing automatic or human-assisted computer based anomaly recognition. At the 9th International conference on Archaeological Prospection in September 2011, it was agreed that CAA was a good opportunity for dialogue across these fields and exchange of ideas, theories and practice. Whilst the focus has fallen on large scale landscape surveys, there are good examples of data management and dissemination strategies for geophysical data using webmapping approaches from other studies, in particular the work in the Vale of Pickering by the Landscape Research Centre (http://www.landscaperesearchcentre.org/index.html) , which was largely collected over a long period of time largely using the traditional 'hand held' manner. We strongly feel that the subdiscipline of archaeological prospection would both be enriched by, and contribute to the enrichment of, the disciplines mentioned above. We would welcome the participation of anyone who feels their research falls into these categories and could potentially be of use, or who has a geophysical problem (question?) to solve. We would aim for a relatively informal discussion and presentation of problems, solutions and areas of agreement. Ideally, we would hope that such a discussion would feed into 'best practice' documentation by way of groups like the GEOSIG (http://www.archaeologists.net/groups/geophysics), MAPSIG (http://www.archaeolandscapes.eu/index.php/news-a-events/news/138-qmethods-inarchaeological-prospectionq-caa-sig.html) and the open methods store (http://methods.okfn.org/wiki/Main_Page).
There are some great things happening across a number of disciplines. It would be good to listen and debate with those who have similar data and interpretational challenges.
Visual communication tools help to convey a message between two subjects or targets. The visual communication process is not limited only to typographical or static imagery. I believe there are several disciplines that can benefit from an interdisciplinary approach by blending visual communication methods. In this case Archaeology and Museum Studies. This project presents the designer's interpretation of an archaeological site in order to produce material for the case study. The installation involves several technological elements that complement each other to provide the best interpretation and enhance experimentation. Among other technologies, the installation utilizes Augmented Reality, 3D Modelling, Projection Mapping and 3D Printing to assist in the interpretation of the site. The project will be using the site of Portus, Italy as the example for visualization and will focus exclusively on one of the warehouses. The methodology developed for this project will be transposable to almost any archaeological site. The project attempts also to generalize and standardize a process for the development of these types of installations and interfaces. As we progressively become more multi-skilled, the boundaries between industries become less visible and it is difficult to pre-plan when we require to bring other specialists into the field. The familiarization with these types of projects can motivate other industries to become more open to collaborative research. I believe that one of the main obstacles hindering the implementation of this technology is usually monetary. For this reason this project has promoted the idea of utilizing 'open source' and accessible technologies in order to facilitate the distribution of content. I am attempting to produce a minimum cost project in which open source elements like the Flash Spark Library or the Arduino chipset play essential roles. I think this will motivate other researchers to start introducing this technology and implementing it within more projects, thus promoting interdisciplinarity. This is a project that can be used for experimentation (Archaeologists) or presentation (Museums).
Within the research communities of archaeological computing and museum studies there has been vivid discussion concerning the virtual imagery produced in archaeological research, as well as the technologies and modes employed for public engagement and outreach. A significant number of collaborative projects are exploring the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) applications for interpretive archaeology, cultural heritage sites and museums. User evaluation is one of the methods typically used by these projects, either for assessing the interpretive value of such applications, -especially in museum contexts- and/or the development of the technologies employed. However, these evaluations are often conducted at the later stages of the development cycle when there is little time available to make amendments to the project based on user feedback. In contrast, researchers from disciplines such as CSCW and Human-Computer Interaction design applications iteratively, with user evaluation conducted throughout the design process. Our work builds on previous research into MR tangible interfaces and interactive museum installations by attempting to explore alternative modes of engaging the public with archaeological information. For the purposes of this project we designed 'Tangible Pasts', a prototype tangible interface in the form of physical book augmented with digital information. 'Tangible Pasts' combines text, 3D models, animations and sound, enabling users to experience the featured case studies in an intuitive way by seamlessly moving between physical and virtual content. The initial design was presented in the 'Open Exhibition' at the Visualisation in Archaeology (ViA) international conference and was evaluated by a group of visualisation specialists who attended the event. The prototype was is also evaluated by non-experts from other disciplines in order to limit the bias of people related to cultural heritage studies. Based on the suggestions and comments received the application was developed further. This paper will present the concept of 'Tangible Pasts' and the results of the user evaluation study, highlighting the importance of a user-centred, iterative design approach for the cultural heritage sector.The project has been partially funded by the RCUK DE PATINA project.
AISc (Llobera 2010) can be defined as an integrative perspective where capturing data, representing, analysing and modelling archaeological events is an interdisciplinary focus. Moreover, we consider AISc as a logical consequence of accumulative experiences process in computer application in archaeology during last twenty years towards a synergy between computational resources and varied and extensive archaeological issues (data capturing process, analysis, representation, etc). Independently on the scale we focus ("intra-site" or "landscape"), we see in AISc a new opportunity in key areas: (i) Congruence between empirical observation of spatial proprieties of artefacts and its possible ways of perception and recording. In this direction, archaeologists need a complement for understand the inherent complexity in archaeological records. For this, virtual reality and analytical visualization are the most powerful issues for solving problems in spatial contexts. At an intra-site level, the possibility of interacting and modelling structures (postholes, hearths, stone alignments), distributions of remains, stratigraphy into a digital environment, is an ideal situation for testing and manipulating different hypothesis without affecting the real archaeological object. From a landscape perspective, the obstacles on representing cognitive approaches and collective behaviours have been widely noted by scholars.(ii) Comprehension of archaeological problems like an extensive network of actions (natural and social) and material consequences located in determinate area, and not in terms of distribution of materials remains that are defined under certain nominal categories. In this sense, statistical analysis is the best option for understanding, in terms of heuristic point of view, the presence of any spatial (and temporal) structure. To this effect, for an adequate understanding, the significance of variation and change is more than the recognition of any insolating cluster into a vacuum space, which is related with the reductionist idea of analysing the space where concrete actions were performed. (iii) Uncertainty as an approach to deal with multidimensional and incomplete structure of archaeological spatial datasets. Fuzzy-logic has been used in certain domains of science as way to extract logic from non-structured data, but its application in archaeology has been recent. Considering the incomplete condition of archaeological record as a conjunction of natural and human actions, fuzzy-logic approaches have started to proliferate in spatial analysis. Modelling and representing vagueness has become a way to interpret the spatial distribution of phenomena that overcome distribution maps of items. Since some authors have enounced its potential, it seems a good moment for develop the potential of this proposal and test if it is able to provide an acceptable connection between archaeological theory and practice. To illustrate the capabilities of this new approach, we will present and discuss some experiences and their proficiency on managing spatial data.
In the last decades, archaeology, as many other Social Sciences disciplines, has witnessed the delineation of a new judgment about the engagement between the people and the environment in which they lived (Bordieu 1990). From this innovative viewpoint the concept of the human (behavior) and the non-human (materiality) facts and their relationship have changed. The connection between the people and the world is determined by their previous relationship with the environment. Thus material components and social practices are mutually reinforcing. An individual or collective behavior is not completely understood if we forget the material features of its context. Terms such as "procesual plus" (Hegmon 2003; 2005) or "symmetric archaeology" (Webmoor et al. 2005) are good examples of the renewed approach (revalorization) of the physical aspects of the archaeological record without abandoning the potentialities of the interpretative archaeology and the perception of the archaeological entities.
Landscape archaeology can also adopt this position. The agrarian landscape is a complex reality where many facts have acted to create the compounded environment we study. Our main interest is to understand how past societies interacted with the land in order to create the present landscape. It is obvious that each collectivity is constrained by the physical features of the environment in which they live. However we must recall that the materiality of the natural context is just one agent (as is the individual or the collective behavior) in the network that built up the current landscape. The meaning of these tangible elements "is at least partly determined by its material qualities" (Jones 2004: 328). Those features and properties can be measured and quantified matching with the positive sciences position. It is a necessary requisite to simultaneously consider how the landscape is socially and culturally generated, while also paying attention to its physical and mechanical properties. We can apply this hypothesis to the agrarian landscapes. One of the main objectives of this kind of work is to delineate the temporal and spatial networks that link these tangible entities with the social behavior of past cultures. Some scientific analysis, legacy of natural sciences, could help us to set up patterns of the material aspect of the landscape.
The technological innovations reached in the last decades are useful tools to conjoin both aims, especially considering its potentialities for the (statistical, cartographical"¦) representation of this mixed statement. Until recent years, the GIS (as many other techniques) has failed to recreate all worries of either the natural or social sciences. Nevertheless there have been some efforts to address this fault (Re-presenting GIS Edited by Fisher et al. 2005). The frame of reference of the Euclidean space notion (continuum invariable) is still the most used within the GI Science. In any case it is becoming easier to find new approximations where the representation of the space is constructed on a time-scale basis or even trough qualitative or perceived perspectives, leading us to a "human-centered archaeology of space" (Wheatley 2006).
The development of spatial technologies (GPS, remote sensing, digital cartography, aerial photogrammetry and GIS) allows excellent documentation in archaeological site locations, as well as topographic and environmental reconstructions. Similarly, the application of spatial analyses to archaeological evidence, such as site distribution, site viewshed, movement modelling, etc. has provided archaeologists with large, complete and diversified corpus of data. However, those data set are usually treated as a research goal and as a final result, without any previous theoretical reflections on the historical and anthropological issues to be studied and which methodology is the most suitable to address those issues. At the same time, archaeological interpretations and social models are usually based on preconceived models, without a critical integration between spatial analyses results, archaeological evidence and theoretical paradigms. The main aim of this work is to discuss the need for the development of a specific methodology for the analysis of the location and characteristics of Palaeolithic sites, as well as the importance of a regional and integrative perspective for a better understanding of forager societies land use patterns and mobility strategies. A case study from the Nalón basin is presented here as an example of the possibilities of the application of this methodology and perspective.
Following in the footsteps of Irwin Scollar's (1997) paper '25 Years of Computer Applications in Archaeology' this paper examines the trends in archaeological computing for the last 15 years, based on papers presented at the computer applications and quantitative methods conference between 1997 and 2011. Scollar discussed the trends he identified in the context of increasing availability of hardware and software, and it is therefore considered appropriate to re-explore this topic given the considerable developments we have witnessed in both hardware and software since 1996. Such an analysis is also timely given that the conference is now entering its 40th year and that in recent years the number of papers presented at CAA conferences has risen substantially. In his paper, Scollar identified a number of themes that he used to classify the broad range of subjects of papers presented at each conference. For the purposes of this paper, the same classification scheme was used to sort and analyse the subjects of papers presented at the CAA conference over the last 15 years. The trends for each of these themes is identified and discussed in relation to the changes in technology available to archaeological computing practitioners. By categorising the papers using Scollar's themes it is possible to see that while there has largely been continuity in research interests since his 1996 paper, several new themes have become increasingly prevalent at CAA that are not adequately described by his original classification scheme. In order to enrich the quantitative data the results of a survey are also discussed, which was conducted to confirm the trends identified in the analysis based on the subjective impressions of practitioners within the archaeological computing community.
This research forms part of the PATINA Project, and is funded through the RCUK Digital Economy Programme.
Scollar, I. (1997). 25 Years of Computer Applications in Archaeology. In L. Dingwall, S. Exon, V. Gaffney, S. Laflin, & M. van Leusen (Eds.), Archaeology in the age of internet: CAA 97; Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology; proceedings of the 25th Anniversary Conference, University of Birmingham, April 1997. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Çatalhöyük is one of the most important and iconic sites currently under excavation. The data derived from the site has already spanned decades of ongoing work, and has been the focus of innovative theoretical, methodological and technological approaches. Efforts have also been made to, as much as possible, fully digitise and publish the excavation data for use and re-use in the future, including digitising the individual unit data (similar to an individual context, as used in the single context recording tradition), some of which can be accessed online through the www.catalhoyuk.com website. This includes information about the complex stratigraphy found throughout the site, along with comprehensive information associated with each unit. The nature of single context recording allows spatio-temporal relationships to be re-organised and recombined in ways compatible with the way data is structured using the RDF triple format, which is used by the Semantic Web. It is also compatible with the CRM-EH, which is a domain ontology for archaeology, based on the single context recording tradition.One of the most popular reasons for using Semantic Web principles and technologies is as a means to create interoperability between heterogeneous datasets, and successful exemplars of this now exist. In contrast, the data from Çatalhöyük is housed in a bespoke database to facilitate the nuanced intra-site analysis necessary for understanding the site's complexity. As such, there are other features of the Semantic Web, which may help to further unlock the spatio-temporal relationships in the stratigraphy of the site, which are not reliant on interoperability, and have seen fewer exemplars. This is largely owing to both the recent advent of the technology, and the structure and querying of graph data being unfamiliar to most archaeologists. Some of the complexity that might be better understood at the site, includes defining a 'deposit lifespan' for a series of units, which would be based on developing a system of coding time within a stratigraphic matrix. It may be possible to use the querying abilities of SPARQL (and potentially GeoSPARQL) to ask more complex questions of the stratigraphic data, and to allow the 'data haystack' model of graph data to allow easier combining and re-combining of 'deposit lifespans' for analysis under a variety of criteria. This exploration will be carried out with an eye towards how the results might be subsequently visualised. In addition, there may be potential for the use of Semantic Web 'inference' to allow the creation of new data which can be understood from the existing data, at a greater degree than might be possible using more traditional relational data structures.This paper will explore the potential research questions, which may be answerable using Semantic Web principles and technologies, using a subset of data from the Çatalhöyük excavations. It is hoped that this exercise will result in new exemplars of the usefulness of the Semantic Web to archaeology, and the potential for a new and more fluid understanding of the spatio-temporal nature of the occupation at Çatalhöyük.
In the last few years 3D laser scanning techniques have been used more frequently as a means for recording archaeological evidence. This is at least in part thanks to the reliability of the 3D laser scanner. Archaeologists are recognising its extraordinary accuracy, hardly ever paralleled by other instruments. Moreover, the captured 3D point clouds correctly preserve the dimensions of the scanned archaeological information and can therefore be stored and used for future applications. On the other hand, 3D reconstructions of cultural heritage remains often serve purely educational purposes, disregarding their analytical potential. We believe that a combination of both the educational and analytical use of 3D reconstructions might lead to interesting new approaches that will be of interest to a more diverse audience.
This project puts an emphasis on the process of reconstructing the Roman Baths of Llíria, Valencia, the ancient iberian Edeta. The site has recently been deeply excavated and a well-preserved area is currently being converted into a permanent public exhibition. The work carried out involved two separate tasks. Firstly, the 3D laser scanning of the entire site including the masonry and all other archaeological remains like fragments of columns, cornices and so on. Secondly, a hypothetical 3D model of the baths was built using the data captured by the 3D point clouds of the objects scanned.
Handling high resolution 3D point clouds involves a number of issues, in particular when dealing with large sites, as they need to be significantly optimised. Model optimisation very often means that alot of detail will be lost. High resolution results have been obtained, however, in studies focused on the reconstruction of small objects. 3D reconstructions of large sites unfortunately still require using a relatively low number of vertices for them to be easily managed, rendered or, sometimes, animated. This is particularly true when the high resolution model aims to reconstruct real world lighting, texturing or atmospheric variations of the rendered environment.
This paper will address this issue by illustrating the capabilities of 3D Laser scanning for generating accurate virtual reconstructions of past environments that can serve both educational and analytical purposes. Vectorial redrawing of the meshes was used to intensely minimise the 3D point clouds and to create simple solids that allow for easier handling in 3D modelling software. In addition, a combination of low polygon hypothetical 3D models with the textured original 3D meshes has been used to stimulate alternative analyses of the site and, eventually, to extend the general public's knowledge of the cultural heritage these models represent through highly realistic reproductions.
We present a visualisation technique which uses the set of digital images captured in an illumination dome for the construction of 3D representations of material surfaces. In conventional practice (Mudge et al., 2005) the images are processed by the reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) technique to generate a file that represents the variation in intensity when the surface is illuminated from any direction. This enables interactive display of the object as if illuminated by a 'virtual torch' under control of the observer, and provides a useful means of enhancing the contrast of surface relief. We have developed an alternative means of processing the image sets, using the photometric stereo technique (MacDonald, 2011) to extract surface normals. The method achieves a higher angular resolution than in the normals derived from the RTI representation (Malzbender et al., 2001) by employing many triplet combinations of the lamps in the dome. From these the height of each point may be accurately reconstructed, producing a digital terrain model of the surface. The method will be illustrated through a case study on the early Egyptian (c. 3100 BCE) Hunters Palette, a shield-shaped slab of mudstone elaborated with relief-carved figures of humans and animals (Petrie, 1953). Smaller less-elaborate mudstone palettes were used to grind minerals such a malachite and galena, perhaps for cosmetic purposes. The Hunters Palette lacks evidence for mineral grinding, but its surface bears a range of other marks which can aid our understanding of its 'life history'. Such surface details are difficult to discern in conventional photographs and are often ignored in line drawings, but with the aid of RTI images (acquired as part of the AHRC-funded RTISAD project, see Earl et al. 2011), the finer details of surface topography can be visualised in striking detail. RTI analysis is already providing new insight into the manufacture process and the embodied actions and habits of the artisan(s) who created the scenes, from the direction, sequence, and depth of carving to possible tool types and techniques (see Piquette forthcoming). One area of the Hunters Palette in particular shows intriguing evidence for recarving, where it seems that the position of the rope may have been altered. Making sense of these surface transformations provides challenges which can be overcome by deploying RTI capture data in new ways. We extracted surface normals using 36 of the 76 images in the set taken in the dome, corresponding to all LED lights of zenith angle greater than 22° to avoid self-shadowing of the object surface. From the normals the surface gradients (partial derivatives in X and Y directions) were calculated and the height reconstructed. Cross-sectional profiles through the digital terrain map show clearly the depth of the carving with an overall maximum peak-to-trough amplitude of approximately 9 mm, and fine details of 1 mm in depth, as in the pleats of the hunter's kilt. The reduction of height in the stone above the hunter's back is clear in the vertical section, suggesting reworking.
Re-reading the British Memorial: RTI and memorial inscriptions in British churchesThis paper will describe the initial findings of a project which has sought, in collaboration with local history and photography groups, to develop a methodology for Reflectance Transformation Imaging as a means of documenting and interpreting church inscriptions and memorials.Churches and cemeteries constitute a physical historical archive of the communities which they serve. The inscriptions and memorials found throughout churches and their grounds provide a valuable textual record of the history of the community within which they are situated. The materials, styles and craft exhibited in memorials provide insights into the people who commissioned and created them.Attempts to document church inscriptions using traditional methods have been moderately successful. However technical limitations have resulted in a fragmentary record with weathered inscriptions often remaining unreadable. Furthermore, traditional documentation techniques have been largely unable to meaningfully represent materials, tool-markings, erosion levels and other significant data.The value of RTI as a technique for recording and reading inscriptions has been demonstrated in several case studies. The technique also has great value in the degree to which it is easy to use and affordable. Consequently it represents a highly suitable method not just for the academic community but also for community groups to record, study and disseminate material from churches. Local-level participation, alongside national collaborations, documenting and disseminating inscriptions using RTI has the potential to greatly improve understandings of, and access to, this unique and nationally important collection of material.The purpose of the project has been to demonstrate RTI to local churches. Through collaborations with local history groups and photography groups, gravestones and memorials are recorded using RTI. As well as assisting these groups in the recording process the project has also trained group members in the use of a methodology for the adoption of the technique using their own equipment so that they can continue to use RTI and can train others. The project has also offered assistance to these groups to disseminate results of these recording sessions online, with an aim to make these collections available, not only for local, but for national and international study.
Multi-spectral imaging has proven its usefulness for the examination of ancient manuscripts, since it enhances the legibility of vanished or erased writings. Hence, this non-invasive conservation technique facilitates the work of philologists. This paper is concerned with the acquisition and digital processing of multi-spectral images containing historic writings. The manuscript pages examined contain an overwritten historic text and an overlying handwriting, which is considerably younger than the overlying text. The younger texts are visible under all wavelengths utilized, while the older texts are best legible under UltraViolet illumination. This work presents efforts, which have been taken, in order to make the ancient writings readable. At first the image acquisition setup is detailed and the image processing methods, which have been applied, are explained in the second part of the document.
This paper will consider the possibilities for the use of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and specifically Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) in the simulation of archaeologically derived materials. PTM was designed to enable complex surface shading of simulated textures, as an enhancement to bump mapping. However, whilst PTM and RTI files cannot be included in the rendering pipeline of standard tools such as Mental Ray we discuss in this paper the opportunities for repurposing RTI data in visualisation work.RTI is unique in allowing for the capture of a high resolution, highly versatile surface record whilst utilising commonly available, highly affordable equipment and software. Consequently RTI has become increasingly ubiquitous as a method for archaeological recording and a large and growing body of data exists. This paper will present some of the techniques which have been developed at the archaeological Computing Research Group at the University of Southampton which allow RTI data to be adapted and meaningfully incorporated into conventional rendering pipelines.The presentation will describe several projects including the reconstruction of the paintwork of the Roman Statuary from Herculaneum and the virtual reconstruction of the House of the Stags from Herculaneum all of which have incorporated RTI data in different ways. The methods covered in this paper will include the re-use and adaptation of normal maps generated from RTI data, the use of RTI data as a means of conducting metric comparisons with rendered outputs.
This talk will present an overview of the latest developments in RTI and AR technologies.
Reflectance Transformation Imaging
RTI creates digital representations from image sequences where light is projected from different directions. The lighting information from this image set is mathematically synthesized into an RTI image, enabling a user to interactively re-light and enhance the subject's surface in incredible detail.
We will examine multi-spectral RTI and the hidden topological landscapes disclosing under-painting and drawings in the infra-red and the fine surface information disclosed in ultra-violet wavelengths. We will discuss RTI of subjects under magnification using macro and microscopic optics as well as updates in viewing technology.
New developments in the related technology Algorithmic Rendering (AR), which uses the same data sets as RTI, will also be presented. The development of new AR technology by Princeton University and Cultural Heritage Imaging is supported by a significant grant from the National Science Foundation. The end-product will be an open-source tool which will extract and merge visual information available only under certain lighting conditions, certain wavelengths, or certain imaging modalities. Users will be able to generate high quality, comprehensible illustrations for documentation, scientific study, and sharing with colleagues, collection visitors, and the public.
New software tools to better collect and manage the metadata surrounding the creation of RTI and AR will also be discussed. This "digital lab notebook" is a critical element in the generation of scientifically reliable digital representations that enable future reuse for novel purposes, assist the long-term digital preservation of the virtual representations, and aid the physical conservation of the digitally represented museum materials.
RTI is undergoing rapid adoption in the US museum conservation field. A US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) sponsored training program is bringing a four day RTI training to all six masters programs in art conservation in North America, as well as four regional museum trainings open to museum professionals. As a result of this program over 150 museum professionals and pre-professionals will be fully trained in RTI technology, in addition to the many institutions that are adopting RTI outside of this program including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Some artifacts have been broken before excavation due to erosion, lithosphere pressure and human's destruction. With the quick development of the 3D capture devices, more and more experts do researches on matches of fracture surface to restore artifact by the 3D geometry information of the fractures. However, the algorithm is complex and the cost of data capture is high. Meanwhile some of artifacts are shape-plane, such as bronze mirror, eaves tile of Han dynasty, etc, all of which are the significant artifact of ancient China. In this situation,3D contours are not the only parameters to match several fractures.In this paper, we propose an effective algorithm to achieve virtual restoration of shape-plane artifact on the basis of image reassembly. Firstly, we use digital camera to obtain image of all the fragments at once time so that the errors of projection and scope are omitted in the procedure of data capture. It is much easier to obtain the shape than the approach of rangefinder. Then image processing are performed containing two parts: (a) As all the fragments lies in the single image, watershed algorithm is adopted to mark various fragments ;(b) the exact contour of each fragment is extracted and traced. Thirdly, we represent the fracture contour lines as numeral sequence and compute the longest common string to match neighbor fragments. In order to accelerate the speed of matches, we segment the contour line to sub-curves by angular points. According to the correspondence common curve, we compute the rigid transformation of the neighbor fragments by least squares method. We repeat the above steps between neighbor fragments and the reassembly result is taken as new fragment. All of the fragments will reassemble together. However, there exist accumulative errors after several times reassembly so that the last fragment cannot match the initial one closely, evenly match error. Finally, in order to overcome this issue, we propose an optimization method to estimate the rigid transformation for each fragment which makes the global distance between the neighbor fragments smallest. Following the scheme of virtual restoration, we can reassemble the artifacts in practical terms. A prototype system has been developed and applied to restore several artifacts.
This paper will introduce the funding from a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Funded research network that will investigate peoples' experience of household life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the time in which Shakespeare was writing - and consider how we might use this information to enhance our experience of visiting historic properties in the twenty-first century. The network will use the latest developments in computer science and cognitive science in order to understand how the domestic interior was experienced in early modern England. The network has brought together researchers in the humanities and sciences, conservators, museums curators and heritage professionals, including individuals from English Heritage, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Historic Royal Palaces and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The participants are experimenting with, for instance, virtual reality environments that recreate historic atmospheric effects and eye tracking equipment that measures where and for how long we look at our surroundings, and see how this technology might be used to reconstruct historical perception. In order to make the task more manageable, we are going to focus on a specific case study - "˜how did early modern men and women respond to decorative textiles in their houses?'
Further details at: http://www.kent.ac.uk/mems/domestic%20interior.html
Virtual Reality has become nowadays not simply a way to graphically represent archaeological hypotheses concerning space archaeology or architecture, but also a tool within the process of interpretation of remains. As it is a suitable technique to visualise 3D environments, it helps to perceive correctly volume, perspective and proportions, all features that can be hardly represented in traditional 2D archaeological drawings. The process of building a VR model will be a continuous testing of major and minor hypotheses, and formulating new questions as new needs show up. These questions lead to new interpretations, more fieldwork in search of new data and search of parallels. This conception of VR has allowed us to propose a solution for the evolution of two close buildings in the NE area of the forum of the Roman city of Pollentia (Mallorca, Spain). Pollentia was founded after the Roman conquest of the Balearic islands (123 BC), probably between 70 and 60 BC. During the last 10 years archaeological research in the site has uncovered an area of the Forum where several walls overlap, and some of them even remained isolated at some moment, without any connection to others. Altogether makes difficult their architectural interpretation. The building of a VR model has allowed an approach to the evolution of this area. A building ("Building A"), belonging to one of the first phases of the city in the Republic, stood northwards. In the Early Empire, a new building with a fine opus sectile pavement ("Building B") was raised up southwards, overlapping the southern part of the Building A. Some of the walls of Building A remained destroyed to their foundations and isolated within the boundaries of Building B, while others were completely removed to clear the area for the new building. The evolution of this spot is difficult to follow until the 4th cent. AD, when the Building B was altered, probably related to a renewal of the city after a great fire that affected the city around 270/280 AD. The abandonment is also confusing as it seems to be abandoned slowly somewhere in the Late Antique period and affected by an Early Medieval necropolis. The interpretation of the evolution of the area E of the forum, through VR offers a feasible solution to the problem of interpreting poorly preserved structures, and it may be a good help to plan new archaeological campaigns.
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Several thousand incised graffiti adorn the sandstone walls of the Great Enclosure at Musawwarat es Sufra (Sudan), a unique sacral building complex dating to the Meroitic period (c. 270BC-AD350) of the Kingdom of Kush.
The often finely incised informal inscriptions and images – rare evidence of non-official art and ritual practice – are threatened by accelerated weathering and the negative side effects of increased tourism. Several past attempts at documenting the hitherto unpublished graffiti corpus have been hampered by limitations inherent in traditional photographic and other graphic recording techniques. In 2009 white light scanning was tested on some graffiti with good results, but its high cost and the loss of important colour information limited its application.
In 2011 low-cost Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), which captures surface details in different lighting conditions, was tested on a large sample of graffiti. RTI is based on traditional raking light photography, where multiple images are taken from a fixed camera position using a light source that is moved between exposures. Results of the recording exercise are extremely encouraging although the outdoor field conditions posed various challenges, such as the restriction of the ideal hemispherical movement of the light source (i.e. the flash) due to walls or the ground as well as the sheer impossibility to prevent camera movement due to strong gusts of wind. Nevertheless, several hundred graffiti were captured and processed during the past field season, contributing to the virtual preservation of the graffiti corpus.
The processed RTI images can be viewed using open source viewer-software, which offers various visualisation tools. These display even finest graffiti detail that can be studied under different lighting conditions and surface rendering modes. It is planned to make the processed RTI images available for study via the open access Musawwarat Graffiti Archive.
Thursday, March 29 02:00-04:00 pm
This talk presents "TOMOBIKI Night!!" - a self-produced Ustream programme on archaeology and related fields of research and technologies in Japan (http://ustre.am/fAyw). The Ustream is an online broadcasting service, and is now broadly used for independent talk sessions, music and other entertainment programmes, and also academic presentations. It is very easy to get started: All we have to prepare is a computer with broadband Internet connection and webcam. The "TOMOBIKI Night!!" programme is coordinated by the authors, and is broadcasted every tomobiki day (every twelve days in average according to the Japanese lunar calendar system) [1][2]. It has been broadcasted for twenty-four times from August 2010 to November 2011. The contents include the latest news, current issues on archaeology and related fields, introduction of useful computer applications and tools, and upcoming events. Guests are occasionally invited from related fields such as geography, geomorphology, and geospatial engineering, to give an informal and interactive talk about their research. The audience gives comments in real time through Twitter gadget (Social Stream) embedded in the interface of the Ustream viewer. Such an interaction advances exchange of knowledge, experience, and ideas of research to form a new, real, and interdisciplinary academic connection. [1] Ako, T. and Y. Kondo (2011) Archaeo-GIS Workshop's USTREAM "TOMOBIKI Night!!" at the Dawn of Academic Social Media. Paper presented at Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2011, held at Makuhari, May 22-27, 2011. http://www2.jpgu.org/meeting/2011/yokou/MTT034-02_E.pdf. [2] Kondo, Y., G. Matsumoto, Y. Seino, T. Ako, W. Fukui, M. Sugiura, T. Uozu, and H. Yamaguchi. (in press) A union of dispersed knowledge and people: achievements of Archaeo-GIS Workshop 2007-2010. CAA 2011 Proceedings.
Some sets of prehistoric parietal engravings are palimpsests, making the analysis of their motifs complex and difficult. This is partially due to the loss of color information from each successive engraving over time, by removing the patina from the surface. In this sense, engravings also behaved like color lines. Unfortunately, the aging of these features may have made the tone of the surface rather homogeneous, only preserving the geometric information of the engraving grooves. When documenting prehistoric engravings, graphic solutions based on light and shadow relationships are insufficient. Hence, we need to find strategies that permit us to characterize more efficiently engraving groove families. The purpose of this project is, therefore, to distinguish different geometries of strokes (i.e. morphology, depth, length, width) in order to attempt to isolate the motifs and determine possible types of engraving tools. In this vein, it seemed interesting to take the sets of engravings in El Mirón Cave - a site that has been excavated by González-Morales and Straus since 1996 - as an extraordinary test case for the application of 3D scanning. The subject consists of an accumulation of linear engravings on a large block that had fallen from the cave ceiling atop a Lower Magdalenian cultural layer and then was covered by later Magdalenian archaeological deposits, all of which are radiocarbon dated, facts which has allowed dating of the engravings between 16000 BP and 13000 BP. The collection of 3D digital data was done with a structured light scanner. We used different fields of view (FOV) at resolutions ranging from 50 µm to 280 µm, to test the required level of detail to be used also in other similar engravings. We present here a few strategies based on semi-automated curvature extraction and other volume issues.
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The construction of a large railway infrastructure in 2008 led to the discovery of a prehistoric settlement in the Serra de Mas Bonet, in the Catalan region of Alt Empordà. During the fieldworks numerous negative structures of various functions and types (cabins, lodge funds, silos, pits, among others) were documented, as well as a broad diachrony ranging from the 5th to the 2nd millennium cal BC. The best represented occupation phase is the late Neolithic (late 4th millennium cal BC), characterized by different negative structures, as well as a good preservation of its deposits. The most unique and unparalleled known finds of such deposits are a set of stelae with carved horns on blocks of sandstone. Our proposal is based both on formal analysis and three-dimensional study performed with a 3D structured light scanner of one of the stelae and experimental replicas, which have permitted to analyse, to describe and to compare the different types of macro traces. At the end of this experimental project, we aim to understand the technical process used by the craftsman and associate the observed macro traces with different gestures, carving techniques and used tools.
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The aim of this paper is a critical survey on the webGIS in Archaeology and their real usability. At the First time a GIS on the web was called WebGIS, now are used also different terms as Webmapping and webcartography, but often is not well discriminated if there is a different meaning or not. Furthermore the WebGIS is a technology that allow to be presented spatial information in a user friendly format on the Web. Summarizing this kind of system allow for: data archiving, data creation, data editing, data analysis, query building, data visualization. The power of the platform is the possibility to have a different access by different users, generally the users are able to do: consultation of database and geographic maps; making queries and refine search in the database; creation of thematic maps with different layers; thematic selection and printing; draw spatial entity; administrator users can modify and update the database. In the last years thanks to the Open source applications there was a growing up of WebGIS projects, also small works were put on the web in order to disseminate the data and to improve the collaboration between the people. In the Osgeo website it is possible to download some applications and find all information (http://www.osgeo.org/) about the free system for instance MapServer, Geomaja, Geoserver. But WebGIS is not only OS and there are different programs, the most used are : ESRI ArcIMS, Intergraph GeoMedia WebMap, Autodesk Mapguide (Enterprise, but also OS). Different matter concerns the API of GE applied in some works. There are a lot of archaeological WebGIS projects, but the issue is that are these project useful for who? Which is the main aim? Spread data or a way to disseminate the know-how to the archaeological community? Which kind of data are shared? Are their used only for strict audience or for widely range of users? How long the web pages are loaded dynamic and quickly? Moreover most of these projects after a few years are not developed more, the websites did not work anymore, also often the interface is not really user friendly and the server is too slow, at the end are not "attractive" for the internet community.The purpose of that survey is try to understand through the exam of the past projects which is the future of the WebGIS in archaeology and the next developments in terms of Open Knowledge and cultural dissemination.
The aim of this project is the definition of a methodology, designed to create socionatural models able to improve our understanding of ancient populations dynamics and settlement patterns. We propose the integration of Geographic Information Systems exploiting the advantages of free software combined with traditional archaeological techniques (field walking and survey). This work shows the application of this approach in a particular case study of the NE Iberian Peninsula, the middle basin of Ripoll river (Catalonia, Spain) as well as the theoretical and methodological discussions about the use of spatial analysis in archaeology. Also, we used the Libre Office suite for the creation of the database, and Quantum GIS and GRASS for geographical modeling and spatial analysis.The latest rescue excavations in this area has generated a huge volume of information about prehistoric sites. Nevertheless, it is not being used by common research due to the fragmentation and heterogeneity of data. There is some evidence that these prehistoric settlements have been closely related to the location of various water bodies and fertile soil areas.In particular, the Ripoll river are home to the first human groups established within this region. The river and its basin offered Paleolithic groups and early farmers a wide range of animal resources, plants and materials. This landscape was formed by rolling hills and meadows, forests, natural water springs and streams. Moreover, the river can be understood as a place of passage, a real path of cultural transmission and economic and social communication.We suggest spatial analysis and geostatistics as a basic research tool to explore these questions in relation to our area of study. This type of techniques are able to combine geographical, ecological and cultural variables. For this reason we suggest that they could be used to validate or refuse old hypotheses. Moreover, GIS can also integrate data coming from different paleoenviromental analysis, as well as radiocarbon dates.The main aim of this work is to present a useful methodology to integrate data from areas where a high number of rescue excavations were developed. In this sense, spatial analysis and predictive models are excellent tools devised to improve the planning of new excavations and support better management systems.
Remote sensing (RS) data quality is improving exponentially. Ever higher resolution and acquisition facilities have become accessible in the last decade. In archaeology, satellite imagery has been widely used for detecting surface and subsurface anthropic features. In the last years the use of RS has been extended to reconstruct past environmental conditions, modelling subsistence strategies and evaluate conservation and visibility of the archaeological record (Lasaponara and Masini 2011). Here we present the use of RS data and newly acquired field data for the understanding of present geomorphology and taphonomic processes affecting geoarchaeological evidence preservation and visibility. Our case study is based in North Gujarat, India, an ecotone region strongly affected by changes in seasonal precipitation and climate. The present physiography is the result of a "fossilized" landscape where records of environmental variability and settlement dynamics of hunter-gatherer and agro-pastoral communities during the Early to Middle Holocene are readily accessible. Present work focuses on a) classification of regional main land covers, b) detection of sedimentary processes and c) changes in geomorphological features for a better understanding of settlement patterns. Research propose a multiscale approach integrating: 1) multispectral response of vegetation and sediments on LANDSAT, ASTER, and IKONOS imagery; 2) regional altimetry (SRTM, ASTER GDEM, GPS survey); 3) historic maps and imagery (such as declassified CORONA); and 4) ground survey for validating remote sensing results (sediment analyses, plant cover, archaeological site location). Preliminary results propose a definition of new socio-ecological patterns suggesting a different story of the transition from hunter-gathering to agropastoralism in north-western India
Recent developments in RTI technology lead to the growing number of applications of RTI as a tool for examination and analysis of surface detail, documentation, as well as a means of communication, dissemination and presentation. The present work is focused on RTI's contribution to the conservation objectives, namely, accessibility, durability, integrity and practicality. Applications of RTI on a large number and variety of artefact types and materials, derived from the Hellenistic cemetery of Derveni, in Macedonia, Greece, reveal hidden details, related to every phase of the objects biography, such as manufacture, use, decay and conservation. It clearly demonstrates the crucial role of RTI as a preventive conservation measure, which limits the human-object interaction considerably and can be valuable in case of fragile artefacts. Furthermore, the application of microscopic Highlight RTI not only meets the conservation needs for microscopic level of detail, but also signals interesting developments of the technique, which can broaden its application in the cultural heritage sector and particularly in conservation practice.
Linear models have been important statistical techniques fordealing with any experimental science. One important topic in this area is to detect influential subsets of data, that is, observations that are influential in terms of their effect on the estimation of parameters in linear regression or of the total population parameters.There are a lot of studies in radiocarbon dating to purpose a value consensus removing possible outliers after the corresponding testing. An influence analysis for the value consensus from a Bayesian perspective is developed in this paper.ABSTRACT SUBMITTED FOR POSTER SESSION
It is a common practice for people visiting an archaeological site to imagine what that place could have looked like during the period when it flourished. 3D modelling is an overwhelming, infinitely powerful dream tool since we can modify, rebuild, animate and experiment with all our thoughts freely without ever causing any damage to the site itself. This, however, was not the case in the past. When the Megalithic Temples of Malta were excavated they looked very different to what they look like today. Wanting to preserve has played a strong role and so has wanting to reconstruct. In the 1950's, a part of the Hagar Qim Temples' façade was rebuilt, shaping it to the façade we have today. Old paintings document the state in which this façade was originally seen when uncovered after being excavated in 1839. This research makes use of old documentation (photos, paintings, drawings, engravings and lithographs) as data from which to extract geometrical features which determine the monoliths and other large stones, from the façade under investigation, that need to be excluded from the virtual 3D model in order to visualise the Hagar Qim façade as it was discovered, before the physical reconstruction of the fallen slabs and monoliths took place.(I, the Recycler, would like to be considered for the CAA Recycle Award. The originators are Heritage Malta.)
The problem concerning the use of data collected on the surface as reliable indication of sub-surface remains represents a crucial issue for the practice of archaeological surveys, at both regional and site level. Any sort of surface investigation postulates a correlation between surface and sub-surface remains by over-estimating the value of the data collected on the surface. Nevertheless, there are clear evidences (e. g. geological post-depositional factors, past and actual human activity, etc.) showing the unreliability of the surface remains as data to trust for detecting spatial patterns and archaeological features both on regional and intra-site level. The surface collection may offer a biased understanding of the original population for a series of causes: 1) local movements of finds can merge clusters that were originally separated; 2) surface finds are likely to move down a slope; 3) collection rates can be affected by alluvial and aeolian natural processes; 4) the burial of a site by sediments moved by gravity (Colluviation); 5) collection rates depending on the skills of individual surveyors; 6) tillage can damage artefacts and confuse the spatial patterns of finds collected on the surface. Therefore, the present paper aims to acknowledge uncertainty as a quantitative estimation of error present in data collected by surface investigation and to show how all measurements contain some degree of uncertainty generated through systematic error and/or random error. I will show, by using different case studies, how the existing kinds of probabilistic sampling techniques (e. g. systematic sampling, random sampling, and judgmental sampling) can cope with the problem represented by the missing data. Finally, I will offer a range of possible solutions (e.g. Bayesian statistics, further archaeological excavations, remote sensing techniques) addressed to reduce uncertainty by correcting for systematic error and minimizing random error and to assess how the patterns characteristics of the surface remains approximate to those of the parent population.
The use of total station in the excavation of prehistoric sites and the processing of the excavation data with GIS has been introduced gradually since the 90s of last century. Such use is intended, among other things, to determine the spatial coordinates of the different archaeological objects, in order to perform an analysis of their distribution within the occupation area. This type of study aims to identify a possible intentional use of space by the ancient inhabitants, an aspect which could not be applied prior to the introduction of the practice of coordinating the findings, because of the lack of necessary data (spatial coordinates) of the individual findings. The only possibility is to readjust the excavation data and the database associated with them. This paper presents the results obtained from the attempt in this direction, made for a stratigraphic unit of the site Mondeval de Sora (Belluno - Italy), excavated from 1986 till 2000.Mondeval de Sora is situated in the heart of the Dolomites (South Western Alps, Italy) at an altitude of about 2150 m asl; it represents a key deposits for the study of occupation and exploitation patterns of mountain areas on the Southern slope of the Alps during the early Holocene. This site was characterized by the presence of large quantities of finds, so that it became necessary to excavate through the square and sub-square method. For this reason the only data related to the findings from this site, which were useful for analysing their spatial distribution, were the number of objects, broken down by type and material, found in each square. A further complication arose also because the squares of side 1m, were excavated through sub-squares with sides of 33 cm, or 25 cm, or 10 cm, due to the abundance of findings, and sometimes a single square was excavated through several layers (up to 3), each consisting of sub-squares with different size. The first part of the work was dedicated to homogenize the number of findings which were redistributed into sub-squares of 33 cm, for all the squares; then the database was changed in order to make it usable within a GIS. Finally, an analysis was made of distribution of the finds, which for this work were only bones. This analysis was performed by the method of interpolation, using the Krige algorithm, and through a classification of the different sub-squares, using the statistical method of "quintiles", adapted to the needs of this case. In the final phase of the work the results obtained with the two methods were compared, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each.
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Medieval war conflicts were in close connection to the landscape. It is known from the Czech medieval military orders that there was an appeal to use advantageous positions in the landscape. Study of resources allows us to identify several tactic principles which were considered standard or at least highly-desirable. These tactics can provide us with patterns in archaeological sources which can be, however, predictable by GIS analyses with certain accuracy.
This paper is aimed to use of the combination of several computer applications:
3D scans and 3D modeling, ArcGIS usage for extraction spatial datasets with combination LiDAR layer and building the spatial prediction model, and processing of the spatial datasets in factor analysis. The aim of the application is other archaeological object, than have been ever used. In this way it is complex of computer application applied on the small range conflict areas. The result of this paper is the method of the construction the spatial prediction model of the castle siege in the 15th century probably usable in wider Europe territory.
The dataset for the prediction models were extracted from rectified plans, LiDAR layers and geodetic measuring of the siege relicts and projectiles. The dataset contains number of 595 features which has been discovered in last 30 years. From raster layers were extracted data for the factor analysis and limit spatial data. From the results was constructed spatial prediction model. One of the conditions in the model was presence or absence in the active shooting castle area. This area can be reconstructed with metal detector investigation or with the computer simulation. We can map the place with the use combination 3D model of the loopholes and 3D scans of the weapons in the case of so far standing castles. The final spatial prediction model was constructed with conditions and count on the prepared raster layers. Prediction models were tested by archaeological researches and metal detector surveys.
The topic of this paper is photography's role in capturing archaeological sites and spaces in the modern and contemporary world. In a move away from photography serving as a mere form of documentation in archaeology, this paper highlights photography's emerging role to actively capture and depict the motion and subtleties that exist within the archaeological site. Photography can indeed serve as an active medium, in which the interaction between humans and their environment can be more fully captured and represented. This new form of photography demonstrates the medium's emerging role in capturing both the ephemeral and lasting aspects commonly associated with archaeological sites, and the ways in which photography can create a phenomenological experience for the viewer. This greater level of accessibility in archaeological photography not only reconstructs the archaeological site, but also extends the experience of the site to a greater audience through the use of sensory means. At the same time, this paper will also explore the role that digital media tools such as meta-data and macro play in enhancing the experience of archaeological photography. This paper explores examples from current and past fieldwork to highlight the new role that photography can play in archaeology.
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The topic of this paper is photography's role in capturing archaeological sites and spaces in the modern and contemporary world. In a move away from photography serving as a mere form of documentation in archaeology, this paper highlights photography's emerging role to actively capture and depict the motion and subtleties that exist within the archaeological site. Photography can indeed serve as an active medium, in which the interaction between humans and their environment can be more fully captured and represented. This new form of photography demonstrates the medium's emerging role in capturing both the ephemeral and lasting aspects commonly associated with archaeological sites, and the ways in which photography can create a phenomenological experience for the viewer. This greater level of accessibility in archaeological photography not only reconstructs the archaeological site, but also extends the experience of the site to a greater audience through the use of sensory means. At the same time, this paper will also explore the role that digital media tools such as meta-data and macro play in enhancing the experience of archaeological photography. This paper explores examples from current and past fieldwork to highlight the new role that photography can play in archaeology.
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The topic of this paper is photography's role in capturing archaeological sites and spaces in the modern and contemporary world. In a move away from photography serving as a mere form of documentation in archaeology, this paper highlights photography's emerging role to actively capture and depict the motion and subtleties that exist within the archaeological site. Photography can indeed serve as an active medium, in which the interaction between humans and their environment can be more fully captured and represented. This new form of photography demonstrates the medium's emerging role in capturing both the ephemeral and lasting aspects commonly associated with archaeological sites, and the ways in which photography can create a phenomenological experience for the viewer. This greater level of accessibility in archaeological photography not only reconstructs the archaeological site, but also extends the experience of the site to a greater audience through the use of sensory means. At the same time, this paper will also explore the role that digital media tools such as meta-data and macro play in enhancing the experience of archaeological photography. This paper explores examples from current and past fieldwork to highlight the new role that photography can play in archaeology.
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In the last decades, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have shown their potential to uncover spatio-temporal relationships between various objects and layers. Although archeologists have more and more utilized these techniques to analyze and interpret relationships between features on site, a full understanding of the possible advantages of the technology is for many still lagging behind. This shows the need to develop a comprehensive GIS for archaeological data which is not only cost-efficient and easy to use, but above all tailored to the requirements of people dealing with archaeological data in the field or as a primary source of information. It is clear that a three-dimensional GIS for archaeologists could hold many advantages over the traditional GIS tools which are mainly oriented towards a 2D representation and analysis of objects in a single time-frame. 3D visualizations have already proven to be valuable tools to record the state of a site and later revisit it in a virtual environment, long after it has been destroyed or heavily altered. Even more importantly, having a 3D overview of the different structures and objects on a site allows for topological and spatial analysis and a better understanding of the relations between the different excavated objects and stratigraphic layers. Overall, a 3D approach would not only enable new ways of handling this specific type of data but could be a starting point for new or improved methodologies all along the chain from fieldwork over analysis to reconstruction. Problems with developing such a system are mainly related to the broad diversity of archeological data and its inherent complexity. The data itself is intrinsically three-dimensional requiring a fully-fledged 3D GIS that is able to cope with the diversity in spatial, geometric and semantic information. Moreover, the temporal aspect that is linked to each of these information particles pushes the requirements even further towards a system that enables handling the fourth dimension and all its associated vagueness and fuzziness. In this project, we are currently examining the 3D relationships between structures and objects on several archeological sites. This should allow us to detect common characteristics that can be the subject of new or improved methods of 3D analysis that aren't feasible in a 2D approach. Both these characteristics and the data model used to register and analyze them have an influence on the requirements for the development of a full 3D archeological GIS. Therefore, the first step is to identify the most significant characteristics, to implement them in an extensible data model and test its robustness in the analyses expected to be most commonly used. Since this research is part of a bigger project, the next steps should eventually result in a formal definition of a conceptual data model with a common archaeological vocabulary and semantic, geometric and topologic description of archaeological objects that will be put forward as an extension of the GML data structure.
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A workshop has been built at the school camp at Costesti (near one of the Dacian Fortress, from the Orastie Mountains - a UNESCO site). This combines experimental archaeology, with the need for education and protection of the historical monuments. With the help of volunteers this 3D project has come to life. With donated materials there are now reconstructed artefacts reflecting the Dacian and Roman civilizations, a pottery kiln, a forge and a potter's wheel.
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As part of the wider geophysical and topographical research programme that is conducted by the British School at Rome (BSR) and the Archaeological Prospection Services of the University of Southampton (APSS) on the behalf of its commissioning partners, recent research has focused upon a number of sites in North Africa.
The use of geophysical survey is emerging in Sudan. Over recent years a series of survey projects in northern Sudan conducted by BSR and APSS has produced significant results at the sites of Amara West (The British Museum), Sesebi (Cambridge University) and Sai Island (University of Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille 3). Through the application of magnetometry, combined with topographical survey, highly detailed plans of these sites have been recorded, helping to determine excavation and conservation strategies.
Together with the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, a detailed magnetometry survey has commenced around the monumental site of Leptis Magna in Libya. Survey work has focused in the necropolis to the east of the city and has begun to reveal a detailed plan of the area and the distribution of the mausolea in the cemetery. Further seasons are planned to extend the survey around the area of the port, as part of the wider Roman Ports Network project beginning undertaken by the University of Southampton and BSR.
Finally, a detailed geophysical survey has been undertaken at the Roman town of Utica in Tunisia, together with the Tunisian Institut National du Patromonie and the University of Oxford. The results of the pilot season have begun to reveal a detailed city plan, focusing on an area to the east of the city between the amphitheatre and theatre.
The poster presents a summary of the current research being conducted by the BSR and APSS in North Africa focusing on a number of key Roman and pharonic sites.
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[will also be presented at GEO1 for 5mins]In South Africa, air photographs were frequently used in the 1960s and 1970s to map the distribution of stone walled pre-colonial structures. The principal objective was to classify different ruin types, and to explain the diversity of types by associating each with a different historically known cultural or linguistic group, ultimately in order to reconstruct the peopling of this landscape. New and readily accessible technologies such as satellite imagery (especially through the software Google Earth) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) justify revisiting the regional distributions of these stone-walled structures. These new tools can be usefully deployed to re-examine stone-walled settlements in the high plains (Highveld ) of South Africa to gain a more complete understanding of the pre-colonial sequence of change in social, political and economic organization. To this end, a long term project is investigating the spatial archaeology of pre-colonial stone-walled structures (SWS) in an area of more than 7000 square km between Johannesburg and the Vaal River, in the southern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. The survey area covers the entire basin of a major tributary of the Vaal River, the Klip, and two adjacent drainage basins. To facilitate the survey, these basins were subdivided in fifteen polygons, each bounded by major roads. Each polygon is being systematically surveyed on satellite imagery in Google Earth. In all survey polygons the initial step of tagging the site clusters has been accomplished by various research assistants at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits University. The subsequent steps of the survey include tagging each individual site, digitizing its outline for area calculation, classifying each SWS according to existing and modified typologies, and finally carrying out a range of spatial analyses using GIS software. In one of the polygons, Pam 1 in the center of the study area, the survey has progressed to the last stage. This poster describes the analysis and interpretation of the spatial patterns in the distribution of SWS in Pam 1. The results show significant changes in settlement patterns through time from dispersed homesteads to nucleated towns during the last two centuries before colonial times. These echo similar patterns reported in the neighboring North West Province, where they have been interpreted as a sequence of evolution in social, political and economic complexity.
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This project focuses on the study of the transition between Iron Age and the Roman period from a landscape perspective, using as a case study the Garraf and the Penedes, a mountainous and a lowland inland plain respectively in northeastern Spain. Previous archaeological research has indicated the existence of different economic activities in these two areas. The Penedes has provided evidence for the existence of Roman centuriated field systems (Palet 2003) while large livestock enclosures have been documented in the Garraf region, which seems to be associated with intensive pastoral activities during the Iron Age (Cebrià et al. 2003).This study endeavours to assess the existence of any synergies between these two activities and territories spanning the Iron Age to the Roman period, and address questions, such as whether the Iron-Age pastoral-based economy was substituted by Roman extensive agricultural practices or both activities could have been possibly integrated into a single economic approach.To investigate these issues an assessment of all the archaeological data available in these areas was conducted. This included firstly, a detailed analysis of the archaeological evidence present by systematic data collection by querying the Catalan Archaeological Sites Record (IPAC) and by fieldwalking to allow a better understanding of the chronology, typology and distribution of these activities. Secondly, a set of remote sensing techniques were used for the acquisition of new data. Given the physical differences between Penedes and the Garraf Massif, diverse but complementary methodological approaches needed to be implemented. For the assessment of centuriation in the Penedes area a combination of multispectral remote sensing, stereophotogrammetrical-derived microrelief analysis, survey and excavation were conducted (Orengo and Palet 2011). In the case of the Garraf area, high and eroded slopes and dense shrub vegetation rendered the application of multispectral image analysis and microrelief development very difficult. Therefore, in order to conduct photo-interpretation in this area, it was necessary to employ the 1985 and 1996 vertical aerial photographs, taken after wildfires burned down the vegetation in wide areas of the massif allowing a better visibility of the area. Block aerial triangulation procedures allowed obtaining orthoimages where hidden enclosures could be located.This poster presents the projects workflow and the first results of the application of this methodology, highlighting how the use of specific remote sensing techniques according to the physical character and history of the study area can offer more thorough insights into past human landscape uses.SUBMITTED AS POSTER
The Balearic Islands (Mallorca and Menorca) were conquered by Rome in 123 B.C. through a campaign lead by the consul Quintus Cæcilius Metellus. Written sources inform of the foundation of two cities in Mallorca, Palma (nowadays capital of the island) and Pollentia (Alcúdia). With the Roman occupation, a progressive new organisation and exploitation of the countryside was also witnessed. However, evidence of ancient Roman villas is still very scarce, and the first examples are dated from the Augustan era (27 BC-14 AD). The villa of Sa Mesquida, on the western coast of Mallorca, is one of the few examples documented and partially excavated in the 80s and 90s of the 20th century. The remains preserved belong to a structure, beginning in the Augustan era, composed of a series of rooms organised around a courtyard, a pottery kiln for coarse ceramics and a cistern that was used later as a rubbish dump in Late Antiquity. A recent project developed in 2010 provided new data concerning stratigraphy, architectural evolution and the activities that were developed during its history. This new set of data allowed us to create a preliminary hypothesis on the architectural form, distribution and evolution of the building. This hypothesis will be represented in a Virtual Reality model of the building, which is part of the interpretative process. New questions emerged during the construction of the model, and fresh hypotheses have been addressed as a result of this process. Furthermore, the environment of the archaeological site has been changed through history. The first main alteration has been a draining work that affected the wetland beside the coast. Touristic development provoked an extensive urbanisation of the area that destroyed part of the site, and the preserved structures remained surrounded by modern buildings. The ancient landscape was very different than what we can see today, and it is important to take into account the visibility that could be witnessed from the site towards the wetlands, the sea and other archaeological sites of the area. To achieve a realistic approach, the villa virtual reality model was incorporated to a terrain model of the surrounding geography. In future research we will explore the possible impact of the location of the villa on the landscape.
The cemeteries with dispersed cremations were the main burial type in Estonia during the Iron Age. The essential characteristic of them is their collective nature and intentional indistinguishability of the individual burials. It seems that the burned bones and artefacts are scattered over the grave field in irregular manner, although there could be some cremations in the pit also. The cremations are mostly without containers. The intrasite spatial and quantitative methods which are usually applied for cemeteries with separate individual burials are not suitable for the analysis of dispersed cremations because of the specific nature of the latter. In the paper I will introduce the results of the intrasite spatial analysis of the Iron Age cremation cemetery of Madi, Estonia. Spatial data of artefacts, bones and charcoal were studied on two levels. First, the material from cemetery were analysed as point pattern data with the aim to find out the regularity in spatial distribution. After that, smaller clusters and concentration areas of finds and bones were taken into closer consideration. Different analysis methods were used: autocorrelation, density analysis, nearest neighbour analysis, mean centre analysis and minimum distance analysis. The digital spatial analysis combined with multivariate statistics allowed to take account many variables simultaneously and to study their relationships and distribution pattern in detail. As a result, the new understanding of the funerary rituals performed on the burial place and formation process of the dispersed cremation cemetery is presented.
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This poster presents the results of an intensive geophysical survey conducted in 2010 in the areas to the east and south east of the Roman fort at Maryport, Cumbria. Magnetometry, resistivity and Ground Penetrating Radar were applied at the site, and provided varying responses to the archaeological deposits in the area. Integration of the different datasets using GIS and interpretation layers facilitated a more comprehensive understanding of the archaeological features across the extra-mural area.
We seek to evaluate the potential for archaeological purposes of a set of LiDAR data, with a density of 0,5 points per square meter, made publically available by the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN) in the framework of the PNOA (Plan Nacional de Ortofotografía Aérea) project. This data will be compared with other available LiDAR datasets with a higher point density. Different case studies in Northwest Iberia will be presented.
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This work-in-progress examines the potential of Open Linked Data applications for Assyriology from the multidisciplinary perspective of Web Science. The study focuses on cuneiform material from the ancient Near East, limited to tablets from the Ur III period (c. 2100 BC) as published by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). The corpus consists of the metadata, transliterations and high-resolution digital images of the original tablets, which were written in antiquity by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay. During the four millennia of the history of script, individual signs underwent typographical changes and semantic shifts as well as being used for writing a number of different, even unrelated, languages. Semantic representations of the polyvalent values of each individual sign are as challenging as the accurate visual representations of this 3D script. The CDLI object records several possible anchoring points for a web of Linked Data. Its database is already an amalgamation of the collections of a number of museums and higher education institutions, and semantic enriching is a logical continuation of existing processes to interconnect and disseminate this data. It will enable a more diverse research base within Assyriology, beyond the traditional approaches of translation and comparative analysis of texts linked by genre, language or provenance. URIs will be assigned to occurring entities within the content of the text (locations, individuals, year names) and the object’s metadata (housing institution, provenance, date, socio-political period), aiding cross-referencing and forming a clearer image of each object, location and personal biography. Publishing the CDLI data in a machine-readable format (non-proprietary formats and as linked RDF) will allow for its use in innovative ways, and linked to projects reliant on separate and heterogeneous data streams. Digital Heritage is a multidisciplinary domain that lends itself well to the budding discipline of Web Science. Within this Web Science framework, the aim has been to examine the potential of human factors and technological possibilities in equal measures. The parameters of the discussion are set at determining whether technological advances will be the primary driving force in the future of Assyriology, or whether the social dynamics of the discipline itself determine which aspects of potential technical advancement are adopted and utilised. As part of this examination, the potential of Citizen Science as a tool for generating Linked Data and opening up a perceived niche-community of scholarship to a wider audience is discussed. Whether a more varied approach and diversity of perspective as brought on by non-specialist to the field are a major factor in the future of Assyriology remains one of the unanswered questions of this on-going project.
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The documentation of Prehistoric rockwall art is one of the most interesting and developed applications of 3D scanning, since it allows to obtain high resolution documentation of this kind of manifestations. However, in spite of the generalization of these kinds of applications, it is still an expensive technology beyond the funding possibilities of many research projects. However, alternative low-cost methods can be implemented in order to provide small projects with funding limitations with this kind of documentation. In this poster, we present the methodology used for documenting the Paleolithic rock wall paintings from El Niño cave (Ayna, Spain). Using a total station, digital photo camera and the ArcGIS software, a 3D photogrammetric reconstruction of these paintings was made, despite the limited funds available. This reconstruction provides a useful documentation for Paleolithic paintings analyses and heritage management, as well as a valuable tool for the popularization of Paleolithic rock wall paintings.
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Explores the difficulty in mapping Late Iron Age sites of the Vredefort Dome and solutions employed in overcoming them. Evaluates various techniques, from aerial photography to GPS mapping, to overcome the various challenges presented by the local conditions. Explores several analytical possibilities in a GIS environment with these maps.
This poster presents a predictive modelling study of the Neolithic settlement system in the Boucle du Vaudreuil, a micro region of 1860 km2 in the Seine Valley (Eure, France). The analysis focuses on the environmental context of the sites, particular topography, geology and soil capacities for agricultural production. We analyzed the environmental context of Neolithic excavated and surveyed sites in the area through principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. In this way, we established environmental 'signatures' of settlement locations that could be used as input for predictive modelling. The MaxEnt software was used to extrapolate and visualize the results. This program was developed by ecologists for modelling species distributions for presence-only species records. It estimates the relationship between species records and the environmental and/or spatial characteristics of the sites (Elith et al. 2011). Since the program is designed to work with insufficient samples it is very suitable for archaeological predictive modelling as well. MaxEnt provides probability map estimates by establishing the covariance between sites and environmental parameters. The poster presents a test-case study. We will also discuss the limits of this predictive modelling method, in particular the problem of model validation with non-random samples and the relevance of the parameters used for the analysis. Reference: Elith, J., Phillips, S.J., Hastie, T., Dudík, M., Chee, Y.E., Yates, C.J., 2011. A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists. Diversity and Distributions 17, 43-57. Submission for CAA2012
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The use of total station in the archaeological excavation has undoubtedly revolutionized the collecting and recording field methods, with several advantages over the traditional practices: faster and more accurate measurements, easier handling of spatial and provenience data, immediate availability of data for visualization, real time analysis and interpretation, among others.Combining these advantages with the ones from digital photography, an effective tool is created for the graphic recording of stratigraphic profiles and archaeological structures, with the ability to eliminate errors associated to traditional tape measured drawings. The method is based on the arrangement and rectification of a series of close-up and general photographs with three-dimensional coordinates taken from a set of preplaced numbered pushpins. These will allow, in addition to the high precision in the vectorization of features, the inclusion of the photographs and subsequent drawings into the site grid space using GIS. This poster will focus on the comparison between the described method and the traditional tape measuring process, applied to the drawing of a burial context from a Portuguese Late Mesolithic shellmidden. The results provide levels of accuracy and resolution with errors less than 1mm from the total station/photograph method, which also reveal a greater exactitude in the representation of the detail of the skeletal elements.
Interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists and archaeologists is enabling the development of innovative digital technologies in a variety of areas. Tracing Networks is a Leverhulme-funded research project that brings together archaeologists and computer scientists to investigate networks of crafts-people and craft traditions across and beyond the Mediterranean region, between the late Bronze Age and the late classical period. In recent years, archaeologists have gathered a massive amount of images, Cross-team knowledge sharing and analysis are vital for their research and being able to retrieve the right images, in the right context, and with the right level of confidence is essential.We explore the use of semantic web technologies and introduce an ontology-based collaborative framework for image annotation, which allows users to tag concepts, relationships in the pictures and storing context regarding users. The framework also provides a systematic way to represent and combine uncertainty of statements as well as user-credibility measurement, which can be used for ranking search results. It addition, we are working on a GraphML-based query builder, which provides assistance to archaeologists who has difficulty with writing query for RDF data.(short paper or poster)
In consideration of the growing interest in urban space studies, the ALPAGE project (ALPAGE is a French acronym for « diachronic analysis of the Paris urban area: a geomatic approach ») aims at producing data and tools to understand the long term relationships between spaces and societies in Paris. This project is a three year research program funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and it involves the work of 4 laboratories with the collaboration of various partners : LAMOP (project leader), ArScAn, LIENSs, L3i, COGIT, IRHT, the Parisian topography centre, APUR. The above have come together to collaborate on building a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Parisian area in the preindustrial period. The creation of such a GIS enables to reconstruct the oldest parcel plan of Paris - the Atlas made by Vasserot between 1810-1836 - and to spatialise historical data from the Middle Ages and modern times (walls, aristocratic mansions, sewers, centennial floods, manors, parishes, etc.). When linked with the old urban fabrics, these data show the diachronic structure of the urban morphology. During the project, the 910 urban block plans of the Vasserot atlas (the oldest parcel plans of Paris) have been thus georeferenced and vectorised. As a result of the active collaboration between historians, geomaticians and computer scientists specialised in automatic vectorisation, this co-production of spatial reference data has allowed the project to take into account the natural and social dimensions of the Parisian urban space. This work has firstly allowed us to study the geometrical characteristics of parcels through different criteria including; density, shape diversity, and the geometric orientations of the road network and of the parcels. These identified morphological characteristics are then explained by social practices that redefine these shapes over a long term period. Secondly, the spatial dimension of these historical vectorised objects has been analysed : influence of walls and road network on the parcels, inheritance of past flows on the feudal domains and the sewers. Thirdly, to improve the understanding of Vasserot's data, plans dated from 1300 to 1380, have also been georeferenced to allow for the comparison and confrontation with medieval texts. Thus, the geocoding on the Vasserot's road system of the taxpayers of the Parisian royal tax in 1300 has been possible. Finally, an original development of the project, unplanned in its beginning, has been to provide all this new knowledge to everyone through a digital webmapping platform. Data co-produced by researchers involved in the ALPAGE project are now freely visible and stackable with current parcel data obtained by agreement with the Paris planning agency. This webmapping platform may meet certain expectations of members of the civil society that have emerged during the project, such as redefining the scope of protection of the Marais according to the shape of the wall of Charles V. More information about the ALPAGE project is available online: http://lamop.univ-paris1.fr/alpage and http://websig.univ-lr.fr/alpage_public/flash/.
The purpose of the proposed study refers to the correct application of the photographic rectification and photogrammetric methodology used as graphic support for the understanding of the constructive processes of Roman structures.The analysis of construction processes of the Provincial Forum of Tarraco involved the need of an accurate and essential graphic documentation, the achievement of which may suffer from practical limitations typical of urban environment (space, time, financial and technical resources, etc.). Depending on the structure of interest and the amount of available data, a two-dimensional reproduction or a digital model was used. In both cases, according with the location of the archaeological evidence, the data were collected with or without the use of topographic control points. However, while for the two-dimensional reproduction a single photo was required used to carry out the specific photographic rectification, for the digital model pairs of photos were necessary to get the stereographic view. The image and data processing allowed the identification of an incredible numbers of information and details about the construction processes of the many of the structures of the Provincial Forum, nonetheless, often the size of such structures beside the modern urban enviroment give time-space limitations. The applied computing methodology led to obtain two-dimensional images as well as digital models in a straight, fast and accurate way; the images and the models obtained have been successfully used in different studies, among the others: the study of the modulation used in the building of the structures and the exact identification of the working tools used for the manufacture of building materials; interesting the high accuracy of the analysis allows not just the mere identification of the type of the working tools but also their classification based on the size of the footprints left in the worked pieces. In conclusion, the combinations of orthoimages obtained through the software PhoToPlan (Kubit) and the digital models of the structures elaborated through the program Topcon-Image Master represented a perfect solution to get the results of our interest.
Because a GIS enables geospatial collection, management, analysis and visualisation of comprehensive data records, it is especially well suited for digital processing of excavation documentation. Valuable originals are spared and saved as a result. Access to the data is optimised and information from different data resources can be integrated and analysed collectively. Translation rows in a database enable the creation of maps in different languages within minutes, which is a big support for the international teamwork. Only well structured and high-quality data input with the corresponding metadata for the data source and processing allows for the best possible results.In contrast to the paper plans of an excavation documentation, in GIS the objects should be drawn in full size and with the necessary details, even if they are not or just partly visible and covered by other objects. When editing in GIS one has to work in reversed stratigraphy from bottom to top. Photographs and literature give the necessary background information to improve and sometimes modify the original excavation drawings. An identification code, for example a Museum number or the name of an excavation field could be used as a connecting link between the databases and the digital plans. The fact, that one is able to show how the different features are arranged, for example in a 3D animation, is a considerable support for analysing, which would never have been achieved by ordinary studies. The transformation of the spatial data from the local System into a UTM coordinate System allows the comparison with other data from the surrounding.The geospatial analysis of data from the war booty sacrificial sites of Northern Europe dating back to the Roman and Migration periods clearly demonstrates the possibilities offered by GIS in relation to archaeological matters. For example, the excavation documentation from the sacrificial sites of Ejsbøl, Illerup Ǻdal, Thorsberg and Nydam in Denmark has been systematically scanned and edited. Countless photos and excavation drawings as well as database entries are now linked with the plans and provide insights into the various deposition stages or simplify the reconstructions of military and personalised equipment on the basis of situation analyses of the individual elements. The wealth of possible applications is illustrated by topics relating, for example, to settlement developments and structures as well building constructions in the framework of GIS-based analysis of settlements and central sites such as Hedeby and Wurt Elisenhof. The visualisation of physical structures proves its worth also in the reconstruction of tomb complexes, such as the wooden burial chambers of Neudorf-Bornstein in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde/ Germany or Poprad-Matejovce in Slovakia.Old excavation documentations contain important information about our past. We should dig them out again and use them for further analysis. Special efforts have to direct the process towards standardizing techniques, so that information from one country can be compared and exchanged with that of another.
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The surveying department of Saxony ordered the creation of high resolution DEM data. The airborne laser scans of about 18 415 km² will be finished in 2011. ATKIS-DGM2, a set of interpolated data with 2m-grid and an accuracy of +/- 0.2 m consists of over 4.6 billion points within about 5200 files. This treasure shall be provided for daily archaeological use.While the methods are clear in theory, there are some challenges in processing large amounts of 3D-data in practice. The experiences using ESRI ArcGIS 10 software with 3D Extension are shown. Based on a description of the solution with ArcGIS Model Builder, problems and chances of the used tools are illustrated in the presentation. Results of this project part are hill-shades of all available DGM2 data and a terrain-model that supports the generation of TIN and 3D-views of dedicated regions.Based on these data, combined with previously georeferenced historic maps and high resolution remote sensing data (DOP, CIR) it is possible to prospect large regions from the desktop. In this manner over 400 km of ancient roads where studied, assumed to be part of the Via Regia and the "Frühbußer Straße". The Result is a documentation of visible preserved remains from ancient roads, just like hollow ways or crop-marks, for concerns of heritage protection.Most details of the used methods are well known, but falling prices allow the application even with rather low budgets. The method supports the practice of heritage protection not only for small project regions but state wide for the entire region of Saxony.
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The regular application of geophysical and topographical survey techniques to evaluate archaeological sites has been the most recent addition to landscape surveys in Italy carried out by a partnership between the British School at Rome (BSR) and the Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton (APSS), a unit within Southampton University.
The creation of a focused team based at the BSR providing a service of geophysical and topographical surveys, draws upon the specialised skills and expertise of experienced researchers. The service also benefits from the academic support and resources provided by the BSR and the University of Southampton.The initiative has been extremely successful since its inauguration in 2001 and has participated in a vast range of chronologically diverse projects, most notably, the Portus Project, as well as projects of Italian and foreign research institutions within Italy. The wide distribution of the geophysical work over much of Italy is testimony to the variety of the commissioning bodies which include Soprintendenza, Italian and foreign universities, Province, Regione and local Comune. More recently, the BSR and APSS have begun to extend the geographical spread of their surveys across the Mediterranean, with ongoing work commissioned by partners in Spain, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia and Montenegro.The poster presents an overview of the research that has been undertaken, the results achieved, and the range of techniques that are used in the field.
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This poster presents a new 3D WebGIS System—called QueryArch3D— that allows archaeologists to search and query segmented 3D models that are linked to a spatial database via a virtual reality landscape—in this case the ancient Maya city and UNESCO World Heritage site of Copan, Honduras. In 2009, the MayaArch3D Project (http://mayaarch3d.unm.edu) was begun to explore the possibilities of integrating GIS and 3D digital tools for research on ancient architecture and landscapes. This interdisciplinary, international project brings together art historians, archaeologists, and cultural resource managers with experts in remote sensing, photogrammetry, 3D modeling, and virtual reality. Some of the questions that we seek to address using the QueryArch3D tool include: What are the research possibilities for 3D models linked to underlying archaeological data? How can we store and curate 3D models for the future? How can we create an online resource for researchers of Maya architecture where they can compare and study geo-referenced 3D models and attribute data? How can we perform quantitative and qualitative comparisons with other Maya structures and analyze architecture in larger spatial and temporal contexts? Like traditional databases, this tool can curate, query, and compare 2D digital objects (such as drawings, maps, diagrams, text, photographs, and videos). However, what is unique and technologically cutting-edge is that QueryArch3D enables users to 1) integrate and edit 2D and 3D data of multiple resolutions, 2) to perform attribute and spatial queries of archaeological data, and 3) to visualize, compare and analyze 3D buildings and artifacts—all in a single online, navigable virtual reality landscape. Developed in collaboration with Dr. Giorgio Agugiaro and Dr. Fabio Remondino at the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK) in Trento, Italy, the QueryArch3D tool links both low resolution models and high resolution reality-based and hybrid models to an open source spatial database (PostgreSQL with PostGIS) via a virtual reality environment that runs on the Unity 3 game engine. The poster summarizes the plans that the project has for its next stage of development, and concludes with a critical assessment of the research possibilities that QueryArch3D can offer archaeologists in terms of organizing, searching, and visualizing data, and identifying patterns over space and time.
Realistically rendered and textured virtual spaces can be created in AVAYA'S web.alive platform by importing high polygon models and scaled accurately reproduced textures. In addition MellaniuM has successfully developed an application for utilizing all the archaeological virtual assets developed in 3D Studio Max over the past several years. It is possible therefore to create interactive environments of archaeological significance that can be accessed through the Internet and available to up to 40 participants. This poster exhibit will be accompanied by a live demonstration of networked PC's to illustrate the collaborative potential of this application
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This paper presents ARANO (West African Rock Art, in its spanish intitials), an Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI for the research and management of the rock art of the Horn of Africa. This SDI is based on the use of free software, which aims to share data in a context of open access to information allowing to different research groups to share a cooperative framework. Beyond the technical aspects of ARANO, that have already been published (Fraguas, 2009), we discuss the usefulness of the cloud, and technologies related to data management in a context of open access, as a means to overcome the scientific and technological gap between North and South, in this case the western and african scientific communities. The methodology employed in the construction of, the ARANO SDI is discussed as an operational example of the potential of the combination of data sharing technologies in Internet and free software as tools for define a socio-political engagement for the information technologies.
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In 2007 the Tidgrove key was found during excavations near Kingsclere, Hampshire. A residence of Henry II, the site highlighted a complex that included a series of buildings, including a large cellar. At the foot of this structure lay a heavily corroded key. A new CT scanner at the University of Southampton revealed wire inlay over the shaft, and the fine cutting of the wards. Earlier this year, the Archaeological Computing Research Group at Southampton began to work on virtually reconstructing this artefact and how it may have been used
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Previous extensive research in Drahany Highlands provided us with a complete medieval settlement network and in some cases also with medieval field systems. Results of this research could be used for further analysis based on GIS and quantitative methods. The basic goal of this paper was reconstruction of past landscapes, impact of human activities on the landscape, the choice of settlement location and changes in the settlement pattern.The remains of deserted medieval villages and their fields were vectorized and displayed in GIS. This provided us the basis for the reconstruction of past landscapes whereas extent of ploughlands has been delimitated with the help of archaeological prediction. On this basis (and also thanks to comparison with the current settlement patterns) it is possible to observe land use and the impact of human activities on the landscape. We could also try to answer the question of land degradation in the Middle Ages. Wide spectrum of spatial features together with their evaluation with the help of quantitative methods enabled us to obtain the regularities in the lay-out of villages and their field systems. Thanks to this it is possible to reveal the main principles which could have determined the choice of location for the settlement areas (especially placing of residential areas and their surrounding fields). Subsequently, during the Late Medieval and Early Modern period approximately half of all villages deserted. We could identify the factors which could expressively influence the process of abandoning the villages. We have pursued the vulnerability of settlement and specified the unsuitable environment for settlement. In addition to this, we have attempted to identify the circumstances which could prevent the complete desertion as well as to define the optimal environment for settlements.
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In this poster we show two different ways of studing the ancient communication in the Iberian Cessetania (Tarragona, Spain. 6th century - 2nd century bC), and how we will finally compare both results. This research has some problems such as the big changes in the landscape after thousands of years, or the fact the traditional paths have been substituted for modern roads. It will be a big effort but we think it is important to go on in archaeological research of Iberian societies, because nobody has done this kind of studies yet and it surely will open new horizons in the research.We decided to focus our investigation between 5th and 3rd century bC, because this was the period when the Cessetanians developed completely their principal sites, and the settlement was definitely organized into a hierarchy. For trade, paying tributes or war there might have been paths which communicated all these sites.We will conduct the first part of research with GIS. The use of this technology for spatial archaeological studies is well known, we will work with it to calculate the possible paths using Arcgis software.On the other hand, we will do the second part of research with archaeomorphological methodology, working with historical and modern cartography, ancient and current aerial photography and field work, looking for paths or its parts that we can consider ancient ways.When we will have done this two preliminary researches, we will share them and we will look for coincidences and differences. Our aim is to compare the results of virtual reality with the real world, in order to check if it is worth to work with it. With these elements, we will try to answer the initial question of this poster.
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I'll represent samples of databases models for the archaeological artifacts used in the museums of Romania, for a better understanding of the special needs in a country where the illegal traffic of cultural artifacts is still taking its toll. The only proposed national program for the evidence and recording of the archaeological objects is DOCPAT for a centralized recording management. Nevertheless, the protection of cultural patrimony it's a necessity when proposing general recording datasheets to be generally followed. Therefore, when the artifacts are various the databases models should differ as an essential factor for the patrimony management.
The presentation focuses on the type of the program and the special needs not yet included in it according to the international standards.
The ideal bedfellows: How the Social Web and Archaeology became friends This paper summarises an analysis of the possibilities for Archaeology that the increasing ubiquity of the social web in society presents. In particular, the extent to which the use of social media tools to proliferate information quickly and informally could impact on the work in the sector. The research analyses how Archaeology's approaches to interpretation are developing alongside social web movements, and considers the possibilities offered for access to archaeological data within the sector, as well as the public. The work includes an analysis of the issues of current approaches to improving access to data and interpretation being used by archaeologists, incorporating key approaches from community archaeology, public archaeology and archaeology as a practice. A exploration as to why Archaeology's take-up of the social web has been varied is supported by the idea of a need for a review of the possibilities for new technologies. The paper will suggest ways to address the extent to which the social web can benefit Archaeology and the public that it serves. Current thinking around the impact of the web on society is used throughout this research, in order to support conclusions. This paper will conclude by putting forward various methodological strategies for adoption of social web technologies within Archaeology, based on the findings from the analysis.
This poster presents the recently launched Journal of Open Archaeology Data (JOAD). JOAD encourages the open archiving of data, rewards researchers, and makes data publicly findable. The journal features peer reviewed data papers describing archaeology datasets with high reuse potential. We are working with a number of specialist and institutional data repositories to ensure that the associated data is professionally archived, preserved, and publicly available. Equally importantly, the data and the papers are citable, and reuse will be tracked. JOAD is part of the new Ubiquity Press Metajournals platform, which also includes journals for research software archiving
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Under the direction of Professor Simon Keay from the University of Southampton, recent excavations at the site of Portus saw the discovery of a massive building. The Roman port, located near to Rome's international airport was once the maritime port of Imperial Rome and the discovery may have played an important role in ship manufacture. The building is rectangular in form and extended 145m along the Trajanic hexagonal basin, nestled in the very heart of the waterways. Using procedural modelling techniques such as City Engine and then transferring these into high fidelity rendering within 3DS Max, the Archaeological Computing Research Group at the University of Southampton, led by Dr Graeme Earl, developed a range of interpretations to examine the many possibilities for both the aesthetic and practical uses of this building. This poster will explore the current developments in the application of these technologies to this structure
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The Georgia Department of Natural Resources Historic Preservation Division (GA DNR HPD), in conjunction with Digital Antiquity, recently conducted a project to convert records of archaeological investigations on Sapelo Island, Georgia to a digital format and to curate these data in the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). Sapelo Island is one of Georgia's thirteen major barrier islands, with a diverse culture history ranging from Archaic Period American Indians to the present-day Geechee of Hog Hammock. While the State of Georgia maintains digital site files, these generally only contain site forms, field reports, and locational information for a given site. To supplement these records, GADNR HPD received grant funding to digitize additional records of archaeological investigations conducted on Sapelo Island. Access to background and supplemental data, provided via tDAR will make more information available to a wider audience and ensure long-term data preservation.
The Preobragenka-6 burial site is located in the Western Siberia. The site dates to the 3-d millenium BC and belongs to the Odinovo culture of the Bronze Age.At present there are 76 burials investigated. There are a lot of heterogeneous data of the site: archaeological, anthropological, paleozoological, paleobotanical, radiocarbon dating, etc. The entire set of data provides an opportunity to investigate various processes of influence and transformation of the Odinovo culture and to contribute greatly to the understanding of the cultural development of Sibiria at the Bronze Age.To integrate and analyze the entire set of data, we used a computer system based on GIS. Applied approaches and methods and the results we present in the form of a poster.
Tuesday, 27th March, 4:00 - 6:00pm
Part of my on-going research on movement in augmented archaeological sites, investigates how architectural remains and interpretative on-site infrastructure impact the way we move in such spaces. Taking into account that each archaeological site has a certain spatial character, it is suggested that design approaches should be informed by formal observation methodologies of how the site itself affords movement (Peponis et al. 2004). It has also been argued that visibility constitutes a critical factor which influences visitors' spatial behavior (Kaynar 2005). A critical point of this research is to develop a hybrid model for managing movement around archaeological sites and to revisit design methodologies for visitor itineraries. Apart from recognised forms of observation and the collection of qualitative data about visitors' movement, technologies such as eye-tracking, GPS body tracking and geo-tagging are deployed. This poster will demonstrate the methodology followed in order to document visitors' movement in the archaeological sites of Gournia in Greece and Portus in Italy, and obtain an insight of the patterns of movement influenced by certain affordances provided by the sites. References:Kaynar, I. 2005. Visibility, movement paths and preferences in open plan museums: an observational and descriptive study on Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum. In Proceedings (Volume II) 5th International Space Syntax Symposium, Delft, the Netherlands. Peponis J, Conroy-Dalton R, Wineman J, Dalton N, 2004, "Measuring the effects of layout upon visitors' spatial behaviors in open plan exhibition settings" Environment and Planning (B): Planning and Design 31, 253-273
This work has been partially funded by the RCUK DE PATINA project.
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Introduction The proliferation of new technologies have provided archaeologists and architects with many novel ways to record, represent and investigate archaeological sites with standing structures and subsurface features. At the University of Notre Dame we have formed an interdisciplinary team of experts from Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, Center for Research Computing and the Office of Information Technologies to investigate and develop new digital imaging and documentation techniques and workflows. One goal is to explore ways of using new digital technologies to document and bring inaccessible field site experiences back to the lab and classroom. Another aim is to create precisely rendered 3D images of cultural artifacts and historic sites to allow in-depth research and display via the Internet. Technologies Our project is currently exploring how best to combine two primary technologies into a single interactive system for cataloging, analyzing and displaying both point and raster data at extremely high resolutions. The two primary technologies we are using are the Gigapan System which enables high resolution digital cameras to create extremely high resolution explorable panoramic photographs and the Leica ScanStation, a time-of-flight laser scanning system capable of creating point clouds with a resolution of 0.5mm for highly accurate field measurement, virtual reconstruction and 3D visualization of World Heritage and culturally significant national and local historic sites. This poster explains and illustrates recent work by the University of Notre Dame Digital Historic Architectural Research and Material Analysis (D.H.A.R.M.A.) group documenting the Roman Forum and two Buddhist tomb sites in India using Gigapan and Leica ScanStation equipment and post processing workflows to combine the data in unique ways. In July 2010 the D.H.A.R.M.A team of Notre Dame School of Architecture faculty and students traveled to the Roman Forum - the center of political, religious, commercial, and judicial life in ancient Rome. Permission was granted by Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, Minstry of Heritage and Culture and the Archaeological Service to accurately measure and draw the monuments and ruins at the Roman Forum. The team produced 27 scans, 30 panoramic views, scaled drawings, detailed images, in addition to hand-measured data. The India sites will be scanned and photographed in January 2012. Further work is being coordinated with research specialists from the Notre Dame Center for Research Computing to create an open-source, web accessible method capable of fusing gigapixel images with laser point cloud data sets to create accurate, interactive 3D models.As part of the poster we plan to incorporate 2D and 3D images utilizing a short-throw pico projector to further explain and illustrate recent work by D.H.A.R.M.A. in Rome and India with Gigapan and Leica ScanStation.
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Today's boundaries often cut through culturally homogenous landscapes of the past. That's why archaeological research cannot stop at state borders and also heritage protection benefits from cross border views. Because every state of Germany is culturally independent, we find a very differentiated situation of data models for archaeological information. So the exchange of archaeological information within Germany and externally is not easy at all. These problems strengthen dealing with protected sites.Authorities of archaeological heritage protection are more and more required to open their data to the public. Initiatives like INSPIRE and GDI-DE aim at improved and smooth information exchange. Therefore the commission "Archaeology and Information Systems" of the Association of State Archaeologists in Germany is concerned with conceptual, technical, economical and legal problems, it is a platform to exchange knowledge and experiences. Special teams work on recommendations to harmonise and standardise archaeological data models, on solutions to archive digital archaeological data and on legal aspects of geodata.The development of the Archaeological Data eXport standard (ADeX) was initiated by the commission "Archaeology and Information Systems" and was implemented by its modelling team. The aim is to develop a simple standard for exchanging archaeological data between all relevant institutions throughout Germany and to export archaeological data to third parties, for example to INSPIRE.As result of extensive analysis of data structures used in various archaeological institutions, a core set of attributes describing archaeological areas was chosen and integrated into ADeX. Based on this, the current work is to define attributes describing (legally) protected sites. This version of ADeX-INSPIRE shall be compatible with INSPIRE and with recommendations of the Association of State Archaeologists ("Opinions on Archaeological Heritage Protection and INSPIRE Protected Sites").The presentation describes the current standard ADeX 2.0 with its extensions for protected sites and INSPIRE.
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This poster presents the results of an intensive geophysical survey conducted in 2010 in the areas to the east and south east of the Roman fort at Maryport, Cumbria. Magnetometry, resistivity and Ground Penetrating Radar were applied at the site, and provided varying responses to the archaeological deposits in the area. Integration of the different datasets using GIS and interpretation layers facilitated a more comprehensive understanding of the archaeological features across the extra-mural area.
The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, currently directed by Ian Hodder from Stanford University was discovered during a survey in November of 1958. The site highlighted an area covering 32 acres of space on the Turkish Konya plain and the first series of excavations, headed by James Mellaart produced a wealth of archaeological material. One of its many famous features consisted of well-preserved wall paintings spread throughout ten differing layers of habitation that provided an exciting insight into both the culture of its Neolithic inhabitants and on a wider scale, the emergence of human sedentary society. One of the many buildings uncovered in this series of excavations was a highly decorated level 5 structure, nicknamed the "Shrine of the Hunters". It was found directly half way through the ten levels of occupation that spanned the site and in total it had four separate painted murals, spread across the entirety of the room. This made it one of the most ornate areas found to date at the site. For over forty years a true representation for this series of paintings had not been undertaken until the summer of 2010, when MSc Student Grant Cox in conjunction with the Archaeological Computing Research Group at Southampton began to develop reconstructions to place the artwork into a virtual context. Achieving this ambition was important visually and analytically because it enabled alternative interpretations to be developed and the wider space to be explored.
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Early in the development of Heurist (HeuristScholar.org) we developed a strategy for building relationships between heterogeneous entitities. Those relationships - themselves stored as entities - were typed, time-stamped, annotated and directional, and could be created without limitations on the type of entitites linked or the number of links created.This strategy has served us well in numerous projects, but it places the onus on the researcher to build sensible relationships. With the increasing use of Heurist for complex, multi-contributor resources, including excavation records and historical encyclopaedias, we have needed to move to a more controlled system of entity linkages. In this paper we will describe our strategy for term-based relationship constraints and demonstrate how it is used in the construction of a complex database of legacy excavation data from the site of Zagora, Greece (used as the case study for our workshop on Heurist). We will also show how constrained relationships are embedded as fields in data entry forms to facilitate data entry.We believe our strategy of term-based relationship constraints and relationships embedded in data entry forms provides a good model for building coherent networks of entities. However the system is still evolving and we will contrast it with alternatives, such as fixed relationship models defined by database structure, and invite feedback on ways it might be improved.
Archaeological Computing and Digital Humanities are contested disciplines. Variously described in contemporary scholarly discourses as ‘emerging’ and ‘established’ - both push knowledge creation and remediation forward, often crossing disciplinary boundaries. By embracing innovation the disciplines explore how digitality supports, augments, and acts as a catalyst for the transformation of data into knowledge or the even more contested term ‘meaning’, which remains at the centre of Humanities’ concerns. The glass screen changes how we experience artifacts - dynamic linking environments, augmented reality, and virtual reality, require new effort as writers and readers in all disciplines situate themselves simultaneously or asynchronously in new dimensions. However, a key issue persists: how can we communicate this knowledge in the best possible way? Both disciplines are concerned with information visualization, interpretation, knowledge representation, and developing an engaged participatory scholarship that negotiates new forms of narrative arc.
Archaeological data combines both spatial and descriptive dimensions. In the particular framework of rescue archaeology in France, our aim is to evaluate archaeological potentials by carrying out systematic surveys on lands concerned by development projects whose realization threaten archaeological sites. The results of these evaluations will allow the archaeological state departments to consider whether an exhaustive excavation should be carried out or not.
In this context, various internal reflections led us to (i) test theoretical sampling strategies to be set up on sites and to (ii) establish an experimental operating chain or protocol for archaeological data to be recorded by INRAP teams in Rhône-Alpes area. This will combines different skills, tools and measurement techniques.
This approach aims to record and archive data in consistent archaeological stratigraphic context, to be adapted at a regional scale through field dataset recording, later integrated into an archaeological database (BDA) using PC-tablet, and topographic - GIS measurements.
The exploratory potential of the GIS tool and its ability to produce various analytical maps in a same space are used to assess archaeological potential of fields and helps with site analysis.
This presentation exposes in detail the operational scheme from the test trenching strategy to the conception of the archaeological database up to the graphical restitution of the spatial information, as well as the type of tools used. The different techniques and methodologies, as well as their limits, are presented here.
This paper presents the results of the Sangro Valley Project's (SVP) deployment of a paperless recording system in a mixed environment of excavation and survey. It also discusses some advances made in archaeological photography. Finally, it presents preliminary results from ongoing experiments with automatically generating Harris Matrices from a FileMaker Pro database and with using iPads and iPhones as GPS units for survey. Over its first sixteen years the SVP employed various formats to record, store, manage, and analyze its data. The opening of a new site in 2011 provided an opportunity to reconceive the project's data systems. The University of Cincinnati's Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia pioneered the use of Apple's iPad in 2010 for paperless recording of basic excavation data. Building upon their success, the SVP developed and implemented its integrated paperless recording system in FileMaker on both laptop computers and iPads. The paperless system pushes digitization of data into the field—replacing traditional recording on paper forms, followed by subsequent transcription into computer systems, with direct data entry into the database format. Data about each context, small find, environmental sample, and level were captured in the field using the FileMaker Go app on iPads. Later, specialists in the labs entered more detailed information about small finds, pottery, tile, and other items into the server-based FileMaker Pro database. Each of the two survey teams used iPads to record data as well. Another area of workflow improvement was in site photography. Previously, documentation photos of the site taken during excavation were captured with digital cameras, with the images subsequently uploaded, labeled, captioned, and stored on a server. As the season progressed the field supervisors tended to defer these processes, leading to errors. To remedy this, the project employed the Eye-Fi Connect X2, an SD camera memory card with built-in WiFi and associated software. This technology enables direct communication between the cameras and iPads, allowing photographs to be immediately labeled and captioned in the field, and enabling a significant improvement in accuracy. The new technology quickly proved to have many advantages over traditional recording methods—much quicker exchange of information between the field personnel and specialists; immediate labeling and captioning of photos taken in the field; a significant decrease in human error through automation; improved consistency of terminology by using a structured vocabulary of options; increased efficiency by eliminating the need to scan and digitize paper records; an increase in the accessibility of information to all staff members; and improved back up. The paperless system proved to be a resounding success. It was used for excavation, two survey projects, and recording by specialists. While there were some growing pains, the benefits far outweighed the costs. For any large archaeological project, data organization is critical. The flexibility of both the hardware and software allowed the SVP to finally integrate several types of research into a single, cohesive database. This approach has enormous potential to revolutionize the way archaeological data is collected, managed, analyzed, and disseminated.
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In the last decade a flexible system of documenting archaeological excavation has been developed in Slovenia thru practical employment in the field (even in remote or inaccessible areas) that allows for an accurate and fast gathering of archaeological field data with a bare minimum: a research team of at least two people, a total station, a digital photo camera and a laptop computer with CAD software and a module specifically designed for fast and automatized processing and managing of gathered data. The system of documentation is so well established and practically tested in the field that allows relatively easy workflow even for a team with almost no prior experience working with total station or CAD computer software. The system is electrically independent since all of the mentioned instruments operate on batteries. But to work comfortably, we need a color printer on site in order to provide the team with up to date information of the situation at the site usually by printing 2D plans of daily situations and of the photogrammetric photographs of details or sections of the site. The printouts are necessary since constantly checking the situation on the computer during excavation is not practical (the computer preferably being located in a location secure from the elements). The invention of the newest generation of tablets and smartphones has given the field archaeologists so much more than just rendering printers on site redundant. We had an opportunity to test a tablet computer on a site which is still being excavated. Using a tablet computer enabled us to view high resolution photographs or CAD drawings of plans and sections of the site which is excellent since the gadget works really fast and turns photographs with the help of a range of free applications for graphic design into very informative sketches which can be than easily sent via wi-fi to other members of the team or to the computer on site. Rather than buying the more expensive 3G tablet, we connected the device to a smart mobile phone which enables wireless internet access for sending gathered data for processing and storage as part of research documentation (even to a remote location such as an office 100 km away), receiving already processed data and an exchange of information between team members on different sites. For example: if someone on a remote site is having trouble operating a total station or processing data, we can send the team a sketch with instructions or even a short video to help them out in mere minutes. The use of a single tablet on the site enabled
