The aim of this paper is to investigate the evolution of the use of half-human half-vegetal figures, the so-called Rankenfrau and Rankengott, in the pavements of the Eastern Mediterranean, from their appearance in the Classical period to their appropriation in the Roman and Christian times. The contextualised analysis of this corpus, combined with a comparison to other media such as architectural sculpture, provide a good opportunity to better understand to what extent the motif varied at different times and how the worldview of the commissioners of the decors can, or not, affect their meaning. In the Classical and Hellenistic contexts, vegetalisation of the human body seems to plastically translate the prerogatives of different divinities of wild nature, growth, and life. Through the mastery of their primitive savagery, these deities allow the coexistence of two different natures and bring divine prosperity into everyday life. In Roman times these figures inherited from the Greek world went through an unprecedented formal and syntactic diversification. A new variant is even created: the foliate head, which concentrates the force of a vital principle and appears as the metonymic representation of its primordial and spontaneous fecundity. In Eastern pavements, bearded and beardless foliate heads are associated with young foliate boys in the peopled scroll borders of the public rooms of rich houses. They evoked the mastery of a vital impulse that is made beneficial for wealthy owners. During the 6th century AD, whilst the foliate heads survive in the pavements of Christian monuments, the Rankenfrau and the Rankengott seem to disappear from the Eastern repertoire.
This book introduces the key stages of niche-based habitat suitability model building, evaluation and prediction required for understanding and predicting future patterns of species and biodiversity. Beginning with the main theory behind ecological niches and species distributions, the book proceeds through all major steps of model building, from conceptualization and model training to model evaluation and spatio-temporal predictions. Extensive examples using R support graduate students and researchers in quantifying ecological niches and predicting species distributions with their own data, and help to address key environmental and conservation problems. Reflecting this highly active field of research, the book incorporates the latest developments from informatics and statistics, as well as using data from remote sources such as satellite imagery. A website at www.unil.ch/hsdm contains the codes and supporting material required to run the examples and teach courses.
Heritage BIM can represent many advantages for heritage building documentation, restoration, retrofitting and management. However, the most complicated challenge concerning H-BIM is the inevitability of starting at an intermediate point in the asset’s life cycle, which can be much more complex than the relatively straightforward cradle-to-grave model that describes new-build construction (Historic England, 2017). This leads to irregular geometry, non-homogeneous materials, variable morphology, not documented changes, damage and various stages of construction. These challenges put more weight on the surveying, documentation, modelling and visualisation phase within the process of HBIM. Many investigation tools can be used and combined to document and investigate the fabric of historic buildings. This paper reviews the literature and the state of art of the different domains of data that could be included in the documentation and investigation process of the built heritage, in order to assess the breadth and depth by which heritage buildings can be documented. These data can vary from outer geometry survey, to sub-surface materials and structural integrity investigations, to data concerning the building performance, as well as the historic records concerning the building`s morphology over time, which can help to create a more in-depth knowledge about the heritage buildings` status and performance and can create a solid base for any required restoration and retrofitting processes.
Growth of science is a prevalent issue in science of science studies. In recent years, two new bibliographic databases have been introduced, which can be used to study growth processes in science from centuries back: Dimensions from Digital Science and Microsoft Academic. In this study, we used publication data from these new databases and added publication data from two established databases (Web of Science from Clarivate Analytics and Scopus from Elsevier) to investigate scientific growth processes from the beginning of the modern science system until today. We estimated regression models that included simultaneously the publication counts from the four databases. The results of the unrestricted growth of science calculations show that the overall growth rate amounts to 4.10% with a doubling time of 17.3 years. As the comparison of various segmented regression models in the current study revealed, models with four or five segments fit the publication data best. We demonstrated that these segments with different growth rates can be interpreted very well, since they are related to either phases of economic (e.g., industrialization) and/or political developments (e.g., Second World War). In this study, we additionally analyzed scientific growth in two broad fields (Physical and Technical Sciences as well as Life Sciences) and the relationship of scientific and economic growth in UK. The comparison between the two fields revealed only slight differences. The comparison of the British economic and scientific growth rates showed that the economic growth rate is slightly lower than the scientific growth rate.
This paper aims to review the evidence of irrigation structures in Southeast Arabia during the Bronze Age (c. 3200–1300 B.C.) and the Iron Age (c. 1300–300 B.C.). The preliminary results of the excavation of hydraulic structures in Masāfī (United Arab Emirates) are also presented. While in Arabia many studies have been devoted to the qanāt technology, and especially its origin, it is demonstrated that these structures are badly dated. Conversely, it appears that wells played a significant role in water supply during the pre-Islamic period as well as in the present day.
Our understanding of Roman urbanism relies on evidence from a few extensively investigated sites, such as Pompeii and Ostia, which are unrepresentative of the full variety of Roman towns. This article presents the results of the first high-resolution GPR survey of a complete Roman town—Falerii Novi, in Lazio, Italy. The authors review the methods deployed and provide an overview of the results, including discussion of a case-study area within the town. They demonstrate how this type of survey has the potential to revolutionise archaeological studies of urban sites, while also challenging current methods of analysing and publishing large-scale GPR datasets.
This paper presents a cost- and time-effective, accessible, and practicable method of 3D site recording at an aerial scale using ground-based photogrammetry. The methodology was deployed in a recent survey of the site of Khirbet al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya, Jordan. The authors used ground-based photogrammetry to capture this 2.3 ha site, generating a com- plete and accurate 3D model and georeferenced orthophoto of the site within several days. The paper demonstrates that ground-based photogrammetry can provide a valid alternative where aerial photogrammetry is impractical. Therefore, this method is useful for baseline recording of site conditions under varying circumstances, with potential uses in site moni- toring and conservation.
From an archaeological perspective, one of the sites that best represents the western area of the province of Pavia, Lomellina, is Gropello Cairoli, due to the large number of discoveries, which had already been made by the end of the 19th century. Archaeological data chiefly concern the necropoleis, located in various parts of Gropello, while traces regarding settlements are scarcer. The chronological span goes from the end of the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD. Until now, the attention of experts has been focused principally on the detailed analysis of single necropoleis and on the numerous funerary furnishings, while a general overview of the development of Gropello has rarely been offered. A reconstruction of the chronological evolution of the territory and a historical-topographic synthesis has been proposed using a Database Management System and a Geographical Information System. All available spatial data, consisting of historical maps, aerial photos and sketches, were inserted in the GIS platform and the single burials were georeferenced, wherever possible, using the system of topographic overlay. At the same time all the information of non-spatial type, including the data relative to the artefacts and the burials, were fed into a specially created Relational Database. Therefore, it was possible to create specific queries, underlining particular chronological phases and analyzing the distribution of the evidence. The interpretation of the resulting data has suggested the presence of a widespread distribution of small settlements, with the funerary areas along the roadsides. An important demographic growth between the second half of the 1st century BC and the first half of the 1st century AD is evident, after which there is a slow decline suggested by the increasing rarity of archaeological finds.
The present thesis provides and examination of the Greek imports from Al Mina dating from the end of the 9th to the end of the 7th centuries BC. Al Mina, located on the Orontes river in the Hatay province of Turkey, was excavated by L. Woolley in 1936 and 1937. In particular the large quantities of Greek imports recovered from the sites triggered a debate about the site’s function and it’s foundation date. In order to overcome past deficiencies the present thesis provides a detailed record of the Greek pottery recovered from the site. The fragments are analysed stylistically and dated in order to establish a local chronology. Further, a detailed statistical study of the whole assemblage, which comprises about 4800 pieces, reveals evidence for local consumption patterns and further sheds light on the ports external contacts during the 8th and 7th centuries BC. The study also entails a contextual analysis of specific Near Eastern sites in order to set Al Mina in its regional context. Three questions are of major concern in this respect: is it possible to identify the users of Greek pottery in the East in terms of their socio-economic background? Further, is Greek pottery better understood as a commodity or as a gift? Finally, What role does Greek tableware play within the trade with other commodities? The study illustrates that pottery primarily circulated within the lower social classes. It also highlighted a diverse pattern in which high quality products are circulating besides “mass ware”. This can be understood as a diversification process that was initiated in order to reach a wider range of consumers.
From 2014 Italian team, directed by Sabatino Laurenza, worked in the Sultanate of Oman for rescue archaeological excavations for roads construction. The excavations on the Batinah Expressway alignment in Sohar area touched three graveyards with different typologies of graves and with materials of different periods (from Bronze age to Sasanian and early Islamic). The results pushed us to apply a new approach to the “funerary landscape” study of the region. In this paper we present the “funerary landscape” as a specific type of archaeological landscape, focusing on a “mapscape” of the funerary sites and a detailed account of graves typologies and funerary finds (burialscape) and the relations between burials, disposal of the graves in the environment (funeraryscape) and the social memory of the group participating in the remembrance of the burial, through a series of standardized uses (i.e. graves organized in large groups over wide area, the repeated disposal of the dead in the same place, etc.). Those and other aspects let the area to become a place of remembrance of persons in a community’s social memory, reflecting the subscription of several communities to a similar set of guiding principles for creating and maintaining social memory.
Objects in graves have been a traditional focus of burial archaeology. Conventional interpretations of their meanings revolved around religion (equipment for the hereafter, Charon’s Penny), legal concepts (inalienable possessions) and social structure (status display, ostentatious destruction of wealth). An interdisciplinary perspective drawing on archaeological literature, anthropological evidence and sociological theory widens the range of possible interpretations. Textual sources of the Roman and early medieval periods highlight the importance of gift-giving to the deceased, but also to deities. Anthropology shows the importance of the disposal of polluted items in the grave, and of protecting the living. Ethnographic cases also underpin theoretical considerations concerning the role of biographical representations (metaphors) during the funeral, as well as emphasising the desire and the need to forget the dead. Textual and archaeological evidence from the Early Middle Ages suggest that these motives were not sharply separated, but that many of them played a role during any one funeral. In addition, motives changed over time, and the associations of particular grave goods (such as coins or weapons) varied across time and geographical regions. Above all, multiplicity of messages and variability of meanings characterised the deposition of objects in early medieval graves.
Over the years, the methodologies used for graphic representation in archaeology have evolved. The substantial change in representation was achieved with the use of computer software. Currently, 3D sketch scanning and photogrammetry are predominating tools used in this field. A new methodology, i.e., the use of the historical-archaeological evidence level scale, has entered this discipline to show the veracity of archaeological studies, as well as that of the vestiges found. The present study is focused on the virtual reconstruction of the ‘Baker’s House’ in the archaeological site of Torreparedones (Córdoba, Spain). The main aim of this study was to show and identify the veracity of the obtained reconstruction, through the use of the historical-archaeological evidence scale and the elaboration of a typological rank. The methodology used shows the evidence level employed by experts in the creation of virtual representations. The dissemination of the proposed historical-archaeological evidence scale entails the graphical identification of the veracity of reconstructions in this type of representations, always complying with the scientific quality criteria established by the Seville Letter.
This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 “grand challenges” focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (1) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5) human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest pay off will derive from investments that provide sophisticated research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several decades., ResumenEste artículo representa un esfuerzo sistemático para responder a la pregunta: ¿Cuáles son los retos científícos más importantes de la arqueología? A partir de una consulta masiva dirigida ampliamente a la comunidad profesional de arqueólogos, los autores aumentaron, priorizaron y refinaron las respuestas que surgieron de esta encuesta, durante un taller de dos días el cual se centro específícamente en esta cuestión. Los 25 grandes retos que emergen, se centran en los procesos culturales dinámicos y en el funcionamiento de los sistemas humanos y naturales en su conjunto. Para presentarlos aquí, organizamos estos desaflos en cinco temas: (1) surgimiento, comunidades y complejidad; (2) resiliencia, persistencia, transformatión y colapso; (3) movimiento, movilidady migratión; (4) conocimiento, comportamiento e identidad; e (5) interacciones humano-medioambiente. Cada pregunta va acompañada de una discusión y una breve lista de referencias. Un objetivo importante en la identificatión de estos retos es el de informar las decisiones sobre las inversiones en infraestructura para la arqueologia. Nuestra premisa es que las mayores inversiones prioritarias deben ser aquellas que nos permitan abordar las cuestiones mas importantes. Responder a muchos de estos desaflos requerird adoptar tanto la elaboration de modelos sofisticados, como investigaciones a gran escala sintetizadoras que apenas ahora estdn siendo posibles. Aunque sera fundamental llevar a cabo nuevos trabajos de campo arqueológicos, la mayor recompensa se derivard de las inversiones que proporcionen a las investigaciones sofisticadas acceso a la multitud de los datos arqueológicos recolectados sistemáticamente que se ha producido en las últimas décadas.
Google Earth Engine is a cloud-based platform for planetary-scale geospatial analysis that brings Google's massive computational capabilities to bear on a variety of high-impact societal issues including deforestation, drought, disaster, disease, food security, water management, climate monitoring and environmental protection. It is unique in the field as an integrated platform designed to empower not only traditional remote sensing scientists, but also a much wider audience that lacks the technical capacity needed to utilize traditional supercomputers or large-scale commodity cloud computing resources.
‘Godscapes’ proposes to combine a material approach with the Semantic Web to investigate cultural transformation and, specifically, how external elements trigger the transformation of religiosity, resulting in new hybrid elements. Focusing on a case-study on the Levant during the second millennium BCE, the project investigates the interplay between indigenous and exogenous elements (Egyptian, Syrian, Mesopotamian, Aegean, Anatolian) in shaping polytheistic beliefs and practices through the analysis of four types of data – funerary, architectural, iconographic and textual. Thus, the project addresses a new scientific perspective emphasizing the use of material culture to understand the connection between humans and the divine. The focus is on the unravelling of past religious hybridization to grasp how the second millennium cultural and religious intermingling persisted in the syncretic experience leading to the construction of the Israelite monolatry in the first millennium BCE.
For more than a half-century, obsidian provenancing has underpinned many archaeological investigations of peoples of the past. The pace of obsidian studies in this regard has gathered significantly since around 2007, and we review the literature to gain a sense of where this momentum has come from, and what it heralds. In part, there is a data revolution underway, arising thanks to the capabilities for rapid survey and analysis enabled by field-portable analytical equipment. Obsidian studies are also gaining a stronger foothold in regions of the world where the approach was previously under-exploited. Our survey spans progress made in obsidian studies in the Mediterranean, Central Europe, the Near East, the Caucasus, Northeast Asia and Tibet, the Eurasian Arctic and Alaska, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and Africa and Arabia. We also consider methodological issues related to compatibility of differing geochemical analytical techniques, and the state of the art in obsidian geochemical classification. The proliferation of new observations brings opportunities in terms of development of regional and global databases, as well as challenges of calibration and validation of analyses made by different scientists and laboratories employing diverse instrumentation. Obsidian provenancing demonstrates the astonishing ranges of our ancestors’ interactions and networks, sometimes exceeding 1000 km and involving maritime transport.
Nell'Enciclopedia Treccani troverai tutto quello che devi sapere su Gli strumenti dello scambio: i sistemi di misura. Entra subito su Treccani.it, il portale del sapere.
Nell'opera sono compresi un catalogo dei monumenti per spettacoli ripartiti per regiones augustee, comprese le province Sicilia, Sardinia, Alpes Cottiae, con schede per la maggior parte seguite da commento e integrato con saggi di P. Basso, Gli edifici di spettacolo nella città medievale; J. Bonetto, Gli edifici per spettacolo e la viabilità nelle città dell'Italia romana; M. Nardelli, «Natura loci» e «aedificatio». Il rapporto tra edifici per spettacoli e ambiente; G. Tosi, Profilo storico e tipologico delle strutture ludiche in Roma. La carpenteria negli edifici per spettacoli. Il Foro e i «munera gladiatoria» nel «De Architectura» di Vitruvio. La tipologia del Teatro-Tempio: un problema aperto. Il ruolo delle «basilicae» e della «porticus post scaenam». Gli edifici per spettacoli nelle residenze private. Il significato storico delle naumachie; P. Zanovello, Il ruolo storico dei circhi e degli stadi; e aggiornamenti di G. Alvino, Nota sulla ubicazione dell'anfiteatro di «Reate»-Rieti (regio IV Samnium); S. Bonomi, Nota sull'anfiteatro di «Atria»-Adria (regio X Venetia et Histria); L. Baccelle Scudeler, Gp. De Vecchi, Caratteristiche tessiturali e composizionali dell'«opus caementicium» nell'anfiteatro romano di Padova. Per il ruolo religioso, politico, sociale oltre che ludico, che ludi e munera ebbero nel mondo romano, sono state catalogate in un quadro unitario tutte le classi di monumenti o strutture per spettacoli (amphiteatrum, theatrum, odeum, circus, stadium, campus, ludus) comunque attestati: da fonti letterarie, epigrafiche, antiquarie, oltre che archeologiche. In questo ambito è stato dato un ruolo paritetico sia alle strutture ludiche edificate in forma monumentale sia a quelle allestite temporaneamente in carpenteria, tutte presentate in successione cronologica. Ne emerge l'importanza particolare di Roma, dove le due tecniche edilizie coesistono fino ad età imperiale inoltrata e dove, per la ricchezza della tradizione storico-letteraria, è riconoscibil
The author focuses on the role played by the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa during the 1970s and 1980s in the development of computer applications in archaeology and art history. The roots of this activity can be traced to the post-war period in the 1950s; these were years full of constructive optimism which, during the 1960s led to the design and construction of the CEP (Calcolatrice Elettronica Pisana), to the first academic Degree in Computer Science at the University of Pisa, and to the creation of CNUCE (Centro Nazionale Universitario di Calcolo Elettronico). This latter was founded in order to coordinate the various scientific and educational activities and support computer-based research also in marginal and newly established fields. Several important initiatives resulted from the cooperation with the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, directed by Oreste Ferrari. Computer Science was introduced at the Scuola Normale Superiore as an approach to the problems related to the automatic processing of archaeological and art history data and documents, thanks to Paola Barocchi and the creation of the Centro di Elaborazione Automatica di Dati e Documenti Storico Artistici, which established important international relationships with the Paul Getty Foundation, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, the Warburg Institute, etc.
