Il volume raccoglie gli Atti della Giornata di Studi organizzata il 7 giugno 2018 presso l’Odeion del Museo dell’Arte Classica della Sapienza Università di Roma. Sono presenti contributi elaborati sia da giovani ricercatori della Scuola di Dottorato della Sapienza sia da affermate personalità della comunità scientifica, italiane e francesi, con lo scopo di mettere a confronto le metodologie e i risultati. L’obiettivo del lavoro è dunque quello di presentare lo status quaestionis sul tema dell’ideologia funeraria nella città e nel territorio di Veio, dalle origini fino alla definitiva conquista romana: sono stati presi in esame i dati restituiti dalle recenti scoperte e dalle indagini più aggiornate sulle necropoli. Una sezione è poi dedicata al confronto tematico con altre realtà dell’Etruria e dell’area medio-adriatica, mentre l’ultima parte analizza i cosiddetti indicatori dell’ideologia: quegli aspetti specifici che, nel corso della ricerca archeologica, forniscono informazioni chiave per la ricostruzione del complesso e articolato mosaico dell’ideologia, sottesa alla dimensione funeraria di una società antica.
The ONLI (Osservatorio Neologico della Lingua Italiana), established in 1998, aims to study the Italian vocabulary and its evolution between the 20th and 21st centuries, analyzing neologisms by using investigative methods and the rules that describe how new words are formed and applying them to newspaper quotations from between 1998 and 2019 collected in its own data base. The classification of neologisms adopted by ONLI enables the trends in Italian vocabulary to be highlighted also through a comparison of opinions of scholars from related areas.
Tell Ahmar – also known as Masuwari, Til Barsib and Kar-Shalmaneser in the first millennium BCE – was first inhabited in the sixth millennium, during the Ubaid period, and progressively developed to become a regional center and, in the eighth and seventh centuries, a provincial capital of the Assyrian empire. Remains from the third millennium (a temple and a funerary complex), the second millennium (an administrative complex and well-preserved houses) and the first millennium (an Assyrian palace and elite residences) are particularly impressive.The book offers an archaeological and historical synthesis of the results obtained by the excavations of François Thureau-Dangin (1929–1931) and by the more recent excavations of the universities of Melbourne (1988–1999) and Liège (2000–2010). It presents a comprehensive and diachronic view of the evolution of the site, which, by its position on the Euphrates at an important crossroads of ancient communication routes, was at the heart of a game of cultural and political interference between Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean world and Asia Minor.
This paper presents the results of a research that involves the experimentation of the analysis of data acquired by a multispectral camera transported by a drone and their reading and interpretation in the context of archaeological diagnostics, through the extraction of vegetation indices. The first part deals with the methodological issue of the research, with reference to monthly repeated flights during a year in the urban centre of Veii (RM). The methodological aspects highlighted refer to the influence of the presence of meteoric water in the soil and the timing of root growth for the correct reading of the NDVI index. In the second part, however, a series of targeted tests in Latium and Etruscan centres are presented.
Tele-archaeology, in its basic sense, may be defined as the use of telecommunications to provide archaeological information and services. Two different kinds of technology make up most of the tele-archaeology applications in use today. The first is used for transferring information from one location to another. The other is multi-way interactive knowledge distribution. In this paper we examine the possibilities of tele-archaeology, and offer a general framework to implement this technology. The main positive effect of tele-archaeology is the move towards a real 'distributed interactive archaeology', which means that archaeological knowledge building is a collective and dynamic series of tasks and processes. An individual archaeologist cannot fully explain his/her data because the explanatory process needs knowledge as raw material, and this knowledge does not exist in the individual mind of the scientist but in the research community as a global set.
Roman roof tiles: issues of shape, installation and use The ancient roof tile has received less scholarly attention than pottery. In some parts of the Roman world tiles were so common that they go almost unnoticed by most modern archaeologists.
One of the most innovative technologies is the Low Altitude Remote Sensing, characterized by low altitude acquisition using UAV. The UAVs, acquiring with a very high-resolution, can detect structural and architectural details of buildings. It is possible to identify any structural damages and crack patterns. The processing of these images allows the knowledge of the state of conservation, the damage of the architectural building, including the material degradation and the crack of the analyzed object. The purpose is aimed at showing that the UAVs become a tool able to revolutionize the field of architecture and restoration, by the landscape mapping, and scanning of urban infrastructure and monumental buildings in order to assure a continuous monitoring, but also for the conservation of heritage. This study explores why the use of automated photogrammetric systems, based on Sfm algorithms, is widely used for study of Cultural Heritage. The paper focus on examples of 3D reconstruction of archaeological sites and architectural building in order to illustrate how correct processing of imagery can be carried out and how the optimum reconstructive study can be implemented.
The study outlined here was conducted in order to show how the combined representation of a monument’s geometry, together with the morphology and distribution of the damage, the component materials and their physical characteristics, the historical-architectural analysis and environmental factors can be used to facilitate our understanding of the degradation processes. A correct management of the various aspects of our knowledge of our architectural heritage and the evaluation of its state of conservation, which are required for making a plan, implementing it and verifying the results, can only be achieved by constantly matching the specificity of the monument, after its exact geometry has been restored using elements obtained by means of historical and architectural analysis, the survey of the structure, building techniques and materials used, including those which describe its material status, considering individual buildings as a whole and systems of buildings as a group in its context. Information Technology (IT) was selected as the best means of creating environments that were the most suitable for the aims pursued and for use as an operating instrument. It was decided to translate the theoretical disciplinary model into a computer-based procedure in which the functions specific to the GIS - Geographic Information Systems - were transposed to an architectural scale. To this end, an Information System - ARKIS - is currently being configured. It is designed for the organisation, representation and utilisation of knowledge obtained from data regarding the architectural subject in question, its immediate context and its territorial location. Some actual applications are presented.
The Department of Medieval Archaeology of the University of Siena has been engaged for several years in the testing of GPS survey application for landscape archaeology. In the first section of this paper we have summarised the GPS application developed for field-walking, aerial, geophysical and topographical surveys. In the second section we have discussed the fact that, since the second half of the 1990s, we have felt a progressive disjunction between work in the laboratory and work in the field. While the availability of advanced technologies has been rapidly growing, activities in the field have continued to make use of instruments and methodologies developed in the 1970s. A mobile GIS system managed through the merging of PDA and GPS technologies represents at the moment the best available solution for restoring the link. The conclusions reached in our experiments using these devices consistently go far beyond the increased fieldwork efficiency and finally make it possible to systematically apply strategies and methodologies developed in the past but rarely used up to now because they were too time consuming.
The Adulis Project started in 2011, directed by the Ce.RDO in collaboration with the Centre for GeoTechnologies of the University of Siena and the National Museum of Eritrea. The project aims to investigate and promote the cultural heritage of the ancient port site of Adulis, one of the most important archaeological sites in Eritrea and East Africa. The paper presents the results of the first two campaigns. First of all, we analyzed the satellite imagery to identify traces of buried archaeological elements. Then, three excavation areas were opened to unearth some of the structures already identified in the excavations of the last century, as well as to investigate the stratigraphy of the site in areas where archaeological excavations have never been conducted. In conclusion, a GPS survey was conducted on the whole area to elaborate a detailed map of the site, to create a DEM and to position all the archaeological structures that are visible on the surface. All the stratigraphic, topographic and cartographic data were managed in an open source GIS, based on the combination of the desktop mapping software Quantum GIS and the plugin pyArchInit.
Esta obra es resultado del V Simposio Internacional de Arqueología de Mérida. Como en su día se planteó, pretende abarcar de la forma más exhaustiva posible los diferentes campos de aplicación de las tecnologías de información geográfica (TIG). En la primera sección, dedicada a las aplicaciones TIG en prospección arqueológica, puede verse cómo el problema de la georeferenciación y gestión de los datos de campo ha encontrado un gran aliado en las nuevas tecnologías. En la segunda sección, numerosos casos de estudio ponen de manifiesto la incorporación de las TIG como columna vertebral para la planificación y desarrollo de la investigación. Los siguientes apartados dan testimonio de la alta especialización que se ha desarrollado en el estudio de aspectos específicos de la actividad humana en el paisaje. Otro vasto campo de modelización es el orientado a formular predicciones sobre la localización de restos arqueológicos. La obra reúne además una nutrida representación de trabajos relacionados con aspectos morfológicos del análisis arqueológico del territorio. Agrupamos también aquí las contribuciones relacionadas con el análisis de redes, tanto hidráulicas como de comunicaciones. El numeroso bloque de contribuciones presentado bajo el epígrafe de la gestión quiere atender a las múltiples acepciones de este término en Arqueología. En el último bloque se agrupa un conjunto de contribuciones cuya escala de trabajo se ciñe a los límites del sitio arqueológico. Plantear una sección de este tipo resulta natural e inevitable, ya que en Mérida se está desarrollando una de las experiencias más completa de gestión de la arqueología urbana a través de un SIG. Por último, el volumen se cierra con las conclusiones y una valoración crítica del contenido del simposio.
The article presents the results of the GPS and photographic surveys conducted on the archaeological site of Villa Magna (Anagni, Lazio). The archaeological complex, identified as the imperial residence of Antoninus Pius, occupies an area of about 22 hectares. Presently, the visible remains are divided into two principal nuclei: the northern one, near the church of S. Pietro, and the southern one, occupied by a farmhouse. The aim of the survey was the reconstruction of the morphology of the terrain in order to produce a Digital Terrain Model and to highlight the relationship between natural elements and ancient structures. In order to speed up the work, a new procedure was used. It consists of a Differential GPS used in a kinematic way by mounting the rover antenna on a jeep. In this article the experimental method’s advantages and the problems of acquisition are analysed. Moreover, low altitude photographs of the archaeological excavations were taken using an aerostatic balloon. The photographic system was anchored to the balloon with a radio-controlled device called Picavet. Georeferenced photos can be very useful not only for documenting but also for presenting and exploiting the site.
On the occasion of this Symposium, we have reported on the new results of research activity on multimedia techniques, that Ceaprelda srl has been developing from many years in the field of cultural heritage. Our latest products (Etruschi-Etruria meridionale, Paestum, Campi Flegrei - 2° ed.), archaeological and artistical itineraries, have been now all realized on CD Rom, allowing a great development of technical potentialities as to the old floppy disk; CD use allowed us to make progress above all in the aspects of sounds, of quantity and quality of images, of animation (with complex and faithful reconstruction of ancient buildings, realized in 3D Studio on the base of archaeological surveys). To design the programme structure we have considered the reference of HDM (Hypermedia Design Model), but the products are not more realized in DB Fast 2.0, like for floppy version, but in Visual Basic 4.0. We have also elaborated a proposal to avoid the complex problem of incompatibility between "spreading communication" and "scientific communication" in the sphere of cultural heritage: we have provided for introduction in our multimedia itineraries of a section named "Lavori in corso" ("Works in progress") with a marked scientific feature, containing recent discoveries, researches and studies results and the most important cultural activities in the area of our itineraries. We believe, in this way, to have created a product for cultural fruition that, thanks to technological progress, gives widespread information aimed to specialists, and also makes them available to a wider public, not necessarily specialized in that sector.
Laser scanner technology permits a rapid elaboration of digital models of surfaces and complex geometries which would be impossible to survey with traditional topographic instruments. It therefore represents the proper technology for surveying archaeological sites and objects of Cultural Heritage. In this paper the characteristics of different commercial instruments are described and their different resolutions in the acquisition of the coordinates and in measuring reflection. The presentation of some practical examples now gives us the opportunity to describe the operative process of 3D restitution from planning and performing the survey up to the development of specific procedures for the elaboration of data.
S. Rosa terramara, which measures 7 hectares, is a Middle and Recent Bronze age site, excavated since 1984. Cooperation between archaeologists and geologists has made it possible to experiment with the comparative analysis of computer image processing of the aerial photos, integrated with the detailed study of a DTM (Digital Terrain Model), in particular in relation to the geopedological and geoarchaeological interpretation of the site. The integration of two kinds of data, aerial photographs and a DTM, has been complemented by the texture mapping of the aerial photo overlaid on the corresponding 3D model. Significant ranges in the pixel distribution in the digital aerial image identified four main areas; any area presents particular digital features. For example, the digital features of the small village are very different from the characteristics of the large and more recent village. The digital classification of these areas identified the following: area 1, alluvial sediment (posthumous) which hides part of the earthwork; area 2, the nucleus of the small village; area 3, the diking of the big village; area 4, a Roman villa (another posthumous event). The final interpretation, after processing, distinctly shows the formation of natural (vertisoils) and artificial deposits (earthworks). In particular in the north-western area of the aerial photograph the interruption of the diking means that in that point the structures are buried because of a flood. Moreover, it results that the two villages are separated by a large ditch. On the basis of these results it has been possible to reconstruct the evolution of the site and of the environment in different periods: 1) the site before the Bronze age; 2) the terramara in the Middle Bronze age; 3) the terramara in the Recent Bronze age; 4) the site in Roman age; 5) the site in Medieval age. The computer processing, integrated with the aerial photo-interpretation, shows an important series of data not obtainable through traditional techniques. The construction of the DTM, the texture mapping and the digital image processing have clearly enhanced the shape of the structures of the terramara as well as the stratigraphical excavations. This also resolves the problems which emerged in the aerial photo interpretation. In particular, the interruption of the earthwork of the big village in the northern area seems connected with the burial of part of the anthropic structures, after the abandonment of the terramara. In conclusion, the computer image processing, together with the DTM and the texture mapping of the site, is an exportable tool, useful for an evaluation of the state of preservation of the Bronze age deposits in the Po valley. These results were obtained without excavation, using only simple stratigraphical surveys on the ground.
3D modelling represents a fundamental survey technique to represent archaeological evidence. It is particularly important to draw and analyse engravings because it is more descriptive and, somehow, objective than traditional drawings, which result interpretative and not replicable, becoming a debatable and often controversial matter. A technique able to verify the overlaying of signs is essential to establish the relative sequence, thus the chronology of engravings. However, there are several techniques and they provide different results. The paper tries to empirically compare SfM and PS methods to understand how they work on surface representation and which are their specificities in a difficult context such as the Pianaura engravings. The aim of the paper is to verify the accuracy of the techniques. Three paths are pursued: the first analyses pure quantitative data, such as counting the number of points or faces built and so on; the second aims to verify quantitatively distortions by geometric measurements analysis; the third is a visual quality test, which focuses on users’ perception of 3D models. It can be concluded that the distinct fields of application and the diverse purposes of the research enhance the different specificities of the two techniques.
This paper illustrates the experiment of image-based modelling conducted on the site of Calicantone (RG) by the international course in Archaeology of the Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche of the University of Catania, in collaboration with the Dept. of Engineering and Architecture of the same University and the Soprintendenza of Ragusa. The aim of the research was to experiment and verify a single process of digital acquisition, elaboration and communication, and to investigate the potential of shifting from 3D to 2D for the creation of metrically and geometrically reliable orthophotos (so called new photogrammetry). In particular, this kind of application has not been widely used by the archaeological teams working in Sicily, especially when the Computer Vision is not aimed at the reconstruction or the dissemination of the results. The site of Calicantone represented an ideal context for a multiple experimentation of image-based modelling. Indeed, the construction of a methodology of survey of the site involved a global understanding of a complex context, made by different kinds of evidence: built architecture (walls), negative architecture (rock cut tombs), horizontal restitution of the trenches vs vertical restitution of the slopes of the hill hosting the tombs. From the point of view of the archaeological narrative, the exceptional impact of the landscape, the necessity of an enhancement and the limited visibility of some of the archaeological evidence encouraged the acquisition of the data through passive detectors, in order to support the traditional 3D reconstruction of the landscape.
The research expedition of the CNR-ITABC in the archaeological site of Umm Al-Rasas, near Madaba (Jordan) was partially supported by the Italian Foreign Ministry. It started in 2013 and was mainly focused on the 3D documentation of two Byzantine churches with magnificent floor mosaics, dedicated to Saint Stephen and Bishop Sergius respectively. To improve the analysis of the archaeological structures, different investigation techniques were used and reciprocally integrated, in an effort to create geometric models enabling the interpretation of data related to the masonry and floor mosaics, as well as to the documentation of the archaeological area. In order to facilitate handling and mobility, lightweight tools were chosen and Micro Photogrammetry and Close Range Photogrammetry methods were applied. A correct description of the floor warp was achieved thanks to laser scanner techniques and the resulting geometric data were integrated with the chromatic data coming from photogrammetry, obtaining a 3D restitution of the two adjacent structures and a metric and spatial analysis of their morphological features. New devices, specifically designed for the project, helped to solve some practical problems that the survey operations had to cope with during the fieldwork. This paper illustrates the results of the survey, which will be useful to develop restoration projects in order to make the whole archaeological site attractive to tourists.
" . . . Dr. Ihde brings an enlightening and deeply humanistic perspective to major technological developments, both past and present." ―Science Books & Films"Don Ihde is a pleasure to read. . . . The material is full of nice suggestions and details, empirical materials, fun variations which engage the reader in the work . . . the overall points almost sneak up on you, they are so gently and gradually offered." ―John Compton"A sophisticated celebration of cultural diversity and of its enabling technologies. . . . perhaps the best single volume relating the philosophical tradition to the broad issues raised by contemporary technologies." ―Choice" . . . important and challenging . . . " ―Review of Metaphysics" . . . a range of rich historical, cultural, philosophical, and psychological insights, woven together in an intriguing and clear exposition . . . The book is really a pleasure to read, for its style, immense learning and sanity." ―Teaching PhilosophyThe role of tools and instruments in our relation to the earth and the ways in which technologies are culturally embedded provide the foci of this thought-provoking book.
Depending on how one construes the kinship relations, technology has been either the stepchild of philosophy or its grandfather. In either case, technology has not been taken into the bosom of the family, but has had to wait for attention, care and feeding, while the more unclear elements - science, art, politics, ethics - were being nurtured (or cleaned up). Don Ihde puts technology in the middle of things, and develops a philosophy of technology that is at once distinctive, revealing and thought
This study assessed three‐dimensional (3D) photogrammetry as a tool for capturing and quantifying human skull morphology. While virtual reconstruction with 3D surface scanning technology has become an accepted part of the paleoanthropologist's tool kit, recent advances in 3D photogrammetry make it a potential alternative to dedicated surface scanners. The principal advantages of photogrammetry are more rapid raw data collection, simplicity and portability of setup, and reduced equipment costs. We tested the precision and repeatability of 3D photogrammetry by comparing digital models of human crania reconstructed from conventional, 2D digital photographs to those generated using a 3D surface scanner. Overall, the photogrammetry and scanner meshes showed low degrees of deviation from one another. Surface area estimates derived from photogrammetry models tended to be slightly larger. Landmark configurations generally did not cluster together based upon whether the reconstruction was created with photogrammetry or surface scanning technology. Average deviations of landmark coordinates recorded on photogrammetry models were within the generally allowable range of error in osteometry. Thus, while dependent upon the needs of the particular research project, 3D photogrammetry appears to be a suitable, lower‐cost alternative to 3D imaging and scanning options.
Digital literacy has been cited as one of the primary challenges to ensuring data reuse and increasing the value placed on open science. Incorporating published data into classrooms and training is at the core of tackling this issue. This article presents case studies in teaching with different published data platforms, in three different countries (the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States), to students at different levels and with differing skill levels. In outlining their approaches, successes, and failures in teaching with open data, it is argued that collaboration with data publishers is critical to improving data reuse and education. Moreover, increased opportunities for digital skills training and scaffolding across program curriculum are necessary for managing the learning curve and teaching students the values of open science., El alfabetismo digital se ha citado como uno de los principales desafíos para la reutilización de datos y una mayor valoración de la ciencia abierta. Elemento clave para abordar esta cuestión es la incorporación de datos publicados en los programas formativos. En este artículo se presentan estudios de caso en el uso de plataformas de datos arqueológicos existentes en tres países (los Países Bajos, Canadá y Estados Unidos) para la enseñanza a estudiantes de diferentes niveles y habilidades. Al delinear planteamientos, éxitos y fracasos en la enseñanza con datos abiertos, se concluye que la colaboración con los editores de datos es fundamental para mejorar la reutilización de datos y la educación sobre los mismos. Además, es necesario aumentar las oportunidades de formación en habilidades digitales y el andamiaje a lo largo de los planes de estudios para administrar la curva de aprendizaje y enseñar el intercambio de datos y la reutilización como práctica arqueológica.
Hundreds of thousands of archaeological investigations in the United States conducted over the last several decades have documented a large portion of the recovered archaeological record in the United States. However, if we are to use this enormous corpus to achieve richer understandings of the past, it is essential that both CRM and academic archaeologists change how they manage their digital documents and data over the course of a project and how this information is preserved for future use. We explore the nature and scope of the problem and describe how it can be addressed. In particular, we argue that project workflows must ensure that the documents and data are fully documented and deposited in a publicly accessible, digital repository where they can be discovered, accessed, and reused to enable new insights and build cumulative knowledge. Cientos de miles de investigaciones arqueológicas en los Estados Unidos realizado en las últimas décadas han documentado una gran parte del registro arqueológico recuperado en los Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, si vamos a utilizar este enorme corpus para lograr entendimientos más ricos del pasado, es esencial que CRM y los arqueólogos académicos cambian cómo administran sus documentos digitales y los datos en el transcurso de un proyecto y cómo se conserva esta información para uso en el futuro. Exploramos la naturaleza y el alcance del problema y describimos cómo se pueden abordarse. En particular, sostenemos que los flujos de trabajo de proyecto deben asegurarse que los documentos y datos son totalmente documentados y depositados en un repositorio digital de acceso público, donde puede ser descubiertos, acceder y reutilizados para activar nuevos conocimientos y construir conocimiento acumulativo.
This paper compares the method of Correspondence Analysis (CA) for finding patterns in archaeological sites by artifacts abundance data, with a robust variant, named Taxicab Correspondence Analysis (TCA). We show that this comparison is useful, especially for sparse tables with outliers. We identify three kinds of outliers. Three well-known datasets are reanalyzed.
The landscape immediately surrounding the site of Çatalhöyük preserves topographic and ceramic evidence dating from prehistoric times to the present day. This article presents the results of a programme of investigation of the landscape conducted through analysis of remote-sensing, map and field-survey data, with particular emphasis on the first and second millennia AD. The concept of taphonomy, usually defined in archaeology as the process of change after deposition, is applied to the transformation of the settled landscape from its Neolithic origins to its present status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Taphonomy serves as a linking concept as we explore how past landscapes are mobilised and translated into the ever-changing present., ÖzetÇatalhöyük yerleşiminin hemen çevresindeki alan, tarih öncesi zamanlardan günümüze kadar topografik ve seramik kanıtları sunmaktadır. Bu makalede, uzaktan algılama metodu, harita ve yüzey araştırması verilerinin analizi yoluyla ve özellikle M.S. birinci ve ikinci bin yıllara yoğunlaşarak yapılan bir araştırma programının sonuçları sunulmaktadır. Arkeolojide, genellikle birikim sonrası değişim süreci olarak tanımlanan tafonomi kavramı, bu çalışmada yerleşilmiş arazinin Neolitik kökenlerinden günümüzde UNESCO Dünya Miras Alanı statüsüne dönüşmesine uygulanmaktadır. Tafonomi, geçmişte arazilerin nasıl değiştiğini ve günümüzde sürekli değişen bu hale nasıl geldiğini gösteren bir geçiş kavramı olarak hizmet etmektedir.
The study of a massive waste dump of the Arretine potter Ateius, by means of the database FileMaker Pro 11, provided some evidence concerning the deposit’s formation. For part of the fragments there were at least two depositions at different times, as some potsherds were re-used as building material within the kiln itself, then discarded again, with a layer of lime and sand that still covered them. Some fragments were first used as slats for shaping vases, then thrown into the dump, and eventually re-used as building material. All these operations inevitably caused the alteration of the stratigraphy, making it quite difficult to piece together all the fragments pertaining to a single vase. Moreover, in a period that cannot be identified, part of the dump was moved from the original place to the location where it was found in the excavation carried out in the 1950s . All these events are reflected by the archaeological records. The Conspectus 9 cup is a good example: the fragments of rims largely outnumber those of foots. Assessing the minimum number of vessels present in the dump is not easy under these circumstances.
There are marked 'incommunicability symptoms' in language with which archaeology should communicate, in particular, with urban and landscape planning, and also possible relationships with new methods of landscape interpretation and management. In a vanishing context no longer based only on historical instance, 'interdisciplinarity' is a possible solution.
The Linked Data Cloud is full of controlled resources, which quality is in fact difficult to handle. Firstly, each resource collection, e.g. a thesaurus, is cooking its own soup related to its research context. Secondly, conceptualisation of Linked Open Data (LOD) assumes standardised data, but in reality, either generic concepts or real instances exist. Thirdly, archaeological items are usually related to generic instances in the LOD cloud, based on their object oriented nature. Describing these relations by modelling archaeological assumptions causes ambiguities which have to be tamed in order to guarantee data quality which can be reused. In this paper we will demonstrate this in three examples from the databases of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz and are proposing ways to solve the handling of ambiguities with a software framework called Academic Meta Tool (AMT).
The aim of the present paper is to reassess the events connected with the Romanization of the Etruscan metropolis of Volaterrae in the light of recent archaeological findings. The results of the Cecina Valley survey and of other related fieldwork have prompted a full reconsideration of the issue: indeed, they show a very different picture when compared with some of the recent mainstream reconstructions of the making of central Roman Italy; in particular, they are in sharp contrast with what was found in other Tyrrhenian regions, such as Southern Etruria or Campania. In line with these developments, recent local work in various parts of Italy now strongly suggests the need to consider each area, almost each civitas, individually, leaving aside for the moment overarching models based on insufficient data. This appears to resonate with a wider and growing realization that the process of Romanization, all over the Empire, exhibits a very heterogeneous and dialectic character, so much so that the appropriateness of the very term has often been put in question. For this reason, Romanization will be used here only in its weakest sense, simply as a convenient term covering the events involved in the creation of a new and unified political entity, disclaiming any assumptions concerning the acculturation of non-Roman ethnic groups. What is clearly emerging is a need for a new generation of regional studies, with the aim of carefully charting the trajectory of each community towards incorporation in the Roman state and working towards the creation of far more robust and informed syntheses. The present paper strives to make a contribution in this direction.
The purpose of this paper is to describe methods of documentation of different archaeological contexts. The first part illustrates some solutions for the integration of tablet PC within the current standards of archaeological documentation. The second part describes several techniques of photogrammetric survey for the documentation of burials, wall stratigraphy and structural elements. With the support of photo-modelling and stereophotogrammetry it is possible to record perimeter and surface of each Stratigraphic Unit in a three-dimensional space also obtaining isomorphic reproductions of the detected object. In conclusion, the last part of the article discusses the first results of an experiment which is still in progress: the 3D PDF for publication of the archaeological record.
On May 1, 1995, 16 institutions created the Digital Library Federation (additional partners have since joined the original 16). The DLF partners have commit- ted themselves to "bring together—from across the nation and beyond—digitized materials that will be made accessible to students, scholars, and citizens everywhere." If they are to succeed in reaching their goals, all DLF participants realize that they must act quickly to build the infrastructure and the institutional capacity to sustain digital libraries. In support of DLF participants’ efforts to these ends, DLF launched this publication series in 1999 to highlight and disseminate critical work.
Abstract. The System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) is an open source geographic information system (GIS), mainly licensed under the GNU General Public License. Since its first release in 2004, SAGA has rapidly developed from a specialized tool for digital terrain analysis to a comprehensive and globally established GIS platform for scientific analysis and modeling. SAGA is coded in C++ in an object oriented design and runs under several operating systems including Windows and Linux. Key functional features of the modular software architecture comprise an application programming interface for the development and implementation of new geoscientific methods, a user friendly graphical user interface with many visualization options, a command line interpreter, and interfaces to interpreted languages like R and Python. The current version 2.1.4 offers more than 600 tools, which are implemented in dynamically loadable libraries or shared objects and represent the broad scopes of SAGA in numerous fields of geoscientific endeavor and beyond. In this paper, we inform about the system's architecture, functionality, and its current state of development and implementation. Furthermore, we highlight the wide spectrum of scientific applications of SAGA in a review of published studies, with special emphasis on the core application areas digital terrain analysis, geomorphology, soil science, climatology and meteorology, as well as remote sensing.
During a long period, until the beginning of the 21st century, a lack of interest about the hydraulics in ancient Sicilian towns prevailed: archaeologists and historians felt more concerned by the traditional topics of Classical Archaeology. Nowadays, as environmental research has been booming, some specific cases have begun to be studied, like Syracusan aqueducts which were known almost exclusively from Francesco Saverio Cavallari and Adolf Holm’s monograph in 1883. Using recent results, the paper will focus on the topics of the Galermi Aqueduct, investigated by a French team of Aix-Marseille University, and some parts of other channels, studied by local teams of Syracusan speleologists and engineers, inside the Epipolai shelf and the Achradine district. The people of Syracuse, maybe under the rule of the Deinomenids and then Hieron II, had been equipped with pipelines of drinking water as early as the 5th century BC and had increased them all through their history to cater for the needs of the fast-growing town, either for drinking water or craftsmanship.
Neolithic pottery from the Balkans and Anatolia is well known for its remarkable and unique decoration. Very often the visual features of these objects are used for determining the relative chronology of excavated sites, without considering its potential for mathematical observation. The repertoire of patterns used for developing the compositional structures painted on the vessels provide abundant data for such analysis. Almost all of the fragments discovered so far as well as the completely preserved painted pots from these regions were decorated following several visual principles which made it possible to achieve a precise disposition of the patterns on the spherical surface of the vessel. This decorative approach was established on the basis of the standards of Neolithic geometry which employ both symmetry and the principles of visual entropy. For this reason, the painted vessels from Early and Middle Neolithic settlements discovered in the Republic of Macedonia provide a variety of information about the organization and structures incorporated on the decorated pottery. In the earlier phases these painted compositions were mostly based on The Four Rigid Motions of pattern disposition on a one dimensional format, while later, besides using this concept, the principle of asymmetry was implemented in order to compose a two-dimensional image . The aim of this paper is to identify all possible forms of plane symmetry, patterns and compositions applied in the decoration of Neolithic vessels from the Republic of Macedonia, as well to promote the use of geometric symmetry as a possibility for the reconstruction of decorated fragments.
In this paper we introduce the DOLCE upper level ontology, the first module of a Foundational Ontologies Library being developed within the WonderWeb project. DOLCE is presented here in an intuitive way; the reader should refer to the project deliverable for a detailed axiomatization. A comparison with WordNet's top-level taxonomy of nouns is also provided, which shows how DOLCE, used in addition to the OntoClean methodology, helps isolating and understanding some major WordNet's semantic limita- tions. We suggest that such analysis could hopefully lead to an "ontologi- cally sweetened" WordNet, meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cogni- tively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.
To make use of the limited amounts of water in arid region, the Iranians developed man-made underground water channels called qanats (kanats) .In fact, qanats may be considered as the first long-distance water transfer system. Qanats are an ancient water transfer system found in arid regions wherein groundwater from mountainous areas, aquifers and sometimes from rivers, was brought to points of re-emergence such as an oasis, through one or more underground tunnels. The tunnels, many of which were kilometers in length, had designed for slopes to provide gravitational flow. The tunnels allowed water to drain out to the surface by gravity to supply water to lower and flatter agricultural land. Qanats have been an ancient, sustainable system facilitating the harvesting of water for centuries in Iran, and more than 35 additional countries of the world such as India, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain and even to New world. There are about 22000 qanats in Iran with 274000 kilometers of underground conduits all built by manual labor. The amount of water of the usable qanats of Iran produce is altogether 750 to 1000 cubic meter per second. The longest chain of qanat is situated in Gonabad region in Khorasan province. It is 70 kilometers long. Qanats are renewable water supply systems that have sustained agricultural settlement on the Iranian plateau for millennia. The great advantages of Qanats are no evaporation during transit, little seepage , no raising of the water- table and no pollution in the area surrounding the conduits. Qanat systems have a profound influence on the lives of the water users in Iran, and conform to Iran's climate. Qanat allows those living in a desert environment adjacent to a mountain watershed to create a large oasis in an otherwise stark environment. This paper explains qanats structure designs, their history, objectives causing their creation, construction materials, locations and their importance in different times, as well as their present sustainable role in Iran.
In recent years, the exploit of 3D data use in Archaeology and the Cultural Heritage sector in general has caused an exponential multiplication of digital content that can be viewed on the web. Nevertheless, web platforms can display a concerning dualism: on one side some contents are over-represented with the same models uploaded dozens of times even inside the same platform; on the other, the inaccessibility or absence of proper 3D documentation for certain datasets limits the usefulness of the resources. As a result of substantial funding received (mostly from public institutions) and the volume of data produced by each digitization project, the final impacts on the broader scientific community remain limited. Starting from the analysis of data published about EU-funded projects by the European Union Commission on the platform CORDIS, this research approaches the delicate issue of the unsustainability of the current 3D data life cycle. The analysis of 110 selected projects revealed a disturbing pattern: even though the EU provided funds for many projects that approached in different ways 3D data diffusion or sharing, currently only 8 of them made the data accessible.
The Mapping Adriatic Landscape Project focuses on the systematic employment of non-invasive investigative techniques across the valleys of the Rivers Cesano, Nevola and Misa, in northern Marche, Italy. The Project aims to understand the dynamics of settlement and processes of urbanisation in the area.
This paper discusses the interrelationship between e-Science and CSCW in terms of key substantive, methodological and conceptual innovations made in both fields. In so doing, we hope to draw out the existing relationship between CSCW and e-Science research, and to map out some key future challenges where the two areas of research may become more closely aligned. In considering what may be required to draw the two more closely together, the paper focuses primarily on investigations that have been undertaken in two dedicated initiatives into e-Science, along with the key issues emerging from these studies.
This book is the product of an ICARDA project to define supplemental irrigation in the Near East and North Africa. In cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (F AO) a meeting was held in Rabat, Morocco, on 7-9 December 1987, entitled "Regional Consultation on Supplemental Irrigation"; specialists from 11 different countries were brought together to discuss priorities for supplemental irrigation within their specific regions. The participants were asked to focus on developing an information base using both primary data, results of surveys administered to district level agricultural personnel, and secondary data sources with a particular interest in the application of state-of-the-art knowledge and technology to the problems of supplemental irrigation. The authors have willingly and thankfully responded to the suggestions and criticisms of Ms Kate Ward, Institute of Irrigation Studies, Department of Civil of Southampton, U. K. , who accepted the soporific Engineering, University position of Review Editor and performed miracles. Chapter 2 and parts of chapters 15 and 16 are a partial rendering of a forthcoming book on systems analysis by Janice R. Perrier. The authors recognize the inclusion of this material which outlines the basic philosophical perspective of supplemental irrigation as utilized in the book. The assistance of Mr. Maurice Saade, Agricultural Economist is greatly appreciated for the understanding of Chapter 14. The section on the phenology of cereals near the end of chapter 4 was written by Mr.
The paper opens with a series of passages from ancient historiographic sources on the concept of cities in pre-Roman Italy, on the rite of foundation and on internal urban organization, apart from the vast bibliography. We then focus on the case of the settlement of Accesa (Municipality of Massa Marittima, GR). This is one of several settlements located E and N of Vetulonia, controlled by this same city and connected through by river valleys to areas of mining interest in the district of the Colline Metallifere and the Tyrrhenian coast. Unlike other settlements, where only tombs mostly dating to the Archaic period have been discovered, Accesa has tombs and houses included in a period that ranges from the recent Villanovan to the Archaic. Its main characteristic is the division into distinct neighborhoods, functionalized in the operations that were conducted there: exploitation of mines and metallurgical activity. Their genesis is linked to a number of economic and sociological factors that, integrated together, find an eloquent expression in the urban structure.
Encoding problems are often neglected, in archaeological as in other humanities related research, because of their apparent triviality. Encoding is assumed to be the reproduction in an “electronic alphabet” (be it the ASCII code or a second level language like SGML) of something written on paper. On the contrary, the encoding process begins with the recognition, choice and declaration of the elements of reality which we are going to submit to an electronic process. As a consequence, we must examine very carefully the substance of the logical and formal passages that we undertake. This article tries to show the difference between many kinds of encoding and the significance of encoding in archaeology, in comparison with other opinions, mainly by J.-CI. Gardin and F. Djindjian.
In the last few years, public administrations and university archives have been promoting the dissemination of cultural heritage via the web, so making it accessible and shared. The aim of those promoting the Open Access movement was to encourage the democratic and fast distribution of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the benefits of using and sharing linked data do not accrue only to the public administration, though this may indeed become more efficient and effective, but also profits the citizenry, as online tools can stimulate public participation and social inclusion.
Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction is a useful technique for the documentation, characterization, and evaluation of small archeological objects. In this research, a comparison among different photogrammetric setups that use different lenses (macro and standard zoom) and dense point cloud generation calibration processes for real specific objects of archaeological interest with different textures, geometries, and materials is raised using an automated data collection. The data acquisition protocol is carried out from a platform with control points referenced with a metrology absolute arm to accurately define a common spatial reference system. The photogrammetric reconstruction is performed considering a camera pre-calibration as well as a self-calibration. The latter is common for most data acquisition situations in archaeology. The results for the different lenses and calibration processes are compared based on a robust statistical analysis, which entails the estimation of both standard Gaussian and non-parametric estimators, to assess the accuracy potential of different configurations. As a result, 95% of the reconstructed points show geometric discrepancies lower than 0.85 mm for the most unfavorable case and less than 0.35 mm for the other cases.
While the branch of Classical studies on Greek figured pottery focused for decades on the development of Beazley’s lifework (i.e. attributions of Greek vases to anonymous painters), the study of the potter’s work, the organization of workshops, their networks and relative chronology (although sporadically studied by several scholars, e.g. Haspels, Bloesh, Mackay, Jubier-Galinier) remained broadly neglected and were never systematically analysed. Yet, Beazley was perfectly aware of the need to restore the potter and his/her wheel to the centre of the workshop. In this paper, we first outline the history of the research on the shapes of Greek vases and their attributions to anonymous potters, showing why this work is fundamental to understand the organization of potters’ quarters (in Greece and elsewhere) and describing the most recent methodologies which we developed in this regard. In the second part, we build on case studies to move past stylistic attribution in order to show how the study of vase shapes in general can help archaeologists understand broader questions like the mechanisms of intercultural exchanges in the ancient Mediterranean.
This study was commissioned by the Commission to help advance 3D digitisation across Europe and thereby to support the objectives of the Recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage (C(2021) 7953 final), adopted on 10 November 2021. The Recommendation encourages Member States to set up digital strategies for cultural heritage, which sets clear digitisation and digital preservation goals aiming at higher quality through the use of advanced technologies, notably 3D. The aim of the study is to map the parameters, formats, standards, benchmarks, methodologies and guidelines relating to 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage. The overall objective is to further the quality of 3D digitisation projects by enabling cultural heritage professionals, institutions, content-developers, stakeholders and academics to define and produce high-quality digitisation standards for tangible cultural heritage. This unique study identifies key parameters of the digitisation process, estimates the relative complexity and how it is linked to technology, its impact on quality and its various factors. It also identifies standards and formats used for 3D digitisation, including data types, data formats and metadata schemas for 3D structures. Finally, the study forecasts the potential impacts of future technological advances on 3D digitisation.
This work focuses on the images representing the myth of Ajax, son of Telamon, as represented in a corpus of finds from Greece and pre-Roman Italy. The iconography of the classical myth is studied together with other characters, such as kind of object, production, painting technique, place of finding, age. The age was fixed in intervals of 50 years, because of the wide chronological range and the uncertainty of the age of some finds. The data table crossing the finds with the characters was first submitted to Multiple Correspondence Analysis, where a strong relation was revealed. This suggested that an attempt should be made to estimate the age on the basis of the other characters. Qualitative Discriminant Analysis, applied to the objects with certain age, gave good classification functions that were used to estimate the age of the finds with uncertain age. In conclusion, the examination of the graphs shows how different meanings and functions of a Greek myth are illustrated throughout Classical Antiquity.
This article discusses a research project about the imported and local amphorae found in the Veneto region. The study is specifically based on fragments of Spanish amphorae found in the Venetian lagoon. Several samples could be clearly identified as fragments of the forms coming from the Baetica region (e.g., Dr 8, Dr 38, Dr 7/11, Dr 20 and Dr 20-23); other samples of very limited number could also be reliably identified. In order to attempt a broad identification we have studied the composition of the pastes of a small number of fragments by means of mineralogical and petrographic analyses. Additionally image processing techniques were also used: in particular, a classification procedure has been designed that will perform morphologic, chromatic, radiometric and spectral analyses on the images of thin sections of the amphorae, taken by a polarising microscope. The procedure could be completed by analysing a larger number of samples, that will allow to establish the decision thresholds used in the classification process; the procedure will facilitate the fusion of data and information obtained with different destructive and non destructive tests of the samples, so that it could constitute a useful tool for the archaeological research.
The authors analyze, as a sample-area, the region that includes the municipality of Mogoro, in central-western Sardinia, with the objective to reconstruct, through the study of the settlements and their relationships, some economic and social aspects of the human groups of nuragic culture that inhabited this area between the 18th and the 8th century BC. The territory is located at the foot of Monte Arci, along the Mogoro river that runs through the southern part of the plain of the Campidano of Oristano. The area has been intensively investigated from the half of the past century; an in-depth stratigraphic investigation was carried out since 1994 near the nuragic site of Cuccurada, the main center of an articulated territorial system including a rich network of monuments related to the nuragic civilization. The results are illustrated through various research methods: GIS, with the application of spatial analysis tools, and multivariate analysis (cluster and principal components analysis) that allowed to set out new hypotheses on occupation and populating dynamics and to identify among pre-historical monuments one or more homogeneous and distinguishable groups, resulting from a database in which geomorphological characteristics are recorded. A hierarchical organization and a specific criterion for exploiting and monitoring the landscape have been developed, in which settlement choices depend on functionality criteria, having nuraghi and villages a key role on the strategic control of the territory.
The analysis of site formation processes seems quite ignored in the archaeological literature of Southern Italy. In this paper, we discuss the case study of Terragne (Taranto, South-Eastern Italy), an open-air site characterised by two occupation layers (US 5-Late Mesolithic; US 3-Early and Middle Neolithic). Statistical analyses of different archaeological indicators were performed, in order to value the formation features of the deposit and to identify possible spatial configurations. Particular emphasis has been drawn to the identification of diagnostic tools, able to isolate specific formative phenomena (sin-depositional and post-depositional.
Mario Torelli's essays provide a comprehensive picture of those crucial centuries of Roman history which lead to the tota Italia of the Augustan age. Studies in the Romanization of Italy provides a detailed analysis of the socio-economic and cultural background and paints a full picture of the material evidence from a number of Italian regions and a variety of local situations pertaining to the period between the Late Republic and the Early Empire.
