Sites Of Archaeological Interest Research Articles

Weeds in Non-Agricultural Areas: How to Evaluate the Impact? A Preliminary Case Study in Archaeological Sites

The term “weeds” refers to “plants suitable for habitats modified by man and that interfere with human activities”. It implies an anthropocentric rather than an ecological vision since the existence and the characteristic of the interference depends on men’s purposes. In the archaeological sites, the most important damage is the functional one and it ranges from hazards for the structures to the interference that weed flora can exert on the technical management and fruition of the site. In this particular type of environment, the diverse methods available to quantify the magnitude of the infestation are not sufficient to describe the potential or actual hazard to which a given infested site is subjected. Therefore, it is necessary to consider a greater degree of detail (including morphological, ecological, and physiological properties of the weeds) and to keep them all in consideration. The aim of the present work was to try to identify and propose a method for the assessment of the hazards and thus the damages that a weed community can lead in sites of historical and archaeological interest. The procedure quantifies the degree of the infestation, in terms of occurring species, quantifies the related hazard based on some traits of the weed species, and calculates indexes capable of providing synthetic and comparable information on the hazard to which the site is exposed. The proposed method was applied and tested in some sites of archaeological interest in the Apulia Region, in southern Italy. Applied to the surveyed archaeological sites, the proposed Indexes revealed the presence of weed infestations variously assorted in terms of potential damage, generating different hazard scores. This confirms the importance of understanding the type of infestation and not only its extent. In this study, a procedure was provided that can support decision-makers. Although studied for archaeological sites, the same principles adopted in this procedure could be proposed for other non-agricultural areas.

A New Method for the Collection of Marine Geomagnetic Information: Survey Application in the Colombian Caribbean

In recent years, the Oceanographic and Hydrographic Research Center (part of the General Maritime Directorate of Colombia (DIMAR) has made important efforts to advance research in the field of marine geophysics, in particular, the techniques of geomagnetism, sub-bottom profiling, and side-scan sonar, the first being the most developed at the present time. A method is presented for the acquisition of geomagnetic data in marine environments, as used by DIMAR in the Colombian maritime territory. The development of the geomagnetic method not only offers the opportunity to advance basic scientific knowledge, but it is also of great importance in support of national sovereignty issues. Among other applications, the most representative uses of the geomagnetic method are the location of pipelines and metal plates, detection of buried ordnance, identification of sites of archaeological interest, and the identification and characterization of geological structures. As a result of testing the method, a grid of geomagnetic data was surveyed in an area close to the Island of San Andrés in the north-west of the Colombian maritime territory. The survey was prepared with a regional geometric arrangement, the result of which was compared with survey data obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) magnetic data repository and carried out in the same study area. Despite the long time interval between the two surveys, almost 50 years, no significant differences were observed in terms of the analyzed variables. Finally, results show negligible differences between the magnetic data obtained for the years 1970 and 2018 for all the variables measured, such as the inclination, declination, and total magnetic field. These differences may be attributable to a geological component or also to the acquisition and processing methods used in the 1970s.

Fugitive stones: the temple of Athena Nike, Athens in nineteenth-century photographs

What happens when early cameras are turned to 5th century BCE monuments and sculptures on the Acropolis of Athens? In what ways might the fragile surface of a daguerreotype, a salted paper print or an albumen print be said to have ‘captured’ a pentelic marble fragment? These questions were thrown into bold relief following the public announcement of the daguerreotype in 1839 when travellers to Greece in search of sites of archaeological interest began to take cameras with them. With rapid developments in photographic technology, photographs joined landmark texts and a body of drawings, paintings, engravings, plaster casts to alter established relationships with antiquities. Highly emotive material objects, photographs spoke a new language of loss and fragmentation; through the relative ease of their reproducibility photographs newly facilitated memory and forms of aesthetic resurrection. My essay charts nineteenth-century photographs of fragments of relief sculptures of Nikai from the exterior face of the parapet of the Ionic Temple of Athena Nike. Excavation and rebuilding of the Temple during 1835 and 1836 drew the eye of many travellers to the Acropolis. Resurrection of the classical temple shortly preceded the new technology of photography and, in representing a monument described by Wheler and Spon among others, photographs rehabilitated ‘lost’ stones. Exploring, alongside travel narratives, newly fugitive representations of winged and apterous Nikai, I consider what Walter Benjamin termed the collector’s relationship to ‘the scene, the stage’ of the ‘fate’ of a material object.

Alignment of Old Land Surveys for Accurately Locating Archaeological Sites: The 1634 and 1646 Palisades in Middle Plantation, Colonial Virginia

The location of magnetic north has changed significantly during times relevant to historical archaeologists. To accurately locate sites of archaeological interest mentioned in old land surveys, which used magnetic compass bearings, alignment of those old surveys with true (geographic) north is required. This paper describes the method for doing this and provides an archaeological example of this approach for refining the locations of 17th-century wooden palisades in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Modelling Archaeological and Geospatial Information for Burial Site Prediction, Identification and Management

The application of technologies in humanities and specifically in Archaeology over the past recent years has yielded important expertise that can be successfully exploited by both Archaeological Research and Cultural Heritage Management. This study presents a general methodology for designing, developing and implementing predictive modelling for identifying sites of archaeological interest. The methodology is based on documented archaeological data and geographical factors, geospatial analysis and predictive modelling into one consistent workflow. The model was tested extensively and was validated using a commonly used predictive gain. The results and the evaluation of the model proved the efficiency of its predictive ability in providing answers to a series of questions related to Archaeological Research issues and Cultural Heritage Management.

Earthworm-produced calcite granules: A new terrestrial palaeothermometer?

In this paper we show for the first time that calcite granules, produced by the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris, and commonly recorded at sites of archaeological interest, accurately reflect temperature and soil water δ18O values. Earthworms were cultivated in an orthogonal combination of two different (granule-free) soils moistened by three types of mineral water and kept at three temperatures (10, 16 and 20°C) for an acclimatisation period of three weeks followed by transfer to identical treatments and cultivation for a further four weeks. Earthworm-secreted calcite granules were collected from the second set of soils. δ18O values were determined on individual calcite granules (δ18Oc) and the soil solution (δ18Ow). The δ18Oc values reflect soil solution δ18Ow values and temperature, but are consistently enriched by 1.51 (±0.12)‰ in comparison to equilibrium in synthetic carbonates. The data fit the equation 1000lnα=[20.21±0.92] (103T−1)−[38.58±3.18] (R2=0.95; n=96; p<0.0005). As the granules are abundant in modern soils, buried soils and archaeological contexts, and can be dated using U–Th disequilibria, the developed palaeotemperature relationship has enormous potential for application to Holocene and Pleistocene time intervals.

PIXE analysis of pottery from the northern Cape Province of South Africa

Contact between culturally distinct prehistoric communities through trade or exchange led to the introduction of imported objects onto sites of archaeological interest. PIXE analysis, with an external beam, on 33 specimens showed that 10 elements were common to all, but Ti, Ni and Sr were the elements that provided the greater differentiation between areas. Using a previously described model for the combined chemical and stylistic analyses, evidence was obtained for the movement of sherds across the region of study.

Pottery Sites Near Aden

In the vicinity of Aden and Abyan there are many pottery sites of archaeological interest, which are still little known, although this is in no way due to any difficulty in finding the sites for there is usually extensive surface evidence. In fact in some places wind erosion has exposed thick layers of pottery fragments.