Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity [Book]

Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station #C3400, Austin, Texas 78712. Email: arabinow@mail.utexas.edu

It is often stated that trying to deal with information on the internet is like drinking from a firehose. But trying to put together a book about the current state of digital anything must be rather more like trying to paint a landscape from the window of a moving train. By the time the painting is complete, the scenery has changed dramatically. This puts books on digital approaches to academic disciplines in an interesting position: by the time a volume makes it into the hands of its readers, it is already a historical document as well as a scholarly work. The editors of Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity are very aware of this: as they state, the book seeks "to create a snapshot of the research activities of Digital Classicist members as represented by a selection of the papers given at our Summer seminars and conference panels in one particular year, 2007" (p10). When one considers that the printed volume went to press in 2010, and is being reviewed in 2011, this means that almost four years—a digital eternity—have passed since most of the papers were first composed. I think, therefore, it will be most useful to discuss Digital Research from two perspectives: first, in terms of its scholarly contribution, and second, in terms of what the framing of this work and the identity of its contributors tell us about a particular moment in the history of the field of 'digital humanities'.

Book cover

The Introduction presents the book very clearly as the reflection in print of an emerging "network, a community of users" founded in 2004 as 'The Digital Classicist' (p2). This user community consists of a diverse group of Classicists engaged in research and publication involving interdisciplinary approaches and digital tools. The chapters in the book are thus representative both of the community itself (Bodard and Mahony, the editors, are two of the community's four administrators, and all the first authors but one are also members) and of the sort of research it is meant to foster.

Bodard and Mahony have assembled a group of contributions that they arrange into three categories: 'Archaeology and Geography', 'Text and Language', and 'Infrastructure and Disciplinary Issues'. Only the contributions to the 'Text and Language' section are thematically homogeneous. The other two sections are somewhat more eclectic, although here, perhaps to provide greater coherence, the editors specifically commissioned papers from contributors who were absent from both the 2007 Digital Classicist seminar series and panels at the 2007 Classical Association Annual Conference, from which all the other contributions were drawn. This eclecticism offers both advantages and disadvantages: the chapters cover a very broad range of issues, but as a result the book as a whole does not speak to a well-defined audience. In particular, there is a tension between assumptions about the degree of digital literacy of the reader, and the implicit desire of the editors and contributors to attract and inform less digitally savvy Classicists. Essentially, it is not clear if the work is meant for those who are already numbered among the recruits to digital approaches or those who might be interested in signing on. The contributions also vary in scope, from the presentation of the results of individual projects to the exploration of discipline-wide theoretical and methodological issues.

The first section, 'Archaeology and Geography', consists of three chapters. The first is a summary by Fulford, O'Riordan, Clarke and Rains of the development of the digital recording system at Silchester, a Roman site that since 1997 has been a test-bed for the use of digital tools in archaeological excavation. The temporal breadth of that project, carried out by the University of Reading, is reflected in the content of the chapter. It begins with a justification of the development of a digital database for stratigraphic recording, which might have been necessary in the late 1990s but is less so in 2010, when databases are the norm rather than the exception (as the authors themselves recognise, p20). The discussion of the diachronic development of the database itself is much more useful, however, since it highlights not only solutions to recording issues common to most archaeological projects, but the ongoing process by which the project arrived at those (sometimes short-lived) solutions. The Silchester team has been more self-conscious than most about its adoption of new technologies, and its field seasons in the 2000s have consistently involved a systematic user-testing component. This chapter provides a valuable discussion of that approach: even though a number of the tools discussed were outmoded by the time of publication, the field archaeologist can benefit from the enumeration of practical difficulties associated with the generation and integration of digital documentation in the course of excavation. Interestingly, despite buzz about new tablet computers, the database section of this chapter focuses on the conversion of written information to a digital format—the device most recently tested when the chapter was composed was the digital pen and notebook. It will be interesting to see whether hand-writing survives the next decade as a standard form of archaeological documentation.

Sebastian Heath's contribution, the next in this section, takes an entirely different tack. Rather than focusing on the results of a project, he provides a more general discussion of a few key issues in the dissemination of archaeological information over the internet. Central to this discussion is the tension between access to data and the quality of that data. Using a series of case studies, Heath argues that scholarly traditions of limiting access to data are pushing data consumers, especially in the general public, toward more open but often more problematic sources of information. Reputable collections of information such as JSTOR, museum websites, and even ADS make it difficult to find and reuse data through the restriction of access (JSTOR is behind a paywall), through the limited visibility of their holdings to search engines, or through the lack of "permanent and short URLs" (p51) for the items they contain. Dealers in and collectors of ancient coins, on the other hand, offer large collections of easily discoverable images of numismatic material. The chapter is thus a call for the repositories of scholarly information to make their contents easier to discover and easier to reuse.

The following chapter on 'Neogeography' moves off in yet another direction. In it, Stuart Dunn sets out to discuss the impact of new, widely available spatial tools—and in particular the capacity of these tools to produce user-generated content—on archaeological knowledge. This chapter is somewhat less successful than the first two, in part because it compresses a complex theoretical background uncomfortably into the first few paragraphs, and in part because it does not quite reach its goal of "a high-level synthesis of the utility of [neogeographical] methods in understanding past constructions of space ... as opposed to representing and describing them" (p57). It was not clear to me how the intervisibility of sites in Google Earth, the accumulation of user-generated content around points of archaeological interest, or agent-based modelling of Byzantine military campaigns tell us about anything other than the ways in which we understand space. The clarity of the argument is not helped by the illustration of issues of topography with screen-captures from Google Earth in which topographic views of the landscape are not used. On the other hand, Dunn's contribution makes the important general point that vast sets of crowd-sourced or collaborative 'neogeographical' data have the potential to open new avenues for archaeological research.

I found a similar unevenness in the contributions to the following section on 'Text and Language', although in this case the common threads in these three chapters were much clearer. I wonder if, again, this may be due to ambivalence about the book's intended audience. This was most apparent in the first contribution, by Charlotte Tupman, on the digital publication of epigraphy. This area is, I think, very exciting to those on both sides of the digital/classicist fence, but in attempting to cater to both sides at once, Tupman does not quite serve either. The first part of the chapter is a long review of epigraphic publishing practices which will be overly familiar ground to most Classicists; the second is a long review of XML and digital publication which will be equally familiar to most digital humanists. The conclusion—that digital publication makes it easier to study epigraphic monuments in context and in detail—is certainly true, but does anyone still need to be convinced of this? Tupman does touch on one key technical issue, however, which I think reveals better than anything else the necessity (not just the advantage) of markup-based electronic publication of epigraphic material. She notes that XML encoding makes the complex system of editorial comment in traditional epigraphic publications transparent: that is, it is always clear what parts of the text are lost, what parts are restored, and what restorations the editor is uncertain about (p82–83). In this way, the rich editorial history of the object can be preserved intact, without ambiguity. I think this is a more important point than the idea that digital publication allows the inclusion of more photos, and wish it had been given more emphasis.

Skipping ahead, a similar point is made more effectively in Notis Toufexis' chapter on the diachronic study of Greek. Toufexis argues very convincingly that text mark-up allows us to move beyond the idea of a single critical edition of an ancient Greek text and instead to preserve the entire rich history of 'misspellings' and 'misreadings' in the manuscript tradition that the editors of ancient texts go to so much effort to marginalise. Here the review of the tradition of scholarship is well placed, for it highlights the specific textual and linguistic issues that might be tackled with a very large corpus of marked-up manuscript variants and clear digital conventions for editorial interventions. What Toufexis does not provide is a roadmap for the way in which the editor of a Classical text might approach the production of such a digital edition. Nor does he comment on the additional skills or effort a rich digital edition might demand of its editor, although he offers the reader several prototypes as examples (p116, footnote 49: an online edition of Galen's commentary on Hippokrates and the 'New Testament Transcripts Prototype' give the reader a particularly good idea of the approach he envisions). One suspects, in fact, that such an edition would require far more than a single pair of hands. This is confirmed by the following chapter on the Homer Multitext Project, which describes the development of software for, and the practical execution of, a very similar approach.

The chapter that lies between the contributions of Tupman and Toufexis is a more traditional report on the development of a platform, in this case 'A Virtual Research Environment for the Study of Documents and Manuscripts'. The authors, Bowman, Crowther, Kirkham and Pybus, argue for the value of a digital interface in which scholars can collaborate on the study of texts from remote locations, while enjoying access to a full range of supporting material and tools (especially with relation to digital images). They go on to describe the construction of such an interface, and present a case study of its use in the rereading of a stylus tablet from the Netherlands. To this point the chapter presents an argument for the usefulness of resource-rich collaborative systems that is both convincing and accessible to a 'lay' Classicist reader. The subsequent technical section, on the other hand, would not be at all accessible to a reader who does not know, for example, what a "JSR-168 portlet" is (p96), although it would presumably be useful for an information architect. In their conclusion, the authors outline plans for the integration of this virtual research environment with that of the Silchester project. But it is difficult to understand how all this will be useful to the reader who recognises the value of such a collaborative tool: should one expect to have access to this VRE as a scholarly resource, or is the chapter rather a blueprint for the construction of one's own? The online presence of this VRE and of Silchester's does not answer the question—neither is currently available to external users.

The four chapters in the final section on infrastructure, though an even more diverse group, offer the reader more tangible benefits. This section begins with Neel Smith's chapter on the Homer Multitext Project, which one might have expected to find in the preceding section on text, but which has been included here presumably because of the chapter's heavy emphasis on the project's underlying architecture. This chapter provides a much clearer picture of what is involved in the generation of the sort of rich, multilayered textual-history interface endorsed in the preceding chapter, on the level of both conceptual models and software. The project itself is live and accessible. And, admirably, Smith discusses not only the project's present capabilities, but the long-term preservation of the underlying documents and their relation to each other. The treatment of these issues is perhaps a little too technical, again, for the digitally uninitiated. It would be a shame, however, if this were to prevent such readers from considering it closely, because questions of the interrelations between the many parts of a textual tradition are central to the study of Classics, and Smith and his colleagues have taken a very thoughtful approach to the organisation of those interrelations in digital form. Of particular use to those who regularly use the TLG and other electronic editions is the discussion of a Uniform Resource Name system that permits both the unambiguous citation of a digital text and the clear encoding of relationships within manuscript traditions (p130).

The preoccupation with longevity is taken up on a conceptual level by the next chapter, which echoes the call for openness made by Heath earlier in the volume. In this contribution, 'Ktêma es aiei: Digital Permanence from an Ancient Perspective', Hugh Cayless examines the common features of the transmission of ancient texts to conclude that opportunities for copying and reuse offer the best chance for digital objects to survive into the future. Not only should digital material be made available for reuse by as wide an audience as possible, but the material should be in formats flexible enough to accommodate user-generated additions and annotations—the scholia and marginalia of the digital age. Digital publication strategies that replicate static print media—PDFs and the like—are therefore less desirable than strategies that leave documents open to the accretion of additional semantic information (p148–49).

If Cayless provides much food for thought but few specific tools, the following chapter does rather the opposite, at least for a reader who is involved in teaching. OKell, Ljubojevic and MacMahon present a customisable, multimedia pedagogical software package for the creation of 'Generative Learning Objects', or GLOs. GLOs are interactive digital modules that allow evidence to be evaluated from several different angles, emphasise the process of interpretation, and provide feedback on student input, thus encouraging the development of critical thinking skills. Though the discussion of the pedagogical framework is important for those who do not spend time in a classroom, several of the concepts involved will be familiar to the rest of us. What is new, however, is the toolkit itself, which seems potentially very useful for the development of the sorts of exercises that many of us still build on paper or through basic websites. In particular, the package is designed to encourage 'the spirit of enquiry' (p162) among its student users, rather than the search for a 'correct' answer to a specific question. Since the software package is available for download, along with the example discussed in the chapter and even evaluation modules, this chapter can serve in practical terms as the stepping-off point for the implementation of the pedagogical tool it describes.

The collection concludes with a thoughtful contribution from Melissa Terras on what it means to be a 'Digital Classicist'. Terras's essay considers the practical implications of the editors' endorsement of collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and thus serves as a bookend to the introductory chapter. Here the question of audience emerges again. Terras's points will be all too familiar to anyone who has worked with Digital Classics in the last decade, although she presents the issues in an especially clear and compelling manner. The reader who will benefit most from this chapter is the Classicist who is interested in digital approaches but not yet heavily involved. Terras points out that Digital Classics builds on habits of interdisciplinarity deeply rooted in the field, and that Classics was an early adopter of digital technologies, which were rightly seen as useful tools in the management of a complex textual tradition (p172). At the same time, humanities disciplines in general tend to be lukewarm, if not hostile, to the idea of collaborative work—at least to the extent that such work does not produce single-author monographs. Terras's blueprint for the navigation of these pitfalls focuses on the development and management of project teams (the team approach is perhaps more widely accepted in the UK: even collaborative digital projects in the US tend to be conceptualised as the brainchildren of one or two Primary Investigators, who receive the bulk of the public and academic credit). She ends with a call for evangelism on the part of Digital Classicists, whose promotion of the value of Digital Classics will eventually lead to its recognition as "an academic discipline" in its own right (p188). In the final paragraphs of this chapter, the target audience shifts once more: Terras's conclusions seem to be directed more at confirmed Digital Classicists than at potential converts.

I use the language of religious conversion deliberately here. I think a useful analogy can be drawn between this moment in the emergence of Digital Classics as a field, and the early stages of the establishment of a religion, during which a small number of devoted practitioners attempt to convince the wider community of the value of their new view of the world, even in the face of negative personal consequences. As Terras recognises, it is still the case that '[i]ndividuals can also face issues with the acceptance of their interdisciplinary research (and multimedia) publications by their Classical peers' (p184). Since I feel this book encapsulates the spirit of this particular moment, when intriguing ideas that have been around for some time are beginning to catch on more broadly, but are still meeting with resistance from sectors of the academic community, I would like to make some brief comments from the perspective of an American Digital Classicist about the volume as a historical document.

The most obvious themes that span the various contributions to Digital Research are very much connected to the state of digital discourse since around the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. Most of the contributors are concerned with collaborative work, and with the structures that facilitate that work; an interest in multivocality is equally present in most of the chapters. Concerns with the openness of information, its discoverability and interoperability, are also in the foreground throughout the book. All of these themes reflect developments in the larger computing community during the same period, especially in relation to the internet: one might point to the open-source movement, the rise of the 'semantic Web' and of crowd-sourced content, and the growing attention to 'big data' in both commercial and research circles. There is also a growing (and welcome) concern, visible in some of these contributions, for the long-term preservation not only of the new data objects being generated, but also of the relationships between those objects. The study of Classical Antiquity relies on contextual relationships, and it is heartening that as we place our faith more and more in digital means for the expression of such information, scholars are beginning to think about how it might survive changes in software, platform, or approaches to computing. This, too, reflects an emergent concern in the broader field of data management that has received more attention since the middle of the first decade of the 21st century.

History and geography are of course closely connected, and this book clearly represents a historical moment in a particular place. There are few contributors from outside the UK, and none from outside the Anglophone world. As a result, broad areas of importance to Digital Classics go unrepresented: the most glaring omissions involve imaging techniques and three-dimensional reconstructions, both of substantial importance to scholars working in Digital Classics in other European countries. Spatial technologies are represented only by Dunn's contribution, although a much broader range of spatial tools have come to play a fundamental role in Digital Classics in the last few years. Here I think the omission is a function of time rather than space: the 'spatial turn' has been encouraged since 2007 by the advent of machine-learning approaches that allow researchers to extract and visualise various sorts of information automatically from digital text corpora. Machine learning and natural language processing are not mentioned at all in the book. Time may also be responsible for the lack of reference to some light-weight digital-photography visualisation techniques that seem relevant to the discussions of inscribed objects in the second section. Polynomial Texture Mapping, for example, has been applied successfully to objects like the Antikythera Mechanism; and its potential for the study of inscriptions or stylus tablets seems obvious (full disclosure: I organised a pilot project to apply this technique to an epigraphic corpus at the site of Chersonesos). Again, this is a technique that began to be widely adopted only toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century. This highlights the extent to which books about digital approaches are dated almost as soon as they come out. At the same time, it is interesting to note the lag between the development of digital projects and their launch: several of the digital projects that seemed to be close to public release when the authors were making their last revisions (2009, to judge from reference dates) have not materialised as of May 2011 (XDB-Arch, a cross-database search platform mentioned in Bowman et al., appears not yet to be functional, and the site for the Reference Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek, noted by Toufexis as scheduled for a 2011 release, has no information about a launch date). The delay drives home the way in which digital humanities projects are often caught between their long gestational periods and the rapid changes in the technologies involved.

A glance at the professional profiles of the contributors to the work also provides information about the state of the field at this particular moment. Only four of the twenty contributors (Bowman, Fulford, OKell, Smith) hold traditional academic positions in departments of Ancient History, Archaeology, or Classics. Another (Terras) has a traditional academic position in a school of library, archive, and information studies. Nine more have traditional academic training in Classics or Classical Archaeology, but now hold non-traditional positions in specialised humanities computing centres (Bodard, Dunn, Tupman, Mahony), in centres or institutes dealing with aspects of the ancient world (Cayless, Crowther, Heath, Toufexis), or in the UK Higher Education Academy (MacMahon). The remaining six (Clarke, Kirkham, Ljubojevic, O'Riordan, Pybus, Rains) are professional archaeologists, project managers, or IT professionals. This is interesting not only because it shows this particular community practising the sort of interdisciplinarity it preaches, but because it suggests that junior scholars who put much of their energy into Digital Classics do not end up in traditional academic positions (the three professors among the contributors are all at a senior level).

Finally, the physical book itself. This is perhaps the most telling indicator of the historical moment of its production. Despite its call for openness and reuse, despite its appeals to traditional Classicists to recognise digital scholarship, and despite the obvious advantages of digital venues for speedy publication, the book itself is available only in printed form. It has a page in the Stoa Consortium Archives, on which, in response to a comment from a visitor, Bodard explains that the book's only digital version will consist of individual chapters put up at the discretion of the contributors. To date, in addition to the introduction, only three contributors (Heath, Terras and Toufexis) have put up their chapters. All of them are in PDF format. Clearly, print publication is still the gold standard of scholarly production, and whether this was due to professional demands or the requirements of a publishing contract, even the most committed Digital Classicists have decided here to present their work in that traditional medium. In many ways, it is not the ideal form for this material, which is perhaps more useful framed as individual contributions aimed at different audiences. The illustrations would certainly have been greatly improved by colour and multimedia, and digital publication would have made it much easier to investigate the many links cited. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the field of Digital Classics and digital humanities in general, but I do wonder who will purchase a physical copy, and to what extent that physical copy will still be consulted in ten or twenty years.

But this is a question one might ask of all scholarly books, and in many ways, I expect this book to be more useful in the future than others on more 'academic' topics. Most of the contributions ask questions or discuss approaches that are not tied to specific digital platforms, but lie at the core of Classics and Classical Archaeology. Between its coverage of these bigger-picture issues and its value as historical testimony to a particular moment in the evolution of Digital Classics, Digital Research in the Study of Classical Antiquity comes as close to being a ktêma es aiei—a 'possession for all time'—as one can hope for in a book on the rapidly changing field of digital scholarship.

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What is war good for? Sparking civilization, suggest archaeology findings from Peru

ScienceDaily (July 25, 2011) — Warfare, triggered by political conflict between the fifth century B.C. and the first century A.D., likely shaped the development of the first settlement that would classify as a civilization in the Titicaca basin of southern Peru, a new UCLA study suggests.

Charles Stanish, director of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Abigail Levine, a UCLA graduate student in anthropology, used archaeological evidence from the basin, home to a number of thriving and complex early societies during the first millennium B.C., to trace the evolution of two larger, dominant states in the region: Taraco, along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas.

"This study is part of a larger, worldwide comparative research effort to define the factors that gave rise to the first societies that developed public buildings, widespread religions and regional political systems -- or basically characteristics associated with ancient states or what is colloquially known as 'civilization,'" said Stanish, who is also a professor of anthropology at UCLA. "War, regional trade and specialized labor are the three factors that keep coming up as predecessors to civilization."

The findings appear online in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conducted between 2004 and 2006, the authors' excavations in Taraco unearthed signs of a massive fire that raged sometime during the first century A.D., reducing much of the state to ash and architectural rubble. The authors compared artifacts dating from before and after the fire and concluded that agriculture, pottery and the obsidian industry, all of which had flourished in the state, greatly declined after the fire.

Based on the range and extent of the destruction and the lack of evidence supporting reconstruction efforts, the authors suggest that the fire was a result of war, not of an accident or a ritual.

Iconographic evidence of conflict in regional stone-work, textiles and pottery suggests that the destruction of Taraco had been preceded by several centuries of raids. This includes depictions of trophy heads and people dressed in feline pelts cutting off heads, among other evidence.

Because the downfall of Taraco, which was home to roughly 5,000 people, coincided with the rise of neighboring Pukara as a dominant political force in the region, the authors suggest that warfare between the states may have led to the raids, shaping the early political landscape of the northern Titicaca basin.

Inhabited between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D., Pukara was the first regional population center in the Andes highlands. During its peak, it covered more than 2 square kilometer and housed approximately 10,000 residents, including bureaucrats, priests, artisans, farmers, herders and possibly warriors.

The civilization's ruins include impressive monolithic sculptures with a variety of geometric, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images, plus intricate, multi-colored pottery in a variety of ritual and domestic forms.

War appears to have played a similar civilizing role in Mesoamerica, as well as Mesopotamia, Stanish said. To further test his theories on the origins of civilization, Stanish will begin a new project next year at a Neolithic site in Armenia.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles.

Journal Reference:

Charles Stanish and Abigail Levine. Inaugural Article: War and early state formation in the northern Titicaca Basin, Peru. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1110176108

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.


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An Investigation of Aural Space inside Mousa Broch by Observation and Analysis of Sound and Light

Email: sibbald1@blueyonder.co.uk

Inside Mousa Broch

This project emphasises the unique character and construction of Mousa broch, questions the model of Mousa broch as a roofed home (an interpretation adopted by Historic Scotland in 2002) and considers the way in which sound and light informs our understanding of the spaces contained within its structure. Underpinning the approach to data collection was the architectural concept of aural space. The author attempts to convey an impression of aural space inside Mousa broch by the creation of an audio-visual record supported by acoustic analysis, archaeological discussion, and an architectural breakdown of the spaces within the broch structure. Audio recordings, sound samples, photographs and movies were made on Mousa island and inside Mousa broch during the period of the Summer solstice of 2009.

The results of the analysis of reverberation times for selected spaces are unambiguous. Spaces inside the broch walls created by galleries, cells and the staircase of Mousa broch demonstrate short reverberation times. Acoustic analysis of audio samples support the conclusion that the broch's sonic character can be universally characterised as very dry or 'dead'. The thickness of the dry stone wall construction and the diffusing effect of its fractured surfaces on incoming sound waves influence the sonic character of the aural space. Inside Mousa broch, sounds of at least 1000 Hz and upwards are not reflected but scattered, diffused by the edge surfaces and gaps between the stones in the walls. The author concludes that the influence of what could be called 'dry stone diffusion' found at Mousa broch will occur in all dry stone constructions, including other prehistoric brochs, roundhouses and monastic beehive cells. The identification of a characteristically 'dry' acoustic associated with dry stone construction allows us some insight into the acoustic environment shared by our ancestors in Atlantic Scotland. Photographs and video recordings of the action of sunlight around the walls inside Mousa broch during the solstice period suggest that the broch may perform the function of an interface between ground and sky, a construction in which vertical void sets and stairs are component parts of a solar/celestial measuring device (this possibility remains to be investigated).

Keywords: Mousa; broch; Scotland; audio; video; contruction; aural space; acoustic analysis;Find more publications on brochs in the British and Irish Archaeological Bibliography (BIAB)

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Superb Archaeology Tool Kit up for Grabs!

Join the Council for British Archaeology and be entered into a prizedraw to win this fantastic archaeological toolkit!

Toolkit ToolkitIt will set you up with everything you need to excavate on site, so all you’ll need to do is join an excavation and start digging!

To celebrate the ‘Festival of British Archaeology 2011’, everyone* who joins the CBA by Sunday 31st July, and mentions ‘Festival’ will be entered into the prizedraw to win the toolkit, which was kindly supplied by archaeology tool supplier Archtools.

The CBA is an educational charity which aims to ensure that archaeology really is for everyone. Whether you want to get involved through reading about the latest archaeological discoveries, studying archaeology, joining a local archaeology group, working in the heritage sector, watching archaeological promgrammes on TV or campaigning for the better protection of our historic environment, the CBA strives to ensure that opportunties for widespread involvement in archaeology are available for everyone. We also play a significant role in raising awareness at all levels of the public benefits of engaging with archaeology and the historic environment.

By becoming a member, you will be supporting the CBA’s charitable aims, at the same time as receiving some fantastic benefits:

Bi-monthly issues of the UK’s leading archaeology magazine, British Archaeology, which will keep you up to date with the latest discoveries and news in archaeology in BritainMembers’ Newsletters, which will keep you informed on the CBA’s latest projects, news and campaignsConservation Update, a newsletter focusing on the ongoing work of the CBA in conservation issuesmembership of a CBA regional groupdiscounts to CBA events and on other related products

All this from just £29** for an Individual member or £21 for a student!

If you would like to become a CBA member, find out more or go direct to the CBA shop. To be entered into the prizedraw please mention ‘Festival’ when asked ‘Where did you hear about us?’

Join now!

*NB Due to the nature of the prize, members who are entered into the prizedraw must be age 18 or over

** New members only, for the first year only (full price £34).


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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Seabed may hold clues to first inhabitants of Outer Hebrides

Experts from Wessex Archaeology's Coastal and Marine department will give a presentation on Lewis on how submerged areas of the Western Isles
may hold clues about the first islanders to live there more than 9,000 years ago.

Archaeologists believe up to six miles of land may have been lost off the west coast of the Outer Hebrides in the past 10,000 years, potentially leaving excellent underwater archaeology sites, which can offer preservation conditions rarely seen on land.

In sheltered areas of the seabed there may be evidence of the first people to colonise the islands some 9,000 years ago.

Marine archaeology specialists Dr Jonathan Benjamin and Dr Andrew Bicket will give a public presentation on the subject in the Council Chamber, Western Isles Council headquarters in Stornoway, at 7pm on Monday 18th July.


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Heavy metal hardens battle: Body armor hindered Medieval warriors

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2011) — The French may have had a better chance at the Battle of Agincourt had they not been weighed down by heavy body armour, say researchers.

A study published July 19 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that soldiers carrying armour in Medieval times would have been using more than twice the amount of energy had they not been wearing it. This is the first clear experimental evidence of the limitations of wearing Medieval armour on a soldier's performance.

During warfare in the 15th century, soldiers wore steel plate armour, typically weighing 30-50kg. It is thought this may have been a contributing factor in whether an army won or lost a battle.

"We found that carrying this kind of load spread across the body requires a lot more energy than carrying the same weight in a backpack," says lead researcher, Dr Graham Askew from the University of Leeds Faculty of Biological Sciences. "This is because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight, which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride. If you're wearing a backpack, the weight is all in one place and swinging the limbs is easier."

The research team included academics from the Universities of Leeds, Milan and Auckland along with experts from the Royal Armouries in Leeds, UK. Researchers worked with highly skilled fight interpreters from the Royal Armouries Museum, who wore exact replicas of four different types of European armour. They undertook a range of walking and running exercises, during which their oxygen usage was measured through respirometry masks, providing researchers with a picture of how much energy was being used by the participants.

The study also showed that the armour had a clear impact on the soldier's breathing. Rather than taking deep breaths when they were exerting themselves -- as they would have done had they not been wearing armour -- the interpreters took a greater number of shallower breaths.

"Being wrapped in a tight shell of armour may have made soldiers feel safe," says co-investigator Dr Federico Formenti from the University of Auckland. "But you feel breathless as soon as you begin to move around in Medieval armour and this would likely limit a soldier's resistance to fight."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Leeds.

Journal Reference:

G. N. Askew, F. Formenti, A. E. Minetti. Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011; DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.0816

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.


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Wessex Archaeology Edinburgh featured on BBC Alba

Wessex Archaeology Edinburgh's Jonathan Benjamin and Andy Bicket appeared last night on BBC Alba's news programme, An Là. The piece which is in both Gaelic and English, is 18 minutes into the programme, and will be available via the iPlayer (in the UK only) for a short while.

In the interview, Jonathan explained how preliminary research suggests that submerged areas of the Western Isles may hold clues about the islands' earliest inhabitants. Jonathan and Andy were on Lewis at the invitation of the council, and held a public lecture in the council chambers on Monday evening.

219 An Là on BBC Alba


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What is war good for? Sparking civilization, suggest UCLA archaeology findings from Peru

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 25-Jul-2011
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Contact: Meg Sullivan
msullivan@support.ucla.edu
310-825-1046
University of California - Los Angeles

Warfare, triggered by political conflict between the fifth century B.C. and the first century A.D., likely shaped the development of the first settlement that would classify as a civilization in the Titicaca basin of southern Peru, a new UCLA study suggests.

Charles Stanish, director of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Abigail Levine, a UCLA graduate student in anthropology, used archaeological evidence from the basin, home to a number of thriving and complex early societies during the first millennium B.C., to trace the evolution of two larger, dominant states in the region: Taraco, along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas.

"This study is part of a larger, worldwide comparative research effort to define the factors that gave rise to the first societies that developed public buildings, widespread religions and regional political systems ? or basically characteristics associated with ancient states or what is colloquially known as 'civilization,'" said Stanish, who is also a professor of anthropology at UCLA. "War, regional trade and specialized labor are the three factors that keep coming up as predecessors to civilization."

The findings appear online in the latest edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Conducted between 2004 and 2006, the authors' excavations in Taraco unearthed signs of a massive fire that raged sometime during the first century A.D., reducing much of the state to ash and architectural rubble. The authors compared artifacts dating from before and after the fire and concluded that agriculture, pottery and the obsidian industry, all of which had flourished in the state, greatly declined after the fire.

Based on the range and extent of the destruction and the lack of evidence supporting reconstruction efforts, the authors suggest that the fire was a result of war, not of an accident or a ritual.

Iconographic evidence of conflict in regional stone-work, textiles and pottery suggests that the destruction of Taraco had been preceded by several centuries of raids. This includes depictions of trophy heads and people dressed in feline pelts cutting off heads, among other evidence.

Because the downfall of Taraco, which was home to roughly 5,000 people, coincided with the rise of neighboring Pukara as a dominant political force in the region, the authors suggest that warfare between the states may have led to the raids, shaping the early political landscape of the northern Titicaca basin.

Inhabited between 500 B.C. and 200 A.D., Pukara was the first regional population center in the Andes highlands. During its peak, it covered more than 2 square kilometer and housed approximately 10,000 residents, including bureaucrats, priests, artisans, farmers, herders and possibly warriors.

The civilization's ruins include impressive monolithic sculptures with a variety of geometric, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images, plus intricate, multi-colored pottery in a variety of ritual and domestic forms.

War appears to have played a similar civilizing role in Mesoamerica, as well as Mesopotamia, Stanish said. To further test his theories on the origins of civilization, Stanish will begin a new project next year at a Neolithic site in Armenia.

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 328 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

For more news, visit UCLA Newsroom and UCLA News|Week and follow us on Twitter.


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Friday, July 22, 2011

Ground Penetrating Radar Survey at St. John’s Church, Bemerton

Wessex Archaeology recently conducted a geophysical survey at St. John’s Church in Bemerton, a mile or so west of Salisbury, Wiltshire. Residents from the Bemerton Community Group are in the process of converting part of the church into a community centre, whilst maintaining part of the building as a worship space, and need to be connected to mains utilities. We were asked to survey the routes the utilities would take through the churchyard, from the road to the church building itself.

214 St. John’s Church, Bemerton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire

The construction of St. John’s Church began in 1859 and dedicated in 1861, so the team expected to find archaeology associated with the church, along with graves, up to 150 years old. Out of the techniques we commonly use, ground penetrating radar (GPR) was considered the most useful for this project as we can look at the results in three dimensions. The GPR sends pulses of energy into the ground and measures the time taken for them to bounce off buried features; it works in exactly the same way as radar used to find aircraft, only we point ours downwards!

215 A radargram showing a buried reflector, with time increasing downwards

The site was surveyed on a closely spaced grid, with each data profile showing the distance along the line and the time it took the GPR signal to travel through the ground, reflect off any buried features and return to the antenna. The data are processed so that we can peel layers away that took the same length of time to return to the GPR. We can work out the speed the GPR signal travels through the ground, so work out how deep the responses are.

216 A time slice showing the approximate depth of buried archaeology

The GPR is pushed around in a wheeled cart and the data appear on a screen in front of the surveyor as they push the GPR forwards. A group of children from Bemerton St John C of E Primary School were able to join us in the afternoon to help collect some of the data. It’s always a pleasure to meet the possible archaeologists and geophysicists of the future!

The results successfully showed the locations of a number of unmarked graves, as well as modern services and possible elements of the church foundations. The information provided by the survey will help with more detailed planning of the construction of the new community centre.

For more information about the work of the Bemerton Community Group, you can follow the progress of the project on their blog.


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Crossing the Boundaries: Triple Horns and Emblematic Transference

Crossing the Boundaries: Triple Horns and Emblematic Transference Institution: RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON sign in icon Sign In | My Tools | Contact Us | HELP SJO banner Search all journals Advanced Search Go Search History Go Browse Journals Go RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON Skip to main page content

Home All Issues Subscribe RSS rss Email Alerts Search this journal Advanced Journal Search » Crossing the Boundaries: Triple Horns and Emblematic Transference Miranda J. Green
SCARAB Research Centre, University of Wales College, Newport Abstract This paper explores one aspect of the way in which cult-iconography of the later Iron Age and Roman periods in non-Classical Europe broke the rules of mimetic (life-copying representation, with reference to a particular motif: the triple horn. The presence of three-homed images within the iconographic repertoire of western Europe during this period clearly illustrates two aspects of such rule-breaking. On the one hand, the image of the triple-horned bull - well-known in the archaeological record, particularly of Roman Gaul - exemplifies a recurrent Gallo-Roman and Romano-British tradition in which realism was suppressed in favour of emphasis to the power of three. On the other hand, the tripl-horned emblem is not confined to the adornment of bulls but may, on occasion, be transferred to 'inappropriate' images, both of animals which are naturally hornless and of humans. Such emblematic transference, with its consequence of dionance and contradiction in the visual message, on the one hand, and the presence of symbolism associated with boundaries and transition, on the other, suggests the manipulation of motifs in order to endow certain images with a particular symbolic energy, born of paradox, the deliberate introduction of disorder or chaos and the expression of liminality. The precise meaning conveyed by such iconographic 'anarchy' is impossible to grasp fully but - at the least - appears to convey an expression of 'otherness' in which order imposed by empirical observation of earthly 'reality' is deemed irrelevant to other states of being and to the supernatural world.

cult Gallo-Roman iconography ritual Romano-British shamanism triple homs Add to CiteULikeCiteULike Add to ComploreComplore Add to ConnoteaConnotea Add to DeliciousDelicious Add to DiggDigg Add to RedditReddit Add to TechnoratiTechnorati Add to TwitterTwitter What's this?

« Previous | Next Article »Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1177/146195719800100205 European Journal of Archaeology August 1998 vol. 1 no. 2 219-240 » AbstractFree Full Text (PDF) References Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Load patientINFORMation Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Scopus Citing articles via Web of Science Citing articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Green, M. J. Search for related content Related Content Load related web page information Share Add to CiteULikeCiteULike Add to ComploreComplore Add to ConnoteaConnotea Add to DeliciousDelicious Add to DiggDigg Add to RedditReddit Add to TechnoratiTechnorati Add to TwitterTwitter What's this?

Current Issue December 2010, 13 (3) Current Issue Alert me to new issues of European Journal of Archaeology Submit a ManuscriptSubmit a Manuscript Free Sample CopyFree Sample Copy Email AlertsEmail Alerts Rss FeedsRSS feed More about this journal About the Journal Editorial Board Manuscript Submission Abstracting/Indexing Subscribe Recommend to Library Advertising Reprints Permissions European Association of Archaeologists Sign up to journal alerts socialsciencespace advert Most Most Read Ritual and Rationality: Some Problems of Interpretaton in European Archaeology Phenomenology in Practice: Towards a p Methodology for a `Subjective' Approach A Conversation With Colin Renfrew (Professor Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) The Marine Environment and Its Influence On Seafaring and Maritime Routes in the Prehistoric Aegean Islands in the Mediterranean: Introduction » View all Most Read articles Most Cited Strontium Isotopes and Prehistoric Human Migration: The Bell Beaker Period in Central Europe Archaeology, Science-Based Archaeology and the Mediterranean Bronze Age Metals Trade Climate Change and the Adoption of Agriculture in North-West Europe Book Review: Book Marks Reconstructing the Lifetime Movements of Ancient People: A Neolithic Case Study from Southern England » View all Most Cited articles HOME ALL ISSUES FEEDBACK SUBSCRIBE RSS rss EMAIL ALERTS HELP Copyright © 2011 by European Association of Archaeologists, SAGE Publications Print ISSN: 1461-9571 Online ISSN: 1741-2722

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High-Tech in the Middle Palaeolithic: Neandertal-Manufactured Pitch Identified

High-Tech in the Middle Palaeolithic: Neandertal-Manufactured Pitch Identified Institution: RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON sign in icon Sign In | My Tools | Contact Us | HELP SJO banner Search all journals Advanced Search Go Search History Go Browse Journals Go RESEARCH INSTITUTE ON Skip to main page content

Home All Issues Subscribe RSS rss Email Alerts Search this journal Advanced Journal Search » High-Tech in the Middle Palaeolithic: Neandertal-Manufactured Pitch Identified Johann Koller Ursula Baumer
Doerner-Institut, München, Germany Dietrich Mania
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany Abstract Any new knowledge that goes beyond the stone tools and techniques used in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic is most significant as it reveals the cultural and technical capabilities of the people living in these periods. In 1963, two pitch finds were discovered in a lignite open-mining pit in the northern foothills of the Harz Mountains, in a layer the geological age of which was dated as being older than 80,000 years. The great significance of these finds was therefore immediately apparent. One of the finds showed a fingerprint as well as the imprints of a flint stone tool and the structure of wood cells. This was indicative of the pitch piece having served as an adhesive to secure a wooden haft to a flint stone blade.

Over 30 years later these finds were transferred to the Doerner Institut for investigation. The GC and GC/MS analyses revealed that, in both cases, birch pitches, well-known historical adhesives, had been used. These consist predominantly of pentacyclic triterpenoid components of the lupane type, with betulin forming the major component. The comparison with birch bark extracts showed that the biological peak profile (bio-marker) was surprisingly well preserved in these pitch finds and that hardly any degradation products were present.

Today, comparable pitches can easily be produced with modern technical methods, i.e. using airtight laboratory flasks and temperature control facilities. However, any attempt at simulating the conditions of the Neandertal period and at producing these birch pitches without any of these modern facilities will soon be met with many difficulties. This implies that the Neandertals did not come across these pitches by accident but must have produced them with intent. Conscious action is, however, always a clear sign of considerable technical capabilities.

birch (bark) tar early hafting adhesives gas chromatography resin finds Add to CiteULikeCiteULike Add to ComploreComplore Add to ConnoteaConnotea Add to DeliciousDelicious Add to DiggDigg Add to RedditReddit Add to TechnoratiTechnorati Add to TwitterTwitter What's this?

« Previous | Next Article »Table of Contents This Article doi: 10.1177/146195710100400315 European Journal of Archaeology December 2001 vol. 4 no. 3 385-397 » AbstractFree Full Text (PDF)Free to you References Services Email this article to a colleague Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Similar articles in this journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Load patientINFORMation Citing Articles Load citing article information Citing articles via Scopus Citing articles via Web of Science Citing articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Koller, J. Articles by Mania, D. Search for related content Related Content Load related web page information Share Add to CiteULikeCiteULike Add to ComploreComplore Add to ConnoteaConnotea Add to DeliciousDelicious Add to DiggDigg Add to RedditReddit Add to TechnoratiTechnorati Add to TwitterTwitter What's this?

Current Issue December 2010, 13 (3) Current Issue Alert me to new issues of European Journal of Archaeology Submit a ManuscriptSubmit a Manuscript Free Sample CopyFree Sample Copy Email AlertsEmail Alerts Rss FeedsRSS feed More about this journal About the Journal Editorial Board Manuscript Submission Abstracting/Indexing Subscribe Recommend to Library Advertising Reprints Permissions European Association of Archaeologists Sign up to journal alerts Submit an article to this journal! Most Most Read Ritual and Rationality: Some Problems of Interpretaton in European Archaeology Phenomenology in Practice: Towards a p Methodology for a `Subjective' Approach A Conversation With Colin Renfrew (Professor Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn) The Marine Environment and Its Influence On Seafaring and Maritime Routes in the Prehistoric Aegean Islands in the Mediterranean: Introduction » View all Most Read articles Most Cited Strontium Isotopes and Prehistoric Human Migration: The Bell Beaker Period in Central Europe Archaeology, Science-Based Archaeology and the Mediterranean Bronze Age Metals Trade Climate Change and the Adoption of Agriculture in North-West Europe Book Review: Book Marks Reconstructing the Lifetime Movements of Ancient People: A Neolithic Case Study from Southern England » View all Most Cited articles HOME ALL ISSUES FEEDBACK SUBSCRIBE RSS rss EMAIL ALERTS HELP Copyright © 2011 by European Association of Archaeologists, SAGE Publications Print ISSN: 1461-9571 Online ISSN: 1741-2722

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