Science topic

Landscape Archaeology - Science topic

Landscape archaeology is the study of the ways in which people in the past constructed and used the environment around them. Landscape archaeology is inherently multidisciplinary in its approach to the study of culture, and is used by both pre-historical, classic, and historic archaeologists. The key feature that distinguishes landscape archaeology from other archaeological approaches to sites is that there is an explicit emphasis on the study of the relationships between material culture, human alteration of land/cultural modifications to landscape, and the natural environment.
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WAC2020 SESSION 18 – CALL FOR PAPERS
THEME: F. IDENTITIES AND ONTOLOGIES
15. Archaeologies of Identity
Organisers: Gail Higginbottom, Cecilia Dal Zovo, Felipe Criado-Boado
Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (Incipit)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Direction (CSIC)
**Feel free to download our flyer and share (click on title)**
Invitation
We invite you to participate in our session. This session wishes to address approaches and interpretations that determine in what ways megaliths & earthworks first became phenomena in particular regions and/or why they didn´t. Connected to this is whether or not people saw themselves as affiliated groups. Indeed, we also want to know why some regions chose one of these phenomenon and not the other within the same temporal span, or gave one precedence over the other. The building of megalithic monuments is a worldwide, time-transcending phenomenon, hundreds of thousands were erected across the World, with some places like the Korean Peninsula holding about 30,000 dolmens. The fact that they still exist in situ, highlights their past and continued relevance in the Cultural Landscape today; it also highlights their on-going collective identities. A similar story is attached to earthworks like mounds, ditches, embankments and pathways and their combinations. Megaliths & earthworks are clearly a dominant form for creating a materiality of social & spiritual engagement across the World. Is it possible that similar material practices mean shared worlds in some regions, and how might we differentiate between this and co-vergent evolution? As these monuments continued to develop through time, it is possible that so too did their meaning(s). Or is this rationale only an assumption, and indeed rather misguided? With such deliberations, this session, then, also wishes to see evidence that might answer this for us, too, or indeed provide evidence for the stability of a cultural practices, meaning and identity through time. Perhaps there is macro and micro evidence that displays stability but the micro reveals the forms of change within local communities. We are seeking works that present ideas related to these themes and which seek to answer questions such as these, or indeed, by default, have done so.
Keywords: Megaliths, Earthworks, Cultural Landscapes, Social engagement, Shared Worlds
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An interesting and inspiring subject, good luck!
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What satellite images/bands should I use for this purpose?
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Hi Mannan,
Are the qanat's track superficial or underground? if they are superficial, you can use thermal bands. If the qanat are underground, I think you can use Ground Penetrating Radar for this purpose.
Good Luck,
Reda
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Many analyst ran the dissolution method  without the sinkers and justified that the sinker did not require them. Is this correct? Is it mandatory to use sinkers in the dissolution testing of capsules?
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I think, without sinkers capsule may float on the dissolution medium and have unexpected drug release.
So its always better to use sinkers
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Hello! I am looking for literature in English about pendants from the period of Urnfield Culture in the Carpathian Basin and maybe analogies with other findings around Europe?
Thank You!
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There are a lot of works on this subject in Polish and German langue. 
In English you can use:
  1. Czopek S. 2013 Great Urn cementaries –sacred space and place in the cultural landscape of the Tarnobrzeg Lusatian culture. In S. Kadrow and P. Włodarczak (eds.),  Enviroments and subsistence – forthy years after Janusz Kruk “Settlements Studies…”  (= Studien zur Archaologie in Ostmitteleuropa/ Studia nad pradziejami Europy Środkowej 11) .
  2. Czopek S. 2011 Cultural Change from the Perspective of Cultural-Historical Archaeology Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia 6, 317–342
  3. Baron J. 2007 Intra-Site Analysis at Bronze Age Settlements in SW Poland Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia 2, 83–100
  4. Blajer W.  2014 The West Carpathians as a Contact Zone in the Bronze Age in Light of Hoards and Isolated Finds of Metal Objects, [w:] Settlement, Communication and Exchange Around the Western Carpathians. International Workshop held at the Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, October 27-28, 2012 (red. T.L. Kienlin, P. Valde-Nowak, M. Korczyńska, K. Cappenberg, J. Ociepka), Archaeopress Archaeology, Oxford, s. 287-295
  5. M. S. Przybyła 2009 Intercultural Contacts in the Western Carpathian Area at the Turn of the 2nd and 1st Millennia BC, Warszawa
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Hello All,
as per title, I am rather confused as to using slope raster in degree or percent when implementing Tobler function in GIS. Some sources (A, B, C) seem to point to slope degree, while other ones (D) seem to point to a slight modification of percent slope (actually, slope percent / 100).
Any guidance on this matter will be appreciated.
Sources:
(C) Conolly, J. & M. Lake, 2006. Geographic Information Systems in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridege University Press.
(D) Herzog, I., 2014. A Review of Case Studies in Archaeological Least-cost Analysis, Archeologia e Calcolatori 25, 223–39.
Thank you
Gm
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As far as I know the output of the Tobler's hiking equation is maximum speed that each cell allows to move through it in km/h. You can verify this by examining the maximum value of the result. If it is in km/h the max should be somewhere between 5 and 6 depending on slope values (see image below that we used in our last publication on this matter where the speed is shown on vertical axis and slope on horizontal). To get the speed in m/s the multiplication of the result with 0,2778 is required as 1 km/h = 0,2778 m/s. Now to get the actual time (in this case in seconds) to pass through each cell one should divide the cell size with the speed. This approach, as Joan said, assumes that you move along the cell axes and will underestimate the time needed to get to your destination. In the division above you could use diagonal of the cell (as we did in our research) as you can move diagonally also but the resulting time could be overestimated. From here on you could use the aproach with conversion of the paths to points I described above.
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Hi, I'm looking for publications in which the scatter of medieval pottery around villages brought there by manuring is mapped. When doing fieldwalking and recording the findspots of the shards using a GPS receiver, which method would you suggest?
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Dear Stefan, Except my own works,  i can advise you to have a look on the work of Richard Jones (University of Exeter), a great specialist of medieval manuring. He directed the publication of a book "Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, Ashgate Publishing, 2012" and published an article in 2004 especially dedicated to the mapping of archaeological evidences of medieval manuring "Signatures in the soil: The use of pottery in manure scatters in the identification of medieval arable farming regimes, Archaeological Journal, n°161, 2004, p.159-188". Best regards, Nicolas.
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I recently saw an article summary about scientists using Lidar to locate sites of past civilizations. I'm interested in learning more about how to do this.
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Depending on the quality of the LiDAR point cloud (i.e., how many of the points within a square meter are acual ground points) it is possible to build models at resolutions of 0.5x0.5m, or even more finegrained. A couple of examples from Northern Norway. Based on a set with a resolution of 3-5 points on the ground pr square meters we have built a model with a resolution of 0.25x0.25m where we are able to spot even quite vague structures. In another area we used a dataset with 5-8 points on the qround to build a 0.25x0.25m model as well as several smaller models as finegrained as 0.125x0.125m. The last example is an area with 10+points on the ground pr square meter, a density that has allowed building all the above mentioned resolutions as well as a test of a small area 0.06x0.06m. It is important to be aware that as the resolution gets ever more finegrained, the resulting model size grows exponentionally. building models of large areas with a very fine resolution is therefore computationally more intensive, and at some point becomes a pointless exercise unless smaller areas area picked for more finegrained analysis. The 0.25x0.25m models mentioned can be considered our "standard" resolution when building models of a new dataset/area. It is useful to get a quick overview, is able to spot hunting pits, most housegrounds, etc. Depending on the number of points on the ground of the original dataset, it can even be used to spot some vaguer structures. For datasets with many points on the ground the more finegrained models can even be used to see very vague structures like graves and early stone age housegrounds.
An alternative approach that does not necessarily require more finegrained models is to use methods other than hillshade such as Sky View Factor (very useful to spot any structure with a depression) or Openness positive/negative (good at spotting raised features). There is a tool called Relief Visualization Toolbox available from:
This can perform the mentioned analysis using DEMs - as well as hillshades etc. It is freely downloadable, and there is also a lot of documentation available.
all the best, Jan Ingolf
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Do you believe in portable XRF dating of desert varnish?
Do you think that associated dates for single component sites spatially associated with the rock art are reasonable?
What techniques have you used?
How have you attempted to obtain chronological controls?
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Well said, Alicia: Each pictograph or petroglyph must be evaluated for possible dating on its own merits. I chose micro-stratigraphy because most people can do it with very simple equipment. Bryan.
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I kindly need your visual opinions and comments as visitors of Waterfront (joggers, artists, etc).
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Dear Majid,
I think that one of the main issues is the continuity of the waterfront public promenade, its urban quality and its connection with the neighbouring programmes of commercial and residential urbanism as well as with public transportation. In such contexts, the work of urbanists, planners and architects has to integrate the micro-dimension of daily uses and trajectories as well as the more macro-dimension of the connection with the rest of the city. It is in my opinion this ability to play on both scales that allows (among other factors like the negociation with private developers of the extent and nature of public spaces) a project to acquire a specific value in terms of urbanity.
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I wish to test the hypothesis that prehistoric populations moved to sheltered locations during the Little Ice Age along the Bering sea coast but I don't know how to characterise a sheltered bay or locations vs not sheltered especially to use in a GIS study. Are there specific parameters that define a sheltered location along a coastline that I could or should use for predictive modelling for instance?
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I would add sea level changes to George's list.
I would reformulate the question. Is there a degree of sheltering that predicts the location and movement of prehistoric populations?
I would take a topographic map that I could correct for sea level, and I would digitize it in such a way that I could take each coastal pixel and develop a measure of exposure. Each point will be exposed to the sea from 0 to 360 degrees of arc. At 360 degrees you are on a small island. I would correct then adjust this. A coastal town with 0 degrees of exposure is at the back of a bay with an island completely obscuring the mouth of the bay. At 360 degrees of exposure, you are on a small island some distance from the mainland, and with no protection from any nearby land. You get to define what "nearby land" means. You will then correct the map to scale relevant to humans and scaled to the level of expected storms. A cove 30 meters wide may be sheltered until subject to 10 meter waves.
With this measure of exposure you can simplify, by defining "exposed" as anything with greater than X degree exposure, and "sheltered" as anything with Y degree exposure. Anything between X and Y is "uncertain." Now go through and for each value of X and Y such that X>Y, is there a value that does a reasonable job of predicting the probability of settlement? Also factor in distance to neighboring settlements, distance to a valued natural resource (the greater the reward, the more people will risk to gather it), and other factors you see fit.
Sounds like a fun project.
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Hello, is there anyone on here who knows of rock art images of horsemen in the old Chichimeca territory of the 1500s and 1600s? According to Spanish sources, Chichimeca groups like the Guachichiles were using horses and keeping horse herds as early as the 1560s. Thanks for any suggestions on this subject.
(Image of petroglyph below is from New Mexico).
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You may want to check publications by Carlos Viramontes Anzures with a catalog of rock art  at semidesertic region in Queretaro and western limit of Sierra Gorda at Guanajuato
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I recently sent shallow soil samples taken at two archaeological sites in the Little Karoo, Western Cape Province, South Africa, to be tested for chemical traces such as phosphorus and calcium etc. The results show rather high P values near the actual sites and less further away. However I cannot find anyone who can help interpret them in the light of thousands of years of human habitation. Neither site can have been artificially fertilised in the past being on steep slopes below cliffs in very rugged country.  
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Hello Yvette! You are working on a very interesting problem. As other colleagues have already explained, the matter is very complex and you need to put together data from various disciplines - geology, pedology, climatology, archaeology, chemistry... I have conducted a multi-elemental analysis of soil chemistry in central Europe and in the Mediterranean and increased levels of P are often clearly related to archaeological sites even millenia after their abandonment. But P can be introduced into soil also by other paths than by the past human activities, so a careful analysis of local conditions is always needed. An evaluation of P values together with other elements is usually very helpful and a range of geoarchaeological methods can bring additional facts important for the most plausible interpretation. If your project will continue in the next year we could even offer you assistance with the field survey, detailed mapping of soil chemistry, analysis of data etc. It would be interesting for us to compare results from diverse environmental and cultural settings.
Good luck with your project!
Ladislav
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I am looking for research into the amount of total waste generated and enriching the surrounding soil, by a nuclear hunter-gatherer-pastoralist family (about 6 people) living off the land with no modern conveniences, and with about 5 goats or sheep and two dogs!? ..
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It may be interesting having a look at dung too (you can have a look at the following paper of an ethnoarchaeological research in a Masai settlement)
Reconstruction of spatial organization in abandoned Maasai settlements: implications for site structure in the Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa
Ruth Shahack-Gross, Fiona Marshall, Kathleen Ryan, Steve Weiner
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Iron Age, Scotland, Subterranean, Cave, ritual, not including Souterrrains. Thank you. A site name would help, an excavator name would help more, links to papers or details of publication would be best.
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There are the Iron Age burials from MacArthur’s Cave in the article by Saville and Hallén in Antiquity.  Also, how about the cisterns in brochs, said by various people, e.g. Mike Williams in his Prehistoric Belief book, to be like Mine Howe?  Could you see Neolithic tombs as being thought of by Iron Age people as a kind of cave, suitable for offerings, as at Calf of Eday Long (Calder's excavations).
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I'm looking to explore the integration of pre-Islamic and Islamic ritual
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I think one of the best resource that can help you about the symbolic role of tree in sufism is old illustrations of sufi books in particular persian poem book from middle age illustrated in iran such as Khamsa Tahmasbi (16th century, Iran). in these works painters, who were often sufi or familiar to sufism, illustrated stories in shrines or at least in architectural space. 
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The great alluvial Plain of Catania (Piana di Catania) is situated in the East of the mediterranean island of Sicily. Basically two rivers flow there along the sides of the plain into the sea: Simeto and Gornalunga. The region is absolutely ideal for bronze age water engineers to build the usual bronze age water engineering. Yet, I cannot find any academic work on this. Sicilian archaeology is concerned only with the Greek era or with single settlements, not with landscape archaeology, as it seems. Any helpful hint is welcome!
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You can find something helpful here:
Matthew Fitzjohn (ed.)
Uplands of Ancient Sicily and Calabria. The archaeology of landscape revisited
Specialist Studies on Italy 13
2007
And you can even contact me in private at tanasid@arcadia.edu as I teach even a course about Landscape archaeology in Sicily at the Arcadia University, Sicily Center.
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I'm looking for early constructions of wells, sumps, etc. or pit features used for agriculture in coastal environments.
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I'm working on the subject area of the Atlantic Ocean. I think they are first natural deposits offered by nature in a process of initial colonization, then after the settlement and the need for a greater amount of water resources involve building nearshore deposits, mainly wells, especially on islands besides those spaces inside water capacity enough.
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Particularly with regard to humans migrating out of Africa and perhaps transporting useful plants with them which then establish elsewhere along early routes. It seems that there is a global similarity between plants at the Family and Genus level which are associated closely with archaeological sites world-wide. Could this be due to anthropogenic transport, not necessarily with intent? For instance, seeds eaten in food remaining within the gut, or carried as food (possibly dried), and deposited at a new site where the germinated plant establishes, grows, then is moved along further after becoming productive much later?
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The Polynesians deliberately took crop plants with them and dispersed these across the islands of the Pacific Ocean. An article on this can be found here: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/29/11/1226.full.pdf. This was a very deliberate act and quite late in human migration history. This was probably not unique in human history and did happened on other continents much earlier, probably as early as the advent of agriculture, if not earlier.
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Cultural Heritage has grown over the past decades to become one of the most pending questions to mankind. Individuals continue more than ever before to look into the very roots of their existence, which is a good thing to do. However, this root-treatment cannot be established by oral traditions only. One needs bio- and material cultural objects that reflect how our forefathers were living and left behind. Only since the mid 19th century, many of these artifacts are assembled in hundreds of museums where they are treated with good care. However, with the accumulation of artifacts and the restoration and necessary conservation of cultural objects, it will become a burden to pay for this type of work and as the assemblage will only grow, there will come a point in time that there will not be enough budget to pay for all that work. So, how do you see the future of Cultural Heritage?
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Here is an anecdote for Jean. She wrote:"not conserving some things of the past costs the people and society their mental health and mental balance."
Well, some years ago in Toronto, Canada, the head of the neutron activation archaeometry group there got the order to close the lab and the reactor, because they needed the site to construct a hospital. The scientist asked all of us in the same profession to write a letter to the president of the Toronto University. As an obeying citizen, I wrote a letter to the president in saying that thanks to the work done at the reactor in Cultural Heritage, the average man saw interesting projects shown by the big media. By closing the reactor, it would take away the mental health and balance of a large group of people who from the moment of closure wouldn't get any longer this info. I wrote the president that by leaving the lab open, he would not need the hospital to hospitalize these people.
He answered that the decision was not his but somewhere higher up. Everythin seems always to happen 'somewhere higher up' who are voted in by us!
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I'm starting a project in which I analyze the relationship between various prehistoric settlements (Copper Age) and a high number of burial caves in Alicante (Spain). Does anyone know or can recommend me literature on ritual appropriation of territory by burial caves?
The number of sites is quite high so I will use GIS, any recommendation or application specific about it?
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In the Great Hungarian Plain, on flood-free river terraces, on natural levees, and more rarely on sand dunes, even today there are thousands of artificial mounds of between 3 and 12 metres in height, dating from different historical periods. These mounds of varying function were built from the Neolithic to the age of migrations, and from that period right up to the early medieval times. The majority of these potentially archaeologically significant structures are of the kurgan type, i.e. burial sites dating from the Copper Age.
We have some publications on this topic. You can find this in my profile.
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I'm writing my thesis on iron age settlement patterns on the Drenthe Plateau in the north of the Netherland. Besides comparisons with other pleistocene covers and area's in the Netherlands I would like to compare it with those in the north of Germany. Since I'm not that well read in German research I would like some help with titles that give an overview of the patterns (preferable in relation to the landscape). I would prefer publications in English, but titles in German are welcome too.
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Hi Chris,
to gain a quick overview, have a look at the chapter on the Iron Age in Dannenberg, H.-E. and H.-J. Schulze (eds), Geschichte des Landes zwischen Elbe und Weser 1, Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Stade 1995).
It might also be worth your while to browse the publications of the NIhK in Wilhemshaven (www.nihk.de). This is one of the main susbjects the institute has been pursuing for the past 75 years and the Marschenratskolloquim in 2011 was specifically targeting your questions (Aktuelle Forschungen im Küstenraum der südlichen Nordsee: Methoden – Strategien – Projekte ).
Hope that helps you on the way.
Jörn
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In his article 'Building, dwelling, living' Tim Ingold backs up his dwelling perspective by claiming
'the forms of organisms are in no way prefigured in their genes but are the emergent outcomes of environmentally situated development processes.' (Ingold 2000, p. 186).
However, biologist Mike Hansell (among others), who specializes in animal architecture, shows that the form of animal 'buildings' is at least in part innate ( Animal Architecture (2005), pp. 123-124). From this point of view Ingold's earlier dichotomy between design and execution seems more sensible than his later view. If we would accept this dichotomy, what would be the consequence for dwelling perspectives?
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Thank you for your response! I'm sorry for not answering quicker but I have been quite busy the last two weeks. Anyway, I believe Ingold tries to invalidate the dichotomy by claiming there is no ontological dichotomy. I agree with you that using the dichotomy in an epistemic way can be very usefull even if the ontological dichotomy does not exist.
What I was curious about is the consequences for a 'dwelling' perspective if an ontological dichotomy does in fact exist (contra Ingold). The reason I was wondering this is because the dismissal of this dichotomy seems to be one of the major reasons for Ingold's shift from a 'building' perspective to a 'dwelling' perspective. The dismissal of the dichotomy stems from his point that building is, in both humans and non-humans, the outcome of environmentally situated development processes instead of being prefigured in their genes. The other publication I was refering to however tells of examples where animal architecture is in fact innate.
(Perhaps you have tried to answer this in your post but I have a bit of a hard time with some of the terms you use:-) )