Abstract Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to become corpora which can for the first time be interrogated en masse as source material. By applying new Computer Vision methods leveraging machine learning, we outline a research pipeline for working with thousands (rather than a handful) of maps at once, which enables new forms of historical inquiry based on spatial analysis. Our ‘patchwork method’ draws on the longstanding desire to adopt an overall or ‘complete’ view of a territory, and in so doing highlights certain parallels between the situation faced by today’s users of digitized maps, and a similar inflexion point faced by their predecessors in the nineteenth century, as the project to map the nation approached a form of completion.
This paper aims to make a conceptual and methodological contribution to the spatial analysis of past architectural spaces, by suggesting some new methods for the investigation of human sensory engagement with the built environ
The paper introduces the concept of webmapping in the archaeological and historical sciences. The interest in offering an online mapping service is developed in terms of collaborative working, technical support, e-learning, mapping functions, and hardware and software architecture. The integration of the webmapping functions in the more general case of a Geoportal is also considered. Examples of operational Geoportals and projects in progress are also briefly described, most of them being detailed by their authors in the present volume.
Between the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties of the Twentieth century, following the discovery of numerous occasional findings, the village of San Basilio (Ariano nel Polesine, Rovigo, Italy) had been the object of a series of archaeological campaigns, which made it possible to identify a pre-Roman settlement and a Roman <em>villa/mansio</em> linked to the passage of the via Annia/via Popillia. In the past few years, the research has been resumed in that area, carrying out both archaeological and topographical activities, aimed at reconstructing the organisation of the ancient landscape. The aim of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, the planned research activities are presented and, on the other, the opportunity can arise to discuss about the potentialities of digital approaches in mapping the archaeological landscapes of San Basilio.
Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) decision-makers often need to have a clear vision of what is researched and by whom to design effective policies. Such a vision is provided by effective and comprehensive mappings of the research activities carried out within their institutional boundaries. A major challenge to be faced in this context is the difficulty in accessing the relevant data and in combining information coming from different sources: indeed, traditionally, STI data has been confined within closed data sources and, when available, it is categorised with different taxonomies. Here, we present a proof-of-concept study of the use of Open Resources to map the research landscape on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 – Climate Action, for an entire country, Denmark, and we map it on the 25 ERC panels.
Publishing provenance data on the Internet requires the integration of various resources, some of them easily accessible, some of them costly and protected by various copyrights. The work is based on thematic and archive maps, special fieldwork and research projects, data published in technical literature and stored in related databases. This paper will survey the accessible resources used for creating an “Atlas” of prehistoric raw materials for the Carpathian Basin, both commercial and public domain elements and will concentrate on the additional new value as well as problems of continuous maintenance. New developments in supporting reference collections at the Hungarian National Museum will be discussed as well.
The paper points out the possibilities of mobile mapping in synergy with classical desktop applications of geographic information systems in the study of sustainable tourism in the urban environment. As an example, large Romanian cities (Oradea, Timisoara, Cluj-Napoca and Bucharest) have been selected, collecting data on the normal movement of tourists through the city using mobile mapping. Emphasis is placed on open technologies - especially the desktop QGIS in integration with the tablet, and the mobile version of QField supplemented with data collection in the form of the mobile application Geopaparazzi. The results show the suitability of using mobile mapping in urban environments, especially in the synergy of desktop GIS applications and mobile in situ data collection tools.
Since the widespread adoption of GIS by archaeologists in the early 1990s, analyses of visibility have steadily gained traction, becoming commonplace in landscape and regional analysis. This is in large part due to the routine way in which such products can be generated, bolstered by a raft of landscape-based studies that have placed varying degrees of emphasis upon human perception and direct bodily engagement in seeking to understand and explore the past. Despite this seeming popularity, two worrying trends stand out. The first is the lack of any coherent theoretical framework, applications preferring instead to seek justification in the very first wave of experiential landscape approaches that emerged in the early 1990s. Needless to say, the intervening 20 or so years have seen considerable development in the conceptual tools we draw upon in order to make sense of past landscapes, not to mention considerable finessing of the first-wave developments alluded to above. Second is the tendency to relegate viewshed analysis to certain types of predictable problem or question (i.e. viewshed analysis has become typecast). These trends have been compounded by a host of other issues. For example, whilst there have been refinements, tweaks and variations to the basic viewshed (and the frequency with which they are generated and combined), not to mention establishment of robust calibration criteria for controlling them and statistical approaches for assessing the patterns tendered, these have yet to be brought together in any coherent fashion and their veracity critically assessed. Likewise, a failure to establish an agreed vocabulary has resulted in a number of proverbial wheels being reinvented time and again. The argument presented here is that viewsheds have considerably more to offer archaeology but to realise this entails confronting these issues head on. That this is possible and desirable is illustrated through discussion of a new theoretical framework for visibility-studies that draws upon developments in assemblage theory and the author's own work on affordance and relationality. To demonstrate the value of this approach in encouraging different ways of thinking about what viewsheds are and how we might begin to draw creatively upon them, a case-study is described where viewsheds are folded into a detailed exploration of landscape liminality.
This paper describes the work carried out by PIN (University of Florence) and the MiBAC, in the framework of the ARIADNE project, for mapping the Italian archaeological documentation system to CIDOC-CRM. ARIADNE’s primary goal is the implementation of interoperability among archaeological data at a European level, by creating a technological infrastructure for archaeological data sharing and integration. The Italian system is extremely articulated and complex, but the mapping activities, although at an early stage, are progressing very quickly. We are presenting here an overview of the conceptual mapping between the “RA” model (providing information on archaeological artefacts) and CIDOC-CRM, the reference ontology chosen by ARIADNE as a “common language” for integration.
– Complexity of large-scale Airborne LIDAR data: its processing, and interpretation emerges the necessity of automated analysis with novel techniques. – Detection and documentation of archaeological ruins, hidden in the forests of the Swedish landscape.
IT L’ingente patrimonio culturale italiano affronta oggi le conseguenze di strategie di promozione obsolete e di un insufficiente uso delle ICT, ma soprattutto di una errata percezione del suo significato nella vita delle comunità. I caratteri stessi del c.d. ‘Museo Italia’(un patrimonio di beni ‘minori’ fortemente diffuso sul territorio accanto ai più noti beni monumentali) richiedono notevoli cambiamenti nei progetti di promozione sia nel senso di un trasferimento alla scala locale dei processi, sia nella identificazione e modellazione dell’utenza potenziale. Sul piano operativo ciò implica il ricorso a strumenti tecnologici semplici e fortemente interattivi, incentrati sui bisogni di informazione dell’utente medio, potenziale visitatore. L’articolo illustra il sistema sviluppato da ITC-CNR (Bari) nell’ambito del progetto 'Smart Cities’ per la città di Siracusa, basato su procedure e software che semplificano la pubblicazione di informazione georeferenziata.ENThe huge cultural heritage of Italy is facing the consequences of obsolete promotion strategies and of an under exploitation of ICTs, but above all of a wrong perception of its significance in communities’ life. The inherent characters of the so-called ‘Museum Italy’ (a wealth of ‘minor’ assets, diffused on the territory, together with the more famous monuments) demand substantial modifications in promotion projects, in terms of both a downscaling of processes and of identification and modelling of potential users’ behaviour. On the operational level, this requires the elaboration of simple and highly interactive technological tools, focused on the ‘average’ user’s information needs, or potential visitor. The article presents the system developed by ITC-CNR (Bari) within the ‘Smart Cities’ project for the city of Siracusa (Sicily), based on software and procedures aimed at simplifying the publication of georeferenced information.
The authors, who have been working since 1987 in Sphakia (Sw Crete), present some practical thoughts about how to use computers to improve the production of archaeological maps for publication. The research project, carried out by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, has foreseen an intensive survey work in the eparchy and the subsequent production of period maps for the final publication and of maps to display details of sherd find spots and other transect data. The computerized recording processing and enhancing of these maps was undertaken using the program SuperPaint 3.0. On the basis of their practical experience, the authors show how computers can help in the topographic and cartographic analysis of information and offer greater flexibility in the final presentation of results.
Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and Map of a Nation is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it. The Ordnance Survey's history is one of political revolutions, rebellions and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's also a deliciously readable account of one of the great untold British adventure stories, featuring intrepid individuals lugging brass theodolites up mountains to make the country visible to itself for the first time.
Questo manuale, ricco di esempi illustrati, si rivolge agli archeologi con l'intento di insegnare l'uso di una serie di strumenti che sono indispensabili per la documentazione e lo studio dei resti antichi. Si descrivono i principali strumenti di rilievo indiretto - stazione totale, GPS, fotogrammetria, laserscanner -, ma viene dato anche grande spazio al rilievo diretto, procedimento che è essenziale per interpretare correttamente il contesto da rappresentare. La seconda parte del testo descrive in dettaglio il funzionamento di alcune tipologie di programmi che servono per l'archiviazione, l'elaborazione e l'interscambio dei dati: software di grafica raster, DBMS, GIS e in particolar modo il CAD, sia per il disegno 2d che per la modellazione tridimensionale. La finalità è quella di indicare un metodo operativo il quale, aggiornato dalle recenti tecnologie, sia in grado di produrre risultati coerenti rispetto ai principi dell'archeologia stratigrafica, favorendo l'analisi e la ricostruzione dei monumenti del passato.
Lo straordinario sviluppo delle tecnologie a disposizione e l'espandersi del campo delle applicazioni specifiche hanno imposto, nell'ambito del rilievo, un nuovo metodo di gestione della complessità dei dati che emergono dall'approccio scientifico con la realtà dell'architettura e della città, sia storica sia contemporanea. Attraverso un percorso che parte dal disegno per arrivare alle metodologie operative del rilievo, questo testo risponde alla necessità di affrontare da un punto di vista didattico le problematiche nate dall'evoluzione della disciplina in questa direzione. Grazie alla decennale esperienza didattica degli autori, il "Manuale di rilievo architettonico e urbano" è quindi uno strumento utile agli studenti che vengono guidati e accompagnati nello studio di questa disciplina.
Il libro affronta il tema della metodologia archeologica utile alla ricostruzione dei paesaggi del passato, attraverso lo studio di contesti geografici di diversa estensione. Rivolto agli studenti di archeologia, il libro intende fornire una sorta di introduzione ragionata ai modi di approccio alle forme dei paesaggi antichi, alle procedure utilizzate, alle tecnologie di indagine e di elaborazione. Il testo passa in rassegna aspetti e temi diversi della pratica archeologica: le tipologie delle fonti da utilizzare, la scelta del contesto geografico-storico, la ricognizione del terreno come procedura di acquisizione di masse critiche di dati nuovi, la elaborazione e trasformazione dei dati in informazione archeologica, la loro visualizzazione cartografica. I capitoli conclusivi sono dedicati all'interpretazione degli insediamenti, al delicato rapporto fra archeologia e geografia umana, alla illustrazione sintetica di casi di studio e di ricostruzione di paesaggi del passato.
Questo lavoro è stato realizzato con l’intento di contribuire alla corretta diffusione dei metodi e delle procedure di analisi ed elaborazione delle immagini aerofotografiche, finalizzati agli studi di ‘topografia archeologica’. Gli Autori hanno realizzato il presente scritto cercando di privilegiare gli aspetti di semplicità e di sinteticità nella esposizione dei dati, ricercando anche un taglio più operativo che astrattamente culturale. È stato curato, per quanto possibile, anche il lato didattico, rivolto agli studenti di Antichistica, in particolare a coloro che seguono l’insegnamento specialistico in Aerotopografia archeologica.
In this paper, we reviewed 20 years of development of 3D based IS to support archaeological and AH artefact knowledge, management and communication and their theoretical work basis. In detail, we illustrated our experiences showing the advantages and limits we had observed after extensive use. In conclusion, we have illustrated a new paradigm based on IoT-related technologies, potentially able to overcome existing problems, and the theoretical foundation of the new framework that has been designed, the concept of the Smart Cultural Object, sources and recipients of advanced information and related technological underpinning.
Archaeoastronomy is a discipline devoted to the study of the astronomical observations preceding the invention of the telescope. It is an interdisciplinary science, requiring the knowledge of astronomers, archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists and architects. It has highlighted the great importance that ancient civilizations attributed to celestial phenomena and demonstrated how the analysis of the testimonies of this interest can greatly help us in the understanding the past history of mankind. However, we must avoid the mistake of believing that it is possible to study the impact of celestial phenomena on ancient cultures without taking into account their context: unfortunately, this error is still common to date. This paper illustrates the evolution of Archaeoastronomy since the beginning of the 20th century, its basic principles and the modern methodologies for Archaeoastronomy measurements and data analysis. Moreover, the proofs needed to claim the actual intentionality of an astronomical alignment are discussed, showing the potential of Archaeoastronomy, as long as it is strongly linked to, and continuously compared with, excavation data, and combined with Archaeology in various cultural contexts, thus providing valuable assistance in the interpretation of material data.
The study of pre-Roman landscape settings has progressed across a long trajectory in its consideration of urban and rural adaptations in Etruria. Such studies, while providing valuable details regarding social organization, have not considered the unique aural nature of the landscape, particularly with respect to funerary settings. Nowhere is this more evident than with painted chambered tombs. Our understanding of Etruscan painted tombs is still largely guided by analytic studies of tomb paintings, epigraphic sources, and typologies. Thus, the bilateral relationship between each tomb’s landscape setting and habitation contexts has been explored from a solely visual perspective, rather than from a multisensory perspective, and consequently, ritual performed in and around the tomb space remains unclear. A further understanding of perceptual constructs involving aural information offers a new way forward in confronting these realities. This article utilizes acoustic modeling tools to illustrate the potential range of audibility between the Necropoli dei Monterozzi in Tarquinia and various locations in the landscape. Acoustic and spatial data collected in 2019 inside a series of painted tombs in the Calvario area of the Necropoli dei Monterozzi in Tarquinia provides further information regarding the painted tomb’s landscape setting and its environs. The preliminary study suggests that aural information can greatly enhance our understanding of funerary practices in Tarquinia, particularly with respect to how habitation areas in Tarquinia may have engaged with funerary landscapes.
The use of ethnographic analogy to interpret archaeological remains has produced many misunderstandings, which must now be corrected. 1. Ethnology is traditionally oriented towards the analysis of the thought systems of the populations under study, and believes all too often that this type of discourse in natural language is an acceptable explanation for the observed empirical phenomena. The scientific discourse built by the ethnoarchaeologist must not imitate the distinctions made by the people under study, given that their constructs seek to satisfy different objectives. 2. The construction of inference rules must be subjected to the requirements of all scientific research. In consequence, one must not merely collect 'cas d'espèce', but also assemble numeric data which are sufficiently representative for statistical treatment to be carried out. 3. It is necessary to define, in each case, the actualisation context of the rules, that is, the spatial and temporal universe wherein the proposed rule is applicable. 4. The only way to validate a rule resides in the precautions taken during collection, mobilisation and treatment of empirical data. 5. Successful application of an actualist rule to archaeological data does not mean that the latter has been validated. The only way to confirm an interpretation is by applying the principle of result convergence by independent methods.
Dal 2011 La MAIKI opera nei governatorati di Erbil e Sulaimaniya, e focalizza le sue attività sulla Cittadella di Erbil e sul sito di Paikuli. Gli studi storico-archeologici sui siti sono stati affiancati da importanti attività di documentazione e gestione dei dati caratterizzate dall’utilizzo di alcune tra le più moderne risorse a disposizione
The MAGOH (Managing Archaeological data for a sustainable Governance of Heritage) project is a two-year project funded by Regione Toscana, co-funded by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MIC) and coordinated by MAPPA Lab of the University of Pisa. The project was designed to address the needs of the Superintendencies of Florence, Pistoia and Prato and of Pisa and Livorno to manage archaeological data. The project represents the development of the MAPPA project on a larger geographical area of 72,000 km², corresponding to almost all of Northern Tuscany. MAGOH system is composed of a web-based back-end which allows collecting textual and vector data and the archaeological documentation. It contains around 8000 archaeological interventions openly accessible through the web platform and reusable as open data following FAIR principles. Furthermore, through an appositively developed API, it is entirely interoperable with GNA, the National Geoportal for Archaeology, managed by the MIC.
Orthophotos are one of the most common and typical products of a photogrammetric post-processing and, since the diffusion of specific software, their generation and usage have become even more widespread. In spite of it, some issues remain on the accuracy of orthophoto reconstruction, which is often downgraded by the introduction of meshes and Digital Surface Models to be used as surfaces representing the object. The use of a more accurate and reliable input, such as a point cloud, makes these approximations avoidable. For this reason, a new approach, termed MAGO (Adaptive Mesh for Orthophoto Reconstruction), is here delineated and proposed. The input data of the procedure are the user-defined orthophoto plane, the image and its internal and external orientation parameters, and a point cloud representing the object. Each pixel of the image is projected on the orthophoto plane at its original resolution via an iterative process, which builds an adaptive mesh, defined by means of the three best fitting points, where the collinearity rays and the point cloud intersect. After an overview on the method and its innovative features, an example on a test case is reported, together with a comparison between MAGO’s and another photogrammetric software results.
This study belongs to the branch of research dedicated to the interpretation of the archaeological landscape using innovative models for the information analysis, managing and fruition of the land. To this aim, a preliminary analysis was carried out in order to identify the characteristic elements of the area being studied which are fundamental for landscape description. The study of material evidence is directly related, in this sense, to environmental resources in a diachronic key. The territory of Sila (Calabria) was considered as a case study and the work was divided into different essential steps, respectively concerning fact-finding elaboration, description and evaluation of data in the historical, environmental, settlement, functional and relational system of this territory. Using matrixes represented by descriptive elements of the landscape, it is possible to relate the natural, environmental, historical and archaeological features of places. The main point in this kind of approach is not territorial analysis but the development of synthesis models that make it possible to interpret the complexity of human-environment interaction. The Geographic Information System is one of the techniques for landscape analysis based on qualitative and quantitative environmental data with a great capacity for spatial interpretation of the structural properties of the landscape according to different natural and human gradients. GIS was designed to compare spatial data to temporal ones and this feature made it possible for us to elaborate interpretative approaches for understanding the way in which ancient populations made use of natural resources over the centuries.
Machine learning (ML) is rapidly being adopted by archaeologists interested in analyzing a range of geospatial, material cultural, textual, natural, and artistic data. The algorithms are particularly suited toward rapid identification and classification of archaeological features and objects. The results of these new studies include identification of many new sites around the world and improved classification of large archaeological datasets. ML fits well with more traditional methods used in archaeological analysis, and it remains subject to both the benefits and difficulties of those approaches. Small datasets associated with archaeological work make ML vulnerable to hidden complexity, systemic bias, and high validation costs if not managed appropriately. ML's scalability, flexibility, and rapid development, however, make it an essential part of twenty-first-century archaeological practice. This review briefly describes what ML is, how it is being used in archaeology today, and where it might be used in the future for archaeological purposes.
Nel corso degli ultimi dieci anni, l’Unione europea ha più volte sottolineato, nelle sue raccomandazioni e documenti, il ruolo che le ICT possono svolgere per favorire le opportunità di partecipazione ed integrazione dei cittadini più svantaggiati. In questo contesto, il progetto ENSEMBLE, qui presentato, si è proposto di mettere a punto una strategia d’impiego delle tecnologie della comunicazione per promuovere l’integrazione socio-culturale dei cittadini immigrati, facendo leva sull’uso di tecnologie come il lettore MP3 e il telefono cellulare, e sperimentando metodologie didattiche e formati comunicativi adatti agli strumenti impiegati.
