Prospecting for New Questions: Integrating Geophysics to Define Anthropological Research Objectives and Inform Excavation Strategies at Monumental Sites

Climate change is the latest in a dismaying series of challenges that industrialism and modernity have gifted to humanity. To date, anthropological and archaeological responses have focused largely on the culturally particular—that is, on the interactions of climate, environment, cultural schema, and social systems in specific locales and eras. In this article, I urge a complementary response that capitalizes on archaeology and anthropology's holistic and universalistic investigative aspirations and expertise. For two decades, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has overseen major efforts to model human social dynamics and their implications for future climate change. These models are technically sophisticated but economically reductionist and substantively crude. Here, I review these efforts and provide three examples of how established and future archaeological and anthropological research could improve them. Recent changes to the IPCC's modeling regime make this an opportune moment for such a project. El cambio climático es el último en una serie de preocupantes retos que el industrialismo y la modernidad le han regalado a la humanidad. Hasta la fecha, las respuestas antropológicas y arqueológicas se han centrado largamente en lo culturalmente particular—es decir, en las interacciones de clima, ambiente, esquema cultural, y sistemas sociales en locales y eras específicos. En este artículo, urjo una respuesta complementaria que capitalice en el conocimiento y las aspiraciones investigativas holísticas y universalistas de la arqueología y la antropología. Por dos décadas, el Panel Intergubernamental sobre Cambio Climático (IPCC) ha monitoreado grandes esfuerzos para modelar dinámicas sociales y sus implicaciones para el cambio climático futuro. Estos modelos son técnicamente sofisticados pero económicamente reduccionistas y substantivamente aproximados. Aquí, reviso estos esfuerzos y proveo tres ejemplos de cómo investigación arqueológica y antropológica establecida y futura los podría mejorar. Cambios recientes al régimen de modelización del IPCC hace este un momento oportuno para tal proyecto.

Non‐destructive geophysical prospecting methods are increasingly used for the investigation of archaeological sites, especially where a detailed physical and geometrical reconstruction of structures is required prior to any excavation work. Often, due to the limited size and depth of an archaeological structure, it may be rather difficult to single out its position and extent because of the generally low signal‐to noise (S/N) ratio. This can be overcome by improving data acquisition and processing techniques and integrating different geophysical methods. In this work the results of a multimethodological surveys, used with the aim of detecting sharp discontinuities (boundary of cavities and fractures in the host medium) at the Archaeological Test Site of Sabine Necropolis at Research Area of National Research Council of Rome (Montelibretti, Italy) are shown. For the survey a combination of passive and active methods (magnetic, ground‐penetrating radar (GPR), and dipole–dipole geoelectric (DDG)), topographical and three‐dimensional laser scanner surveys and archaeological excavations were used to study the state of conservation of underground tombs. With all geophysical methods a high‐resolution data acquisition was adopted with the aim of reconstructing a global vision of the study area. Signal processing and amplitude time‐slice representation techniques were used for the analysis of GPR data. The bi‐dimensional cross‐correlation technique was applied to enhance the S/N ratio of the magnetic data. An example of the integration (both qualitative and quantitative) of these results is presented for a portion of the investigated area in the Sabine Necropolis at Colle del Forno (Rome, Italy). Archaeological excavations were then conducted systematically after completing the geophysical surveys and interpretations (from 2000 to 2006), which confirmed the location and shape of the individual chamber tombs with associated corridors. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In Legions of Pigs, Jamie Kreiner uses pigs as a lens through which she examines the early medieval West from North Africa to the British Isles and Scandinavia. Pigs are unique among the medieval domestic mammals. Unlike cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and donkeys, pigs do not produce secondary products that can be extracted from live animals, such as milk, wool, hair, traction, and transport. Pigs produce meat and other primary products, such as skin and bone, that can be accessed only when a pig is slaughtered. Pigs are also biologically and behaviorally distinct from the other early medieval farm animals. They are smart and will eat almost anything, but they can be dangerous and require careful management so that they do not destroy agricultural fields and other aspects of the landscape and the built environment. Using pigs as a focal point, the chapters in this volume explore worldview and cosmology, agriculture and ecology, social organization, and religion across the late antique and early medieval West.The research that went into this volume is meticulous, and the scope of the volume is impressive. The geographic range includes North Africa, Iberia, and the Norse colonies in Iceland and Greenland, in addition to the more well-studied regions of early medieval western Europe, such as the British Isles and Francia. Kreiner is a documentary historian, but I was impressed with her knowledgeable and creative use of the archaeological and zooarchaeological data on early medieval animal husbandry and agriculture. She draws on zooarchaeological data to show how the relative importance of pigs in early medieval societies varied across both time and space. For example, while pigs played an important role in many early medieval societies, recent archaeological research has shown that they were introduced to Iceland at the beginning of the Norse settlement, but they declined rapidly thereafter, possible due to the damage that they did to the fragile environment.Kreiner begins by describing pigs as animals that provided meat, a commodity that early medieval people wanted, but also as animals that were intelligent and required management. She then links these animals to broader issues of early medieval cosmology and worldview. Her third chapter focuses on pigs in the early medieval landscape. This is where her interdisciplinary skills really shine. Kreiner draws on archaeological data to show how pig husbandry varied across the early medieval world as a result environmental differences and the choices that early medieval farmers and landowners made. She then explores the complex laws and negotiations that governed access to pannage for pigs in the woodlands during the acorn season. Kreiner’s historical data complement the archaeological evidence to provide a rich picture of early medieval pig management. Her next chapter explores the relationships between pigs and humans, ranging from the role of swineherds to the social context of pork consumption. Her final chapter explores the relationship between pigs and Christianity.The volume is extensively documented with over 50 pages of notes and a wide-ranging bibliography. It is also well illustrated with 32 pages of color plates, 7 useful maps that show the locations of the sites and regions discussed in the volume, and many black-and-white in-text figures.Early medieval studies are by their nature interdisciplinary, drawing on evidence from historical records, archaeological excavations, and art historical studies. This volume is one of the most creatively interdisciplinary volumes that I have had the pleasure to read. Kreiner has produced a truly multispecies history, using the relationships between pigs and people to explore the agrarian, social, and cultural history of the early medieval period. As a result, this book will be of great interest to early medievalists who work with texts and material culture, as well as scholars who work in interdisciplinary fields such as historical ecology and animal studies. I will use this book when I teach both medieval archaeology and zooarchaeology. My archaeology students will appreciate Kreiner’s careful and critical use of archaeological and zooarchaeological data, and they will benefit from her use of pigs as a lens to explore broader issues of early medieval cosmology, religion, and social organization. These issues are nearly impossible to study on the basis of archaeological data alone. The volume is clearly and engagingly written, and I recommend it in the highest possible terms.

Archeology is the only branch of human study that relies more on material remains left by people than on direct observation of human behavior or on written evidence. This focus on material evidence compels archaeologists to improve the methods and techniques of collecting and interpreting data that ensure the extraction of maximum information from available sources. The article provides an analysis of existing national and foreign information and geoinformation systems representing data on archaeological finds, cultural sites, and research documentation. A description of the existing standards, which regulate the list of attributes of geoarchaeological objects, is provided. The article also describes the stages of conceptual and logical modeling of the “ArchaeoNomos” database, which represents a unified repository for all data accompanying archaeological investigations, archaeological research and design, and documentation of research activities of the Scientific Research Center “Baikal Region” of Irkutsk State University. The problem of automating the processes of storage, processing, modification, and interpretation of geoarchaeological data is formulated. The system analysis of the subject area, system specification of an application that works with a database, the surveying specialists of the subject area to identify associations between database objects are presented. The infological and physical models of data presentation in the database are described, which allows the integration of the accumulated archaeological data into larger scientific associations. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of using relational databases as repositories for archaeological data are outlined. The purpose of creating the “ArchaeoNomos” database is to implement measures for the preservation of the archaeological heritage, including the introduction and the use of the database by scientists that systematize and automate access to accumulated scientific data, including literary sources. The sub-goals include solving the problem of organizing and storing archaeological data, implementing multilingual interfaces in the information system, organizing information support for field and laboratory archaeological research, transferring the physical (nondigital) historical data storage system to a digital system. “ArchaeoNomos” database allows to keep records, analyze, visualize, and interpret data on geoarchaeological sites of Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region.

The “a priori” knowledge of the physical and characteristics and the geometry of the subsoil is the basic element both for the optimisation of the design of engineering constructions, and the means to avoid or reduce the so called “archaeological risk” which can cause the interruption of engineering works. On the other hand the imperfect knowledge of the subsoil characteristics and the thoughtless or forbidden intervention that can follow, can produce the loss of the cultural goods without the “memory” of the archaeological remains. Practically that is very usual in the “urgency” condition and especially in urban areas and/or in a building construction. In such cases it is very hard to preserve the archaeological structures. It is well known that the subsoil knowledge can be obtained by the application of appropriate geophysical methods. They must be applied with care taking into account the context, the dimensions of the archaeological bodies, the presence of noise sources, the physical properties of the materials. The choice must also be made taking into account the economic aspect: the geophysical methods must be “convenient” in respect to the economic value of quality and cheaper than other methods like archaeological diggings or excavations. Normally in archaeological research it is necessary to acquire substantial data, which must be filtered, processed and interpreted in order to give a detailed reconstruction of the subsoil. All data must be ordered and normalized to give a pseudo 3D reconstruction: The quantity of data can make the direct excavation process long and expansive. Archaeological Heritage has different dimensions and characteristics, so the choice of geophysical methods depends on the type of archaeological structure that it needs to show. Type of measure, sampling rate, profiling distance, have to be compared to archaeological structure. To establish the convenience of Geophysics an economic parameter (Marchisio and Ranieri, 2000) can be applied: Monetary Expected Value of the archaeological heritage is the product of the probability to discover the object and its monetary value. Besides it’s possible to define the intrinsic value of geophysical information and value the quantity of methods to apply.

Lithuanian manors are an important area of historical and cultural heritage that has been studied for several decades from various perspectives – historical, architectural, economic, cultural, art-historical and heritage conservation. The perception of manor complexes as the objects of archaeological investigations has appeared in Lithuanian archaeology science only recently. Manors began to be more intensively studied in the last decade of the 20th century, and in the past two decades, archaeological research has been carried out annually at several dozen manor sites, ranging from small-scale to larger-scale investigations. According to data from 2023, more than 200 manor estates and manor sites have been archaeologically studied in Lithuania, 26 of them – in North-Central Lithuania. One of the main aspects of studying manors is their location within the landscape and the buildings they contain: the spatial arrangement of the manor’s buildings, their layout, construction techniques, materials used, and their functional purpose. The structures and functional zones of most manor complexes developed over several centuries – some buildings decayed on their own, others were demolished during the war and still others were rebuilt or newly constructed. Some of these changes are documented in preserved manor inventories, and more rarely in plans. Archaeological research data helps fill in the gaps of missing information. The aim of this article is to review the dynamics of archaeological research of manors in one region – North-Central Lithuania – focusing on the nature of these investigations and their most significant results, as well as to assess the possibilities of applying archaeological data to the study of the development of manor structures. For the case study, the Šiauliai manor estate was selected. Archaeological investigations indicate that the original manor complex was established in the north-eastern part of the estate, whereas at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the manor buildings were relocated to its south-western section.

This paper presents an approach how to create FAIR data for prehistoric mining archaeology, based on the CIDOC CRM ontology and semantic web standards. The interdisciplinary Research Centre HiMAT (History of mining activities in the Tyrol and adjacent areas, University of Innsbruck) investigates mining history from prehistoric to modern times with an interdisciplinary approach. One of the projects carried out at the research centre is the multinational DACH project “Prehistoric copper production in the eastern and central Alps”. For a specific geographical region of the project, the data transformation to open and re-usable data is investigated in a separate Open Research Data pilot project. The methodological approach will use the FAIR principles to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. Every archaeological investigation in Austria has to be documented according to the requirements of the Austrian Federal Monuments Office. This documentation is deposited in the CERN-based EU supported research data repository ZENODO. For each deposited file, metadata are created through the application of the conceptual metadata schema CIDOC CRM, an ISO standard for Cultural Heritage Information, which was adopted by ARIADNE, the European Union Research Infrastructure for archaeological resources. Concepts specific to mining archaeology research are organized with the DARIAH Back Bone Thesaurus, a model for sustainable interoperable thesauri maintenance, developed in the European Union Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. Metadata are created through the extraction of information from the documentation and the transformation to a knowledge graph using semantic web standards. To facilitate usage, graph data are exported to hierarchical and tabular formats representing sites and objects with their geographic locations, temporal and typological assignments and links to the research activities and documents. Metadata are deposited together with the documentation into the repository.

Examining the Late Medieval Village from the Case at Ambroyi, Armenia

Archaeologists grapple with the problematic nature of archaeological discovery. Certain types of sites are difficult to see even in the best environmental conditions (e.g., low-density lithic scatters) and performing traditional archaeological survey is challenging in some environments, such as the dense temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. Archaeologists need another method of survey to assess large areas and overcome environmental and archaeological barriers to site discovery in regions like the Pacific Northwest. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology, a method for digitally clearing away swaths of vegetation and surveying the landscape, is one possible solution to some of these archaeological problems. The Calapooia Watershed in the southern Willamette Valley in Oregon is an ideal area to focus LiDAR's unique archaeological capabilities, as the region is heavily wooded and known to contain hundreds of low-lying earthwork features or mounds. Modern Indigenous Communities, such as the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, consider the Willamette Valley mound sites highly sensitive locations, as ethnographic accounts and limited archaeological work indicate that some are burial sites. However, these mounds have received little archaeological study. Land ownership (94 percent privately owned), dense vegetation that obscures mounds, and the sheer expanse of the landscape (234,000 acres) have impeded professional archaeological research. The focus of this thesis is the development and the testing of a LiDAR and remote sensing predictive model to see if this type of model can detect where potential mound sites are located in the Calapooia Watershed, Oregon. The author created a LiDAR and remote sensing predictive model using ArcMap 10.5.1, LiDAR, and publicly available aerial imagery; manipulating data using standard hydrological tools in ArcMap. The resulting model was successful in locating extant previously identified mound sites. The author then conducted field work and determined that the model was also successful in identifying seven new, previously unrecorded mound sites in the watershed. The author also identified several possible patterns in mound location and characteristics through exploratory model analysis and fieldwork; this exploratory analysis highlights areas for future mound research. This project has clearly established a method and a model appropriate for archaeological mound prospection in the Willamette Valley. This project also shows the efficacy of LiDAR predictive models and feature extraction methods for archaeological work, which can be modified for use in other regions of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Furthermore, by identifying these mounds I have laid the groundwork for future studies that

Desert Insurgency: Archaeology, T. E. Lawrence, and the Arab Revolt

Introduction to Special issue

Archaeological research is currently based on an interdisciplinary approach which makes use of a wide range of technologies allowing for the collection of data and information about sites and archaeological findings. An essential part of the archaeological data is related to spatial information that links historical contents to the metric reconstruction of monuments and artifacts, and show their mutual relations in a map. This work presents the results of a large project of archaeological excavations and surveys carried out by a team of the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio starting from 2015 and making use of modern geomatic techniques for georeferencing and 3D reconstruction of sites and artifacts. The case-study is located into the municipality of Aquino (province of Frosinone), in southern Lazio, and discusses evidences from the archaeological excavations in the locality of S. Pietro Vetere, the surveys of the Roman Latina Way, the socalled Porta San Lorenzo, the monumental complex of the church of S. Maria della Libera and the so-called honorary Arch of Marco Antonio, all parts of the large Roman town of Aquinum. Images, orthophotos and three-dimensional precision models have been processed and transformed in digital data implemented in a GIS platform based upon the open source software Quantum GIS. The optimization of the various stages of the work-flow is essential for the future developments of archaeological fieldwork and, in particular, in the perspective of a possible future Open Project on the ancient and medieval Aquinum.

The author of the article claims that after gaining independence in Uzbekistan, the attitude to historical science, including archaeological research on the territory of the republic, has radically changed. The article provides data on the ongoing archaeological research and archaeological work in order to study and research in Uzbekistan, including the archaeological study of the Samarkand Sogd. The article presents the material on the directions of development of archaeological science in Uzbekistan and in the Samarkand Sogd on the example of the works of major scientists and specialists who carried out archaeological excavations at the present stage. The author notes major international archaeological expeditions, their achievements during the period under study, as well as the role of international expeditions in the development of methods of conducting archaeological research.

This study represents results of first archaeo-geophysical prospection at the area of Kremenchuk Magnetic Anomaly (Poltava region, Ukraine). Pre-excavation magnetometer survey, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) measurements were performed on archaeological sites which are planned to be destroyed in near future due to development of iron ore quarries and construction of mine sites. Investigated archaeological monuments comprise settlements and burial mounds—kurgans—dated to Bronze and Early Iron Age occupying relatively high terrains in the floodplain of the Dnieper River. Based on prospection results of 18 sites and excavation of 6 ones, we evaluate the advantages and limitations of geophysical methods in confirming conclusions of visual archaeological inspection and targeting subsequent archaeological work. The recognised restrictions for geophysical methods are caused by high-gradient geomagnetic field, airborne magnetic pollution of soils and variable subsoil substrate—loess and sands. The magnetometer survey revealed an anomaly related to the remains of a large mound (the Bondari kurgan) against a background of high-gradient geomagnetic field. Large depression near the kurgan suggested its dating to the Bronze Age proved by subsequent archaeological excavations. The magnetic topsoil masks weak anomalies related to subsurface archaeological features and produces bright plough effects visible on the results of the magnetometer surveys. This is why, no anomalies sourced by mound of kurgan were recognised using this geophysical technique at the east from Gorishn’oplavnivskyi quarry. However, circular ditches and collapsed catacomb burials proved to cause detectable disturbance in the magnetic field. GPR measurements aided to identify the real diameter of kurgans by tracing the reflection associated with the mound-submound interface at sandy soil area. ERT results helped to clarify the structure of the large Novoselivska Mohyla kurgan. Two stages of construction were suggested from the two interpreted mounds of different resistivity. Smaller high resistivity anomalies are associated to primary and inserted burials. Magnetic anomalies caused by dwellings were found on the Bronze Age settlements as well as magnetic trace of shallow feature that was not identified during the archaeological excavations. The obtained results aid a proper understanding of the appearance of archaeo-geophysical anomalies and facilitate applying geophysical methods for archaeological needs in the region.

Soil variation is fundamental to Precision Agriculture. Precision Agriculture systems utilise a number of different data sets from a number of different sources to identify variation and understand its causes. Thus making it manageable. Archaeological investigations often rely on geophysical surveys (using a number of methods but particularly magnetic gradiometry), satellite imagery, elemental analysis and soil coring among many others to investigate areas of variation that may have connection to archaeological sites. Both of these data sets have significant potential to overlap spatially and yet no research has questions the use of archaeological data for supporting Precision Agriculture. This research tests that theory at a test site in Dorset, UK. The results show that in this case, soil zones could be made more accurate due to archaeological data. New areas of variation could also be found as well as better characterisation of those areas by combining archaeological data with Precision Agriculture systems.