The author illustrates some applications of the Idrisi GIS to the archaeological research he is carrying out in the Cingoli area, a territory having a considerable presence of prehistoric sites. In particular, he analyses the relationship between the archaeological sites and some landscape features. The archaeological record highlights a considerable concentration of Palaeolithic sites near areas of the flint outcrops (mainly in the inferior Palaeolithic). A further point of interest is represented by the different middle Palaeolithic sites mean altitude: compared with the inferior Palaeolithic situation, this difference could demonstrate a downwards displacement of settlements. With regard to the Neolithic, Aeneolithic and Bronze Age, the location of sites and their close relationships with Musone and Rudielle rivers could suggest the presence of a road running alongside these rivers and linking the two important valleys of the Marche Region: the Esino valley to the North, and the Potenza valley to the South.
The wreck of the ship Mercurio lies at a depth of 17 m, off Punta Tagliamento, between the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions. It was discovered in 2001, and was excavated in 2001, and again between 2004 and 2011, by Carlo Beltrame (Università Ca’ Foscari) in collaboration with the local archaeological superintendency. It was a brigantine, belonging to an Italian-French squadron, sunk during the battle of Grado in the 1812. Problems typical of post-Medieval ships (especially when military), such as the complexity of the aspect because of the presence of metal concretions and a lot of items of different materials and typologies and the difficulties in documenting very small objects (such as the many buttons of uniforms) with the photogrammetrical system, were solved with the use of an intra-site GIS on a Quantum GIS open source application. The GIS allowed us not only to manage the large amount of information (site-plans, topological positions of the items, photos, etc.) produced during the excavations, but also to answer questions about the dynamics both of the sinking and the formation processes and, thanks to the use of a system of virtual frames, about the location of the nautical equipment, the links between the human skeletons and the personal objects and parts of the uniforms and the location of the caulker store-room.
The authors describe the use of digital image processing techniques aimed at achieving a criteria for quantitative comparison. Usually, these procedures are executed using visual superimposition of images and constrained by the lack of rescaling and anamorphic making up that could be used to cancel the optical distortions caused by lenses. The criteria used within the experimental activity are aimed at helping the archaeologists without changing their traditional research methods. These techniques can be seen as an interesting tool able not only to aid impartial decision making but also to enhance the autoptic analysis of the findings. The most important algorithms pertaining to image processing have been used for investigating the origin and the age of moulded and handmade objects.
ALADINO is a database system created by the Centro di Documentazione of the Istituto Beni Culturali. It was used for data storage and retrieval during the course of the Roman and medieval excavations at Castelraimondo (Udine - Italy). Its distinctive features are flexibility, user friendly interfaces, the use of natural language and the automatic integration of alphanumeric data and images. ALADINO produces distribution maps of data acquired during excavation and allows frequency tables and simple uni- and bivariate analyses. At present, ALADINO has been further improved with new releases and it will be connected with other programs in order to study coarse wares through statistical analyses (cluster, multivariate, etc.) and to further implement a real computer-based information system.
Drawing is a fundamental activity in all archaeological praxis. The emergence and spread of the Massive Data Acquisition Systems (MDAS) have completely revolutionized this documentation area, so that someone has announced his death. Not surprisingly the MDAS have radically changed the concept that we have about archaeological drawing. But this change has been made without planning or without a discussion of what should be his objectives. In this article we try to explain the problems and advantages of using MDAS and above all to reflect on what role they can play in archaeology in order to make them really useful and effective.
Archaeological and cultural heritage (ACH), one of the core carriers of cultural diversity on our planet, has a direct bearing on the sustainable development of mankind. Documenting and protecting ACH is the common responsibility and duty of all humanity. It is governed by UNESCO along with the scientific communities that foster and encourage the use of advanced non-invasive techniques and methods for promoting scientific research into ACH and conservation of ACH sites. The use of remote sensing, a non-destructive tool, is increasingly popular by specialists around the world as it allows fast prospecting and mapping at multiple scales, rapid analysis of multisource datasets, and dynamic monitoring of ACH sites and their surrounding environments. The cost of using remote sensing is lower or even zero in practical applications. In this review, in order to discuss the advantages of airborne and spaceborne remote sensing (ASRS), the principles that make passive (photography, multispectral and hyperspectral) and active (synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and light detection and ranging radar (LiDAR)) imaging techniques suitable for ACH applications are first summarized and pointed out; a review of ASRS and the methodologies used over the past century is then presented together with relevant highlights from well-known research projects. Selected case studies from Mediterranean regions to East Asia illustrate how ASRS can be used effectively to investigate and understand archaeological features at multiple -scales and to monitor and assess the conservation status of cultural heritage sites in the context of sustainable development. An in-depth discussion on the limitations of ASRS and associated remaining challenges is presented along with conclusions and a look at future trends.
Surveys conducted in the aftermath of recent earthquakes have shown that the structural and anti-seismic performances of historical masonry churches are related not only to structural damages and masonry quality but also to other key features such as effectiveness of connections, damages of wooden elements or criticalities related to humidity. Technical and scientific communities are interested in developing or improving existing procedures for the fast-visual survey and diagnostics in order to measure and analyze all the parameters affecting the building performance. In this paper a new procedure, that can be implemented in a Decision Support System (DSS) based on the Analytic Hierarchy Processes (AHP), is developed to perform a rapid visual survey and diagnostics of masonry building through a set of condition ratings. The originality of the presented work is fourfold: 1) the AHP allows to include in the analysis qualitative and quantitative data such as the quality of masonry and connections effectiveness; 2) the proposed survey and diagnostics performed by suitable condition ratings allow an extensive application in order to identify the most damaged buildings that require more detailed structural investigations; 3) the proposed AHP-based approach is integrated in a DSS to provide a powerful computerized tool, useful to large scale data acquisition; 4) the comparison with a standard diagnostics is performed to validate the procedure and emphasize the advantages of the novel diagnostics.
This chapter considers the practice and organization of agricultural production in Roman Italy drawing on textual, archaeological, and ethnoarchaeological evidence. As well as reviewing the types of crops cultivated and animals husbanded, it considers broader questions about the scale of production and the social organization of labor (e.g. peasants, slaves, tenants). The chapter outlines the significance of critical new approaches to ancient texts and recent archaeological discoveries for established narratives of agricultural production and agrarian relations. This includes questioning the extent to which peasant farmers were systematically pushed from the land and the significance of oil and wine production in the economic fortunes of the Republican aristocracy. Throughout, examples are used to demonstrate how powerful ancient and modern assumptions (e.g. the self-sufficient peasant, “decline”) shape interpretation of texts and archaeological evidence.
This paper addresses the issue of standardization in the cross-comparability of different vessel assemblages. It presents a computational method for building vessel categories from the bottom up, by comparing the specified attributes of a collection of vessel-types, and grouping like with like. Thus, it provides a platform for translating vessel data which may have been classified or divided by type using one taxonomy, bringing them into communication with those categorized by another. Two different methods of measuring the similarity among vessel-types (cosine similarity and the Jaccard index) are explored, toward providing a control on the resulting ‘synthetic’ categories. An exploratory dataset, collected from published data of archaeological projects in Italy focusing on ceramic vessels of the last two centuries BCE, was used to test the performance of this approach. Project data and results are open source and are available online at https://github.com/scollinselliott/synthkat/.
meta_description_detail Aggiornamenti sull'attività di studio e di ricerca paletnologica di Camillo Marinoni in Friuli, Visentini, Paola - Forum - Capítulo
To fully understand not only the past, but also the trajectories, of human societies, we need a more dynamic view of human social systems. Agent-based modeling (ABM), which can create fine-scale models of behavior over time and space, may reveal important, general patterns of human activity. Agent-Based Modeling for Archaeology is the first ABM textbook designed for researchers studying the human past. Appropriate for scholars from archaeology, the digital humanities, and other social sciences, this book offers novices and more experienced ABM researchers a modular approach to learning ABM and using it effectively.
Archaeology has been historically reluctant to embrace the subject of agent-based simulation, since it was seen as being used to "re-enact" and "visualize" possible scenarios for a wider (generally non-scientific) audience, based on scarce and fuzzy data. Furthermore, modeling "in exact terms" and programming as a means for producing agent-based simulations were simply beyond the field of the social sciences. This situation has changed quite drastically with the advent of the internet age: Data, it seems, is now ubiquitous. Researchers have switched from simply collecting data to filtering, selecting and deriving insights in a cybernetic manner. Agent-based simulation is one of the tools used to glean information from highly complex excavation sites according to formalized models, capturing essential properties in a highly abstract and yet spatial manner. As such, the goal of this book is to present an overview of techniques used and work conducted in that field, drawing on the experience of practitioners.
This report details the preliminary results of the research focused on Roman archaeological heritage in the Middle Ebro Valley (Spain). The principal objective of this project was to obtain several different readings by means of a UAV equipped with different sensors. Firstly, it has been possible to obtain accurate maps, 3D models and digital elevation models of the site. Secondly, it has been possible to investigate and define archaeological remains still underground, via a new methodology which utilises visible and near-infrared wavelengths.
Africa represents a vast region where remote sensing technologies have been largely uneven in their archaeological applications. With impending climate-related risks such as increased coastal erosion and rising sea levels, coupled with rapid urban development, gaps in our knowledge of the human history of this continent are in jeopardy of becoming permanent. Spaceborne and aerial remote sensing instruments are powerful tools for producing relatively complete records of archaeological settlement patterns and human behavior at landscape scales. These sensors allow for massive amounts of information to be recorded and analyzed in short spans of time and offer an effective means to increase survey areas and the discovery of new cultural deposits. In this paper, we review various case studies throughout Africa dealing with aerial and satellite remote sensing applications to landscape archaeology in order to highlight recent developments and future research avenues. Specifically, we argue that (semi)automated remote sensing methods stemming from machine learning developments will prove vital to expanding our knowledge base of Africa’s archaeological record. This is especially important for coastal and island regions of the continent where climate change threatens the survival of much of the archaeological record.
Adventus Hadriani. Researches on Hadrian' s Architecture The present volume constitutes an update on the current researches panorama on Hadrian' s architecture. It collects a huge number of contributions which provide a great thematic and geographic outlook, specially reflected in Rome, Villa Adriana and Italica, together and other archeological sites of Hispania, Italy, Greece, Minor Asia or North Africa. The volume is completed with diverse synthesis studies about different aspects of interest and the latest news on Hadrian' s architecture. For those contributions the greatest specialists on the subject have been considered and the most recently novelties provided by latest researches or archeological excavation.
Predictive models are central to both archaeological research and cultural resource management. Yet, archaeological applications of predictive models are often insufficient due to small training data sets, inadequate statistical techniques, and a lack of theoretical insight to explain the responses of past land use to predictor variables. Here we address these critiques and evaluate the predictive power of four statistical approaches widely used in ecological modeling—generalized linear models, generalized additive models, maximum entropy, and random forests—to predict the locations of Formative Period (2100–650 BP) archaeological sites in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We assess each modeling approach using a threshold-independent measure, the area under the curve (AUC), and threshold-dependent measures, like the true skill statistic. We find that the majority of the modeling approaches struggle with archaeological datasets due to the frequent lack of true-absence locations, which violates model assumptions of generalized linear models, generalized additive models, and random forests, as well as measures of their predictive power (AUC). Maximum entropy is the only method tested here which is capable of utilizing pseudo-absence points (inferred absence data based on known presence data) and controlling for a non-representative sampling of the landscape, thus making maximum entropy the best modeling approach for common archaeological data when the goal is prediction. Regression-based approaches may be more applicable when prediction is not the goal, given their grounding in well-established statistical theory. Random forests, while the most powerful, is not applicable to archaeological data except in the rare case where true-absence data exist. Our results have significant implications for the application of predictive models by archaeologists for research and conservation purposes and highlight the importance of understanding model assumptions.
The author illustrates the structuring that was carried out for the development of the ArchéoDATA project with the aim of forming a basis for a more general Archaeological Information System. The conception of this project was undertaken from an archaeological perspective; the subsequent use of computers, and in particular the possibilities offered by GIS, enabled the enhancement of the system. The problems of basic information are also discussed, with an attempt to overcome the traditional concepts of site, finds and features by replacing them with the more general concepts of spatial and temporal entities and interpretative grouping.
Since 2011 an Eritrean-Italian archaeological mission has initiated research and excavation activities in the area of ancient Adulis, an emporium town located along the coast of the Horn of Africa on the Red Sea, in current Eritrea, documented by the sources as early as the 1st century AD and disappeared between the 7th and 8th centuries. The site, due to the historical and geographical context that determined its ancient splendour, invites us to broaden the research field, extending it from the excavation area to the commercial networks that, in ancient times, set in communication the African, Asian and Mediterranean cultures, without neglecting the intermediate scale, necessary to understand the ways in which the settlement was related to the territorial context and its resources. Among the natural resources water, in particular thanks to the presence of the Haddas, a seasonal watercourse that reaches significant flows, was certainly crucial to the development of the town and to the probable agrarian exploitation of its surroundings. Haddas itself was probably the cause of Adulis’ sudden destruction between the 7th and 8th centuries. Today, this watercourse is at same time one of the main resources and one of the major vulnerability factors of this portion of the coast, where the villages of Zula, Afta and Foro live a fragile equilibrium, seasonally endangered by its floods. The same protection of the important cultural heritage constituted by the site of Adulis today, in a way not entirely dissimilar from what happened in ancient times, depends on this balance.
