As a “grand challenge” for digital archaeology, I propose the adoption of programmatic research to meet the challenges of archaeological curation in the digital continuum, contingent on curation-enabled global digital infrastructures, and on contested regimes of archaeological knowledge production and meaning making. My motivation stems from an interest in the sociotechnical practices of archaeology, viewed as purposeful activities centred on material traces of past human presence. This is exemplified in contemporary practices of interpretation “at the trowel’s edge”, in epistemological reflexivity and in pluralization of archaeological knowledge. Adopting a practice-centred approach, I examine how the archaeological record is constructed and curated through archaeological activity “from the field to the screen” in a variety of archaeological situations. I call attention to Çatalhöyük as a salient case study illustrating the ubiquity of digital curation practices in experimental, well-resourced and purposefully theorized archaeological fieldwork, and I propose a conceptualization of digital curation as a pervasive, epistemic-pragmatic activity extending across the lifecycle of archaeological work. To address these challenges, I introduce a medium-term research agenda that speaks both to epistemic questions of theory in archaeology and information science, and to pragmatic concerns of digital curation, its methods, and application in archaeology. The agenda I propose calls for multidisciplinary, multi-team, multiyear research of a programmatic nature, aiming to re-examine archaeological ontology, to conduct focused research on pervasive archaeological research practices and methods, and to design and develop curation functionalities coupled with existing pervasive digital infrastructures used by archaeologists. It has a potential value in helping to establish an epistemologically coherent framework for the interdisciplinary field of archaeological curation, in aligning archaeological ontologies work with practice-based, agencyoriented and participatory theorizations of material culture, and in matching the specification and design of archaeological digital infrastructures with the increasingly globalized, ubiquitous and pervasive digital information environment and the multiple contexts of contemporary meaning-making in archaeology.
The aim of the study is to identify young visitors’ perceptions of the archaeological site of Delphi in Greece by measuring their importance and satisfaction levels from a series of cultural attributes through importance-satisfaction analysis. Even though young people are an important segment of the tourism industry little research has been done concerning their actual behaviour towards culture and cultural destinations. Given their significance, an examination of their perceptions towards cultural destinations can give useful insights. This can be done both academically, for the enrichment of theory, but also practically, for the appropriate management of cultural sites according to their needs and wants. In this study it was found that young visitors consider culture as one of the most important motives for travelling. According to the respondents, attributes related to monuments/exhibits at the site are more important than the facilities and amenities provided by its managers. The research identified that, overall, young people were fairly satisfied with Delphi, particularly with its beauty and landscape, but less satisfied with the man-made interventions. Importance-satisfaction analysis indicated that issues concerning the organisation and promotion of the site have positive levels of satisfaction, while issues concerning education and quality have comparatively negative levels. Factor Analysis derived three groups of attributes that should be considered for the future planning of the destination: ‘Place and Experience’; ‘Amenities and Quality’; ‘Facilities and Operation’. Finally, Cluster Analysis indicated that there are three main segments of young visitors in Delphi which, according to their profile, develop certain behaviours that should also be taken into account for the future promotion of the site; ‘The Greeks’; ‘The Americans and others’; ‘The French’. Therefore, better management strategies according to the needs and wants of this dynamic market would make the site more attractive, contributing to the promotion of cultural tourism in general. The study found that young people are great ‘consumers’ of culture and seek to enrich their knowledge while visiting cultural destinations. If a cultural destination meets their specific needs and wants, greater levels of satisfaction will be generated. Positive levels of satisfaction will lead to a series of positive consequences: loyalty, mouth to mouth marketing and peer influence. This, in addition to the fact that young people are the tourists of the future, can lead to the creation of consciousness for culture while travelling and to the enhancement of the potential visitation of the site in the following years.
The Semantic Web allows data to be linked on the Web and structures information for use by humans and machines. Furthermore, it makes relationships between data explicit, enabling the creation of Linked Data. Based on a literature review, the principles and technologies underlying Linked Data are presented – namely, the Resource Description Framework and models developed for libraries, archives and museums. Europeana aggregates European institutions’ digital cultural heritage, having developed a model that follows linked-data principles. For a deeper understanding of this model, the Europeana Data Model is presented with examples of two representation approaches and the advantages of metadata enrichment in information discovery. The experience of the University of Coimbra with Europeana is briefly explained. Finally, the authors discuss the challenges that cultural heritage institutions face in adopting these models and freeing their information from the silos it is in, taking advantage of the potential that Linked Data provides.
Building models for integrating the diverse data generated in Cultural Heritage disciplines is a long-term challenge both for securing presently generated knowledge and for making it progressively more widely accessible and interoperable into the future. This chapter reviews the multiple approaches undertaken to address this problem, finally proposing CIDOC CRM as the most robust solution for information integration in CH. The chapter begins by outlining the data challenge specific to the field and the main approaches that can be taken in facing it. Within this frame, it distinguishes knowledge engineering and formal ontology from other information modelling techniques as the necessary approach for tackling the broader data integration problem. It then outlines the basic principles of CIDOC CRM, the ISO standard formal ontology for CH. From there, an overview is given of some of the work that has been done both theoretically and in practice over the past five years in developing and implementing CRM as a practical data integration strategy in CH, particularly looking at model extensions to handle knowledge provenance across various disciplines and typical documentation and reasoning activities, as well as at successful implementation projects. Lastly, it summarizes the present potentials and challenges for using CIDOC CRM for solving the CH data management and integration puzzle. The intended audience of this chapter are specialists from all backgrounds within the broader domain of CH with an interest in data integration and CIDOC CRM.
Con il portale della cultura italiana, CulturaItalia, il Ministero realizza per la prima volta su larga scala un accesso integrato a basi di dati diverse, appartenenti a diversi settori, create in tempi, modalità e standard diversi. CulturaItalia gestisce un catalogo – Indice – che raccoglie e indicizza le informazioni fornite dai partner, attraverso i metadati. Realizza in pratica l’interoperabilità tra i diversi settori e tra diverse banche dati e crea un unico punto di accesso alle risorse. La raccolta o harvesting dei metadati rende possibile su CulturaItalia una ricerca contestuale tra più depositi (repository) di metadati rimandando poi tramite link al sito Web del fornitore per una consultazione completa di tutte le informazioni e i servizi disponibili. L’harvesting è reso possibile attraverso il protocollo OAI-PMH, il più noto e diffuso a livello internazionale. Grazie all’applicazione di questi standard, CulturaItalia ha realizzato un data base, continuamente alimentato, di metadati provenienti dai vari settori e standardizzati su uno specifico Profilo applicativo, basato sul linguaggio standard internazionale del Dublin Core, in grado di descrivere, in uno schema unico, ogni tipologia di risorsa culturale, sia fisica che digitale. In particolare sono stati integrati nello schema di CulturaItalia i diversi sistemi di catalogazione dei beni culturali (opere e oggetti d’arte, beni librari e digitali) rendendo possibile la creazione di un data base omogeneo di metadati e quindi la creazione in un unico punto di accesso la loro ricerca e consultazione.
Aproximación a las creencias religiosas que existieron en la antigua ciudad romana de Epora (Montoro, Córdoba). Haciendo un recorrido a través del testimonio epigráfico por divinidades de importación y de culto imperial, para acabar con la adopción
This paper proposes CulTO, a software tool relying on a computational ontology for Cultural Heritage domain modelling, with a specific focus on religious historical buildings, for supporting cultural heritage experts in their investigations. It is specifically thought to support annotation, automatic indexing, classification and curation of photographic data and text documents of historical buildings. CULTO also serves as a useful tool for Historical Building Information Modeling (H-BIM) by enabling semantic 3D data modeling and further enrichment with non-geometrical information of historical buildings through the inclusion of new concepts about historical documents, images, decay or deformation evidence as well as decorative elements into BIM platforms. CulTO is the result of a joint research effort between the Laboratory of Surveying and Architectural Photogrammetry “Luigi Andreozzi” and the PeRCeiVe Lab (Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision Lab) of the University of Catania,
The article illustrates and discusses the planning and execution of an Internet site for the archaeological area of the ancient Latin city of Crustumerium. The city is located north of Rome and prospered from the ninth to the fifth centuries BC in parallel to Rome, which eventually conquered it. The text is divided into three parts. The first confronts problems linked to the presentation (and editing in response to new data) of a State controlled Internet site devoted to State controlled archaeological areas. The second clarifies the semiotic choices made during the creation of pages which synthesise various aspects of the archaeological discipline. The third concerns to the editing principles employed to reconcile the logic of hypertext with popular scientific presentation. A last section offers a commentary of a small selection of Internet sites belonging to institutions which present archaeological areas, grouped into three sections.
Emotional signals are crucial for sharing important information, with conspecifics, for example, to warn humans of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. We examined the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs, across two dramatically different cultural groups. Western participants were compared to individuals from remote, culturally isolated Namibian villages. Vocalizations communicating the so-called “basic emotions” (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) were bidirectionally recognized. In contrast, a set of additional emotions was only recognized within, but not across, cultural boundaries. Our findings indicate that a number of primarily negative emotions have vocalizations that can be recognized across cultures, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals.
The article describes the construction of a territorial database that collects information about the 14th century portals of the city of Genoa, in the historic downtown of the area inside the defensive walls. The project focuses on dating some significant elements and demonstrating their importance compared to other elements of the building and the portal itself. Decorative aspects, especially the aesthetic ones, are less significant compared to the thicknesses and shapes of the fixed frame stone of the portals. So the essential characteristics for defining the portal chronotype are the proportions and the thickness of the jamb portal in relation to the width of the net size. The territorial database was created with the aim of collecting information on all portals within the established boundaries. An important contribution to the research planning consists in the CIVIS project: a system in which information collected converged, leading to the production of digital cartography and computer data, available from all over the web. Moreover, the authors illustrate another territorial database produced thanks to a research conducted by ISCUM, which led to cataloguing the chronotypology of the portals in rural areas. In ISCUM databases there are already 2560 rural portals, for the most part located in north-western Italy.
The Graeco-Roman theatre of Catania stands in the heart of the historic centre, on the south-eastern slopes of the hill of Montevergine. The building visible today was built during the Julio-Claudian period as part of a programme that saw the rebuilding of the monument, which probably used structures and materials from the earlier Greek theatre. The work undertaken over more than fifty years, involving expropriation, demolition, excavation, and restoration, has, on the whole, made it possible to bring to light the surviving parts of the theatre, improving the comprehension of this monument, despite the fact that some sectors have been irreparably compromised.
Funerary landscapes are eminent results of the relationship between environments and superstructural human behavior, spanning over wide territories and growing over centuries. The comprehension of such cultural palimpsests needs substantial research efforts in the field of human ecology. The funerary landscape of the semi-arid region of Kassala (Eastern Sudan) represents a solid example. Therein, geoarchaeological surveys and the creation of a desk-based dataset of thousands of diachronic funerary monuments (from early tumuli up to modern Beja people islamic tombs) were achieved by means of fieldwork and remote sensing over an area of ∼4100 km 2 . The wealth of generated information was employed to decipher the spatial arrangement of sites and monuments using Point Pattern Analysis. The enormous number of monuments and their spatial distribution are here successfully explained using, for the first time in archaeology, the Neyman-Scott Cluster Process, hitherto designed for cosmology. Our study highlights the existence of a built funerary landscape with galaxy-like aggregations of monuments driven by multiple layers of societal behavior. We suggest that the distribution of monuments was controlled by a synthesis of opportunistic geological constraints and cultural superstructure, conditioned by the social memory of the Beja people who have inhabited the region for two thousand years and still cherish the ancient tombs as their own kin’s.
Software now allows archaeologists to document excavations in more detail than ever before through rich, born-digital datasets. In comparison, paper documentation of past excavations (a valuable corpus of legacy data) is prohibitively difficult to work with. This pilot study explores creating custom software to digitize paper field notes from the 1970s excavations of the Gulkana site into machine-readable text and maps to be compatible with born-digital data from subsequent excavations in the 1990s. This site, located in Alaska's Copper River Basin, is important to archaeological understanding of metalworking innovation by precontact Northern Dene people, but is underrepresented in the literature because no comprehensive map of the site exists. The process and results of digitizing this corpus are presented in hopes of aiding similar efforts by other researchers., El software ahora le permite a los arqueólogos documentar las excavaciones con más detalle que nunca a través de conjuntos de datos de origen digital. En comparación, la documentación en papel de excavaciones pasadas (un cuerpo muy valioso de datos) es difícil de trabajar. Este estudio piloto explora la creación de un software para digitalizar notas de campo de las excavaciones de Gulkana en la década de 1970 a texto y mapas que sean legibles por máquina y compatibles con datos de origen digital de excavaciones posteriores en la década de 1990. Gulkana, ubicado en la cuenca del río Copper de Alaska, es importante para la comprensión arqueológica de la innovación metalúrgica por parte de los Dene del norte antes del contacto, pero está subrepresentado en la literatura ya que no existe un mapa completo del sitio. El proceso y los resultados de la digitalización se presentan con la esperanza de ayudar a otros investigadores en esfuerzos similares.
In this paper, we present the development of a training dataset for Dutch Named Entity Recognition (NER) in the archaeology domain. This dataset was created as there is a dire need for semantic search within archaeology, in order to allow archaeologists to find structured information in collections of Dutch excavation reports, currently totalling around 60,000 (658 million words) and growing rapidly. To guide this search task, NER is needed. We created rigorous annotation guidelines in an iterative process, then instructed five archaeology students to annotate a number of documents. The resulting dataset contains 31k annotations between six entity types (artefact, time period, place, context, species & material). The inter-annotator agreement is 0.95, and when we used this data for machine learning, we observed an increase in F1 score from 0.51 to 0.70 in comparison to a machine learning model trained on a dataset created in prior work. This indicates that the data is of high quality, and can confidently be used to train NER classifiers.
Catalogo della mostra omonima (Ferrara - Roma) che porta al pubblico, a cento anni dalla scoperta, le ultime novità degli studi archeologici sulla città di Spina, il porto etrusco nell’Adriatico che fu uno snodo fondamentale per i traffici e i contatti tra culture diverse, dal delta del Po all’Atene di età classica, dall'Etruria padana a quella Tirrenica, dal mondo transalpino alla Magna Grecia.
The computer-aided craniofacial reconstruction (CFR) technique has been widely used in the fields of criminal investigation, archaeology, anthropology and cosmetic surgery. The evaluation of craniofacial reconstruction results is important for improving the effect of craniofacial reconstruction. Here, we used the sparse principal component analysis (SPCA) method to evaluate the similarity between two sets of craniofacial data. Compared with principal component analysis (PCA), SPCA can effectively reduce the dimensionality and simultaneously produce sparse principal components with sparse loadings, thus making it easy to explain the results. The experimental results indicated that the evaluation results of PCA and SPCA are consistent to a large extent. To compare the inconsistent results, we performed a subjective test, which indicated that the result of SPCA is superior to that of PCA. Most importantly, SPCA can not only compare the similarity of two craniofacial datasets but also locate regions of high similarity, which is important for improving the craniofacial reconstruction effect. In addition, the areas or features that are important for craniofacial similarity measurements can be determined from a large amount of data. We conclude that the craniofacial contour is the most important factor in craniofacial similarity evaluation. This conclusion is consistent with the conclusions of psychological experiments on face recognition and our subjective test. The results may provide important guidance for three- or two-dimensional face similarity evaluation, analysis and face recognition.
Cosine Quantogram Analysis (CQA) is a statistical analysis employed in archaeology for the study of numerical datasets with hypothesized quantal distribution. To verify thesignificance of the results, the analysis is often combined with the execution of Monte Carlo simulations. In this article, we present a freely downloadable Python package (CQArchaeo) that integrates CQA and Monte Carlo simulations in the same environment, making the analysis customizable in the main parameters. We provide a guide that enables the use of this tool even for researchers with limited experience in Python programming and demonstrate the applicability, functioning, and main limitations of the analysis on some archaeological datasets.
The aim of this paper is to illustrate a study addressing the comprehension and architectural reconstruction of part of Hadrian’s Villa, the so called Accademia. The reconstruction of the monument has a double purpose: the understanding of the buildings and the creation of a virtual musealization. Archaeological data combined with digital reconstructions are aimed at making areas that are not accessible to visitors visible to users. In recent times, several reconstruction projects have been undertaken, producing relevant visual impacts. However, a careful study of the archaeological evidence often failed to support the reconstruction process. During the research project, a detailed survey of the archaeological evidence was conducted, using photogrammetry, photo scanning, and laser scanning techniques. The study produced important information accounting for both the building site and the construction choices made during the erection of the monument. The analysis generated new elements that allowed us to propose some new hypotheses regarding the identification and restitution of volumes, as well as the interpretation of some topographical, architectural and possibly ideological features. For this reason, the paper does not simply enquire into the reconstruction of an ancient building, but into the process of methodological experimentation required to understand, store, process and make data accessible, within the particular context of the Accademia. The methodological experimentation, based on a correct balance between new technologies and traditional research methods, helped us understand the monument, providing content to a reconstruction that otherwise would have been empty.
This article describes the construction of a Geographical Information System for the study of the medieval pottery in Sicily between the 9th and the first half of the 13th century. The creation of a dedicated GIS enables us to organize and manage the large amount of data from archaeological excavations and surveys conducted on the island, while preserving their spatial relationships and accelerating the process of data analysis. This approach allows us to draw a historical synthesis based on the ceramic evidence and to propose a socio-economic model for Sicily. The system is based on two components, a relational database and a GIS platform linked together and able to integrate two kinds of information, the descriptive one and the geographical one. The aim of this system is to produce, on a regional scale, thematic maps of the distribution of medieval pottery in Sicily. Features are represented through points instead of polygons, so that the objects are visible at a small geographical scale. The system allows queries at different levels of detail, to show the distribution of the different wares, shapes, or types, etc. This system has been developed for the study of medieval pottery, but its structure can be implemented at any time by adding new modules. Future development will include the complete filing of archaeological sites dated to between the 9th and the 13th century (so far limited to those that yielded ceramic evidence).
In Greek mythology Europe, daughter of Agenor and Telefassa, Phoenician princess, was kidnapped while picking flowers on the Phoenicia’s shore: the Levant of neutral and contemporary political geography, or the jagged coast of Syria-Palestine according to a more correct historical cultural definition of this very large area of the ancient Near East. The contribution would therefore like to investigate from where the seeds of the flowers so loved by Europe moved, and to connect the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean Sea with those of the Indian Ocean; two segments of the long fault that separated the continental mass of Eurasia, making Europe and Asia geologically similar, as well as - culturally - interdependent
Correspondence Analysis (CA) is a popular tool for archaeological data analysis, appropriate for use with tables of non-negative number. The technique allows the visual display of the associations between the rows and between the columns of a data matrix, and the relationships between them. Archaeologists with this kind of data often have no problem in understanding the ideas behind CA, but with limited training in statistics may have problems in implementing it. Commercial, menu driven, statistical software packages of the type used for service teaching in universities are expensive and restrictive in the way results from a CA can be presented. Archaeologists outside the university sector may not have access to such software. This paper is a guide to how the open-source software R can be used to undertake CA. R is a sophisticated, ‘state-of-the-art’ package that is constantly updated. It is not menu driven and can seem forbidding to new users. The paper provides a detailed account, ranging from installation of the package through to real applications of CA, that has helped, and we hope will continue to help, encourage the use of CA among archaeologists who have previously been discouraged from engaging with it.
Correlation in the broadest sense is a measure of an association between variables. In correlated data, the change in the magnitude of 1 variable is associated with a change in the magnitude of another variable, either in the same (positive correlation) or in the opposite (negative correlation) direction. Most often, the term correlation is used in the context of a linear relationship between 2 continuous variables and expressed as Pearson product-moment correlation. The Pearson correlation coefficient is typically used for jointly normally distributed data (data that follow a bivariate normal distribution). For nonnormally distributed continuous data, for ordinal data, or for data with relevant outliers, a Spearman rank correlation can be used as a measure of a monotonic association. Both correlation coefficients are scaled such that they range from –1 to +1, where 0 indicates that there is no linear or monotonic association, and the relationship gets stronger and ultimately approaches a straight line (Pearson correlation) or a constantly increasing or decreasing curve (Spearman correlation) as the coefficient approaches an absolute value of 1. Hypothesis tests and confidence intervals can be used to address the statistical significance of the results and to estimate the strength of the relationship in the population from which the data were sampled. The aim of this tutorial is to guide researchers and clinicians in the appropriate use and interpretation of correlation coefficients.
El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar a nivel global, sin centrarse en ninguna empresa o sector concreto, el uso que se está haciendo de la red social Twitter para abordar los procesos de comunicación de la RSC en las empresas. Para ello se hizo uso de captura de datos a través de programación en R y una Interfaz de Programación de Aplicaciones (API) en Twitter. Se trataron los datos mediante técnicas de minería de texto y análisis gráfico de redes con la ayuda respectivamente de los softwares R y Gephi. Los resultados muestran que no existen grupos o movimientos notables dentro del ámbito corporativo como generadores de contenido en materia de RSC. Además, se observa la importancia de la perspectiva social de la RSC en los procesos de comunicación de la misma. Por último, se pone de manifiesto que la RSC genera sentimientos positivos y emociones como la confianza en la sociedad. Se concluye que las empresas no están realizando un uso eficiente de Twitter como herramienta de comunicación de la RSC, no están teniendo en cuenta los intereses de sus partes interesadas, ni generando el diálogo y la interacción necesaria para que la comunicación sea eficaz. La principal limitación está asociada al periodo temporal en el que se toma la muestra que coincide con un momento de fuerte preocupación social por la pandemia. Sería interesante que futuras investigaciones analizaran cómo va cambiando el discurso a lo largo del tiempo, y en qué medida una situación social extraordinaria, como es el caso de la pandemia, se ve reflejada en la comunicación de la CSR.
In the 6thand 5th centuries B.C., Gela (Italy, Sicily) was one of the most important production centres of architectural terracottas in the Mediterranean basin. Nevertheless, few archaeometric data are actually available in scientific literature on this interesting artifacts class. Here we report an archaeometric characterization of Geloan coroplastic materials. In particular, an investigation on finest architectural terracottas found in dumps archaeological contexts in Gela has been carried out with the aim at identifying the distinctive features of the production and the manufacturing techniques. The group of samples includes various remarkable architectural elements: painted sima and geison fragments, and acroteria specimens. Information about provenance, fabric features, technology and manufacturing techniques have been obtained by performing petrographic (OM), mineralogical (XRD) and chemical analyses (XRF). Moreover, as most of the identified petrographic fabrics have revealed the presence of volcanic temper, EDS chemical analysis have been performed on clinopiroxenes, being the latter ones an effective tool for provenance attributions. Finally, an analytical characterization of the painted polychrome decoration has been carried out by using Scanning Electron Microscopy coupled with Energy-Dispersive Spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and micro Raman spectroscopy. The obtained results allow us to define, for the first time, the technological features of the Geolan architectural terracottas production, opening new perspectives in the study of the coroplastic art in archaic Sicily.
CORINE Land Cover is a pan-European land cover inventory with 44 thematic classes. Initiated in 1985 (the 1990 reference year) the inventory is available for the 1990, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018 reference years including the change layers.
The aim of this work is to illustrate a database in which we have recorded a great number of archaeological objects. The example is made with 303 figures from Portugal which the archaeologists name “cylindrical idols”. The first step was to choose the vocabulary and organize it in a hierarchical form. Our tree form has three chapters, some sections and subsections that form the base of the system; in the second step, the programme Access was used to describe the cylinders. When the recording was finished, the following questions were posed: a) What is the provenance of the Portuguese cylinders?; b) What is the main raw material?; c) What is their typology?; d) What is their geographical distribution? The answers were reproduced in the form of a graphical picture in which the results can be observed. These results are confronted with M. Gimbutas’ interpretation about these cylinders over Western Europe. Our conclusion disagrees with Gimbutas as in Portugal the figures appear in Copper Age contexts, whereas Gimbutas states that the cylinders were used during the Neolithic. This thesis was linked to the concept of the “Eve Goddess”, although the Kurgans that seem to have introduced the metal in Portugal held the sun as a principal religious symbol.
The paper presents a reconsideration of settlement pattern and defensive systems in south-eastern Italy during the Bronze Age, on the ground of the archaeological data coming from the excavations at Coppa Nevigata. In particular, the transformations
The present paper draws attention to the problem of describing contextual information using an object-oriented approach to relational database techniques. Initially, it outlines the basic theoretical concepts for a structured description of complex information in a relational database. The insight gained from this exercise is used to demonstrate how a generalised object-oriented solution may be implemented using a standard relational DBMS. The implementation called GARD is an all-purpose recording system, where the user can create a particular database structure through its interface without making changes to the underlying table structure, and modify the database as needed parallel to the recording of data. Finally, an example using decorated bowls from the Danish Neolithic shows how complex relational information may be handled. This information has been entered into GARD and extracted again for analysis.
El 19 de junio se realizó el conversatorio sobre el concepto de la carta del rischio del patrimonio cultural en América Latina y las actuales y futuras experiencias de cooperación internacional. El conversatorio se centrò principalmente en el contexto geográfico andino que implica amenazas de terremotos, inundaciones e incendios, pero que al mismo tiempo conecta […]
Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage The General Conference of UNESCO adopted on 16 November 1972 the Recommendation concerning the Protection at National Level, of the ...
Contributo alla studio del territorio di Luciana e Santo Regolo (comune di Fauglia, provincia di Pisa), Brogi, Davide - Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali ;
Les bases de données iconographiques, qu'elles aient été constituées par des organismes chargés de la conservation du patrimoine ou par les chercheurs eux-mêmes, sont des outils de travail précieux dans le domaine de la recherche historique. Ces ressources documentaires sont longtemps restées l'apanage des spécialistes mais le développement d'Internet a permis leur ouverture à un public très large. Cette thèse étudie les conditions d'appropriation par de nouveaux publics de sources documentaires pensées au départ par et pour des spécialistes et s'intéresse particulièrement au rôle dévolu aux " Nouvelles Technologies " dans ce processus d'appropriation au travers notamment du mythe du " Plug & play ". Les bases de données iconographiques sont considérées sous trois angles : en tant que constructions savantes, en tant qu'outils techniques et en tant que propositions communicationnelles. Ceci permet de poser la problématique générale en termes d'énonciation éditoriale et de montrer l'importance des documents d'interface et de la réflexion à mener sur les ré-écritures dans le processus de mise à disposition de nouveaux publics. La seconde partie reprend les conclusions de la première, dans le contexte précis de l'ouverture sur Internet d'une base de données sur l'histoire du Nord conçue par le laboratoire IRHIS. A partir d'observations et d'expérimentations liées à la lecture d'images et menées auprès différents publics, elle propose une nouvelle approche de la consultation des bases iconographiques, plus proche de la nature des images et reposant sur le principe d'une collaboration concepteur/utilisateur.
The determination of cultural groups is revealed as one of the basic principles in undertaking the study of social formations in the Bronze Age complex panorama in the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper an analysis model is proposed for its identification in a southern area of the Iberian mountain range by means of statistical multivariate analysis (Cluster Analysis and Principal Components Analysis) and study on the pottery, particularly the decoration. In this way, we have succeeded in identifying two groups with distinct personalities, coincidental with many other microregions whose diversification emerges in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600-1300 BC), showing a process of territorial fragmentation after the apparent uniformity dominant during the Early Bronze Age.
This work studies a sample of 58 notched pieces formed by all the examples found in surface sites from a small area of the Cantabrian coast (Northern Spain). These sites are the result of three kinds of activity: a) the exploitation of coastal resources; b) the manufacture of artifacts used in this exploitation; c) the working of flint nodules from local limestone. The results of data gathered were organised in a database and a classic statistical analysis was carried out using the package SPSS. After the application of different tests - correspondence, factor and cluster analysis - a classification in four groups based on morphological variables was chosen as the most significant. In the functional analysis a basic traceologic study has been combined with experimental practice in order to establish whether the four morphological classes show differences in the way they were used and in the patterns of the marks of use. The functional analysis has also enabled four groups to be distinguished and the contrast between both classifications displays a difference between the morphological classification based on the morphometric variables, and the functional classification. The factors involved in this contrast are examined in this study.
The aim of this article is the archaeological and analytical study of Iberian amphorae imported into Veneto (Italy) during the Roman period. The characteristic Baetican shapes Dr 8, Dr 11, Dr 12, fragmentary Dr 7-11 and Pompei VII are compared to the Dr 9-10 shapes of uncertain origin (Baetic or Gallic). The determination by X Ray Diffractometry (XRD) of chemicals Si, Al, Fe, Mg, Ti, Mn, Ca, Na and K and of minerals shows the similarity of the pastes of two groups of amphorae. Using appropriate statistical methods, these data are compared to those of Andalusian and Lionese manufactures.
Pontecagnano is a large Etruscan-Samnite settlement located 8 km SE of Salerno, at the northern edge of the Sele plain. The well-investigated necropolis provided data that made it possible to analyse the structure of the ancient community and reconstruct its long-term development. Over the last few years, after archaeological investigations carried out during roadwork to widen the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway, a more systematic study of the site was begun. The analysis of archaeological data was combined with environmental and landscape studies, shedding light on the reasons behind the spatial organisation of the settlement, which was influenced by natural or man-made landscape elements such as streams, non-uniform dislocation of geological formations, terraces, roads, canals, etc. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the methods and instruments we used to develop a system that can dynamically combine archaeological and geomorphological data. The paper focuses particularly on the reconstruction of paleo-topographical areas of the ancient settlement. Our investigation outlined the physical and environmental limits within which the old town developed, especially as regards the archaic and classical period. Part of the work was devoted to reconstructing in detail the connections between the modern and the ancient landscape, not only by reading and interpreting the aerial photographs from 1945 to the present-day, but also by analyzing the evidence from the excavations. This approach allowed us to draw up a detailed geomorphologic map of the area of the ancient settlement - part of the GIS platform - and develop a three-dimensional model of the ground (DEM).
Archaeologists are interested in the construction of information systems and in their treatment and increasingly, in the electronic communication of tools. The examples of collective projects which have web sites exist (databases, GIS, computer generated images, etc.). In this paper we shall present the experience of the EMA program which, under the aegis of the National Agency of Research, was responsible for the creation of a database of children’s graves in Antiquity (Center Camille Jullian of Aix-en-Provence, UMR Archaeology and Science of Antiquity of Nanterre, Center of Alexandrine Studies). In association with their partners, the UMR ArScAn designed the tool in continuation of the work on the conception and the ergonomics of the bases of data and images. The EMA base now is shared; at the end of the program it will be opened for consultation, after the consent of each of the researchers involved. At the same time, we shall examine some sites of consultation of databases and the ways in which they respond.
