Investigating the Impact of Concrete Driven Piles on the Archaeological Record Using Soil Micromorphology: Three Case Studies from the Netherlands

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of field tests into the impact of driven concrete piles on three archaeological sites in the Netherlands. The field tests were done in two different types of archaeological sites. Two locations in the northern part of the Netherlands (Kenwerd and Groot Wetsinge) were artificial mounds or terps, where new buildings were going to be constructed using driven piles. The third location was Voorburg in the western part of the country, where the impact of pilings from the 1950s were studied. We analysed soil which was in direct contact with the piles, and soil at a distance from the pile surface.

The tests show remarkable results. Visible effects of piling in sand were downdrag of sediments along with the pile, disturbance of structure by local displacements, or liquefaction. In clay, some disturbance of structure, compression of pores, and damage to carbonized material was observed. Additionally, piles may promote the formation of pyrite in the directly adjacent peat. In a large number of samples taken from soil directly adjacent to a pile, no disturbance was observed. We did not observe any impact further than six to eight cm from the pile surface.

These results indicate that the impact of piling in fine sediments is smaller than is generally assumed. However, as the number of observations in the present study is relatively small, the results need to be corroborated by more field tests. In future, planners need to consider the direct effects piles have on the surrounding soil as well as the possibility of excavations.     

Documenting Archaeological Mortuary Features using High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging

This technical note presents a refined technique for photo‐documenting archaeological mortuary features using High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging. Mortuary features in archaeological context can be complex and delicate given the wide variability in grave constructions and preservation of human skeletal remains. It is therefore critical to obtain the greatest detail possible when photo‐documenting these features. HDR techniques represent more contrast in photographs and provide greater detail across the DR of illumination within mortuary features—where complex arrangements of human remains can obscure or darken other elements or associated funerary objects, making them difficult to identify in traditional photographs. HDR can be employed with most standard digital single lens reflex cameras used for archaeological field projects, is easy to learn and employ (as described here), can be processed and produced with commonly used photo editing programs, and is ideal for use in unpredictable conditions that are often encountered with archaeological mortuary features and in field conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deep Impact: What Happens When Archaeological Sites are Built on?

Abstract

Increasingly, developers and archaeologists search for ways to build on archaeological sites, while at the same time preserving the remains underneath. However, deciding which effects of construction on archaeological sites are acceptable and which are not is hampered by the lack of knowledge on the impacts of construction on archaeological sites. This paper provides an update on some of the effects of building on archaeological sites. Recent research had shown that displacement piles cause less disturbance in soft soils than previously thought. Moreover, replacement piles may be less benign that assumed up till now. Effects of loading on archaeological sites are described, and gaps in the knowledge on these effects are indicated. More research is needed in this field, especially on predicting soil disturbance and damage to weak materials. Impermeable surfaces and constructions on top of sites may affect the visibility of soil features due to decreased rainwater infiltration. Finally, a series of non-physical effects are mentioned that will have to be taken into account when deciding on allowing building on archaeological sites.     

Snapshots of History and the Nature of the Archaeological Image

By its very definition, archaeology is situated at the intersection of the material and the temporal worlds. Photography is similarly positioned, and yet it can be manipulated to produce constructed contexts according a photographer’s agenda. In order to explore how the abilities and limitations of archaeology and photography are entwined I examine the representational power of the photograph and the phenomenon of Japanese tourist photography. I then discuss the construction of archaeological photographs, both in practice and in the prescribed theory contained archaeological methods textbooks, as well as how photographs are used to represent the embodied, physical performance of archaeology.     

Integration of geophysical surveys,ground hyperspectral measurements,aerial and satellite imagery for archaeological prospection of prehistoric sites: the case study of Vésztő-Mágor Tell,Hungary

An integration of geophysical surveys, ground hyperspectral data, aerial photographs and high resolution satellite imagery for supporting archaeological investigations at the multi-component Vészt?-Mágor Tell, located in the southeastern Great Hungarian Plain, is presented in this study. This is one of the first times that all these techniques have been combined and evaluated for retrieving archaeological information. Geophysical explorations, specifically magnetic gradiometry and ground penetrating radar methods, have revealed shallow linear anomalies and curvilinear rings at the Tell. The use of remote sensing images has confirmed the diverse anomalies with respect to geophysics through photointerpretation, radiometric and spatial enhancements. Moreover, several indices from ground hyperspectral data also have revealed stress vegetation anomalies. These integrated results were used to map the main areas of archaeological interest at the Vészt?-Mágor Tell and plan future excavations. It was found that these multiscalar data can be used efficiently for detecting buried archaeological features.     

Protecting a ‘Homeric landscape’: The making of the Butrint National Park,Albania

Abstract

This paper will present research on the vulnerability mapping of coastal archaeological sites currently being undertaken in Northern Ireland. The ultimate aim of this research is improve current predictions of where archaeological sites and landscapes will be at risk in the future from coastal erosion. The initial stage of this approach uses a suite of oblique aerial photographs to construct a baseline of eroding locations and coastal geomorphology. The erosion baseline can then be integrated with existing historic environment records to obtain a coarse first-pass archaeological vulnerability assessment. Subsequent stages can then use this assessment to prioritize future mitigation such as field surveys or monitoring exercises, or conduct further refinements of vulnerability classifications by incorporating information on site type and positioning on a local scale.     

Photography and Latin American Ruins

Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of ‘classical’ ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West’s contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.     

Framing the past: situating the archaeological in photographs

Archaeology continually reproduces its own images. Speaking archaeology’s visual language is one way we prove membership in the discipline. Many aspects of this visual language have become so naturalized within archaeological representation as to be almost unquestionable: the cleaning of the site, the use of scale, and particular framings and perspectives. How, then, is the production of particular photographic images of archaeology related to the practice of archaeology? Does archaeology look a certain way (in photographs) or are archaeologists reproducing an archaeology according to the way it is thought it should look? Using examples of early photographs from Latin American archaeological expeditions, this article investigates not only photography as an applied technology for scientific recording, but also its power to situate archaeological knowledge. Drawing on recent reflective and critical developments in both the history of archaeology and visual anthropology, it uses five focal points – trace, objectivity and authenticity, sight/site, still lifes, and still lives – to argue that early-twentieth-century archaeological photographs of Latin America participated in the generation of an ‘authentic’ past rather than simply paid testament to it.     

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Survey with Commercial-Grade Instruments: A Case Study from the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey,Iraq

Low-altitude photography in archaeology is now common practice at the scale of excavations; however, landscape-scale applications are a relatively new endeavor with promising analytical potential. From 2014–2016, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mounted camera was used to document sites recorded as part of the Eastern ?abur Archaeological Survey (E?AS), an archaeological reconnaissance project in western Dohuk Province, Iraqi Kurdistan. The E?AS team documented over 70 archaeological sites with the UAV, from single-phase artifact scatters, to archaeological remains with standing architecture, to tells that cover more than 30 hectares. Representative examples from this survey are presented here to outline the project workflow and primary output data layers, including digital orthomosaics and digital elevation models. The quality and utility of results are then assessed in relationship to available satellite-based data. Methods for analysis and interpretation are then considered to demonstrate applications in landscape archaeology. An A) orthomosaic and B) shaded relief model with surface collection area (in red) of site EHAS-C045 created from photographs taken from a UAV.     

Mapping the possible occurrence of archaeological sites by Bayesian inference

Regional archaeological prospections are often done by field walking, where the location of the sampled fields is often determined by factors like feared disturbance or recent plowing. The resulting data configuration can be suboptimal for spatial prediction of the archaeological potential by geostatistical methods like kriging. As an alternative, we propose a Bayesian method to map the possible occurrence of archaeological finds and compare this to indicator regression kriging. Three types of predictive models were implemented in the Bayesian context following deductive, inductive and mixed approaches to use auxiliary geographical information in the mapping. After prediction of a validation set, it was concluded that the mixed approach gave the best results in terms of map quality, and that the kriging method performed poorly. Usage of data on the presence and the absence of archaeological finds is to be preferred above usage of presence data only. Furthermore, a method is presented that filters those parts of a predictive map that are not strongly supported by evidence.     

Examining Land-Use through GIS-Based Kernel Density Estimation: A Re-Evaluation of Legacy Data from the Berbati-Limnes Survey

The use of archaeological survey data for evaluation of landscape dynamics has commonly been concerned with the distribution of settlements and changes in number of recorded sites over time. Here we present a new quantitative approach to survey-based legacy data, which allows further assessments of the spatial configuration of possible land-use areas. Utilizing data from an intensive archaeological survey in the Berbati-Limnes area, Greece, we demonstrate how GIS-based kernel density estimations (KDE) can be used to produce cluster-based density surfaces that may be linked to past land-use strategies. By relating density surfaces to elevation and slope, it is also possible to quantify shifts in the use of specific environments on a regional scale, allowing us to model and visualize land-use dynamics over time. In this respect, the approach provides more multifaceted information to be drawn from archaeological legacy data, providing an extended platform for research on human-environment interactions.     

Excavating ‘Hell Upon Earth’ Towards a Research Framework for the Archaeological Investigation of Workers’ Housing: Case Studies from Manchester,UK

This paper uses 16 years of targeted fieldwork on excavating workers’ housing in the Manchester region, UK, to assess a variety of research approaches to the investigation of urban industrial housing of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Manchester was one of the ‘shock’ cities of industrial Britain, and a honey pot for social commentary during the Victorian period. Using data from more than 30 excavation sites, it looks at the way in which archaeological evidence can be used to explore issues around house build quality, overcrowding, sanitation and disease, and reconstructing households from their material remains. Manchester's reputation for poor living conditions during the industrialising period was crystallised around the comments of contemporary social commentators from Engels to Gaskell. Yet, the archaeological evidence reviewed in this article demonstrates the value of archaeological approaches in challenging and testing such views through detailed case studies. More importantly, it shows that archaeological material can be used to study directly features of the new industrialised form of urban living, providing a set of research questions applicable across the industrial urban workers’ housing of Britain.     

A neolithic case of Down syndrome

The aim of the study is to draw attention to the existence of a Neolithic figurine from Greece with characteristics compatible with Down syndrome. We have reviewed the relevant medical and archaeological literature, and we have compared photographs of the figurine with photographs of a patient with typical Down syndrome (DS). From the above data we conclude that the 7000 years old artefact may well be the most ancient representation of the disease in Western civilisation.     

Spatial and Temporal Variation in Mesopotamian Agricultural Practices in the Khabur Basin,Syrian Jazira

While archaeologists have long recognized the value of regional analysis to define economic systems, relatively few archaeological data sets—principally settlement patterns, ceramics and lithics—have been used to assess regional-scale spatial variation and temporal change. As with other archaeological data sets, resolution of archaeobotanical data at a regional scale poses some formidable challenges. A new approach in the Near East uses archaeobotanical remains from multiple sites. The data have been drawn from midden assemblages that exhibit high variability between assemblages, requiring the use of random effects logistic regression models that can accommodate high variability. Our approach detects changes over time and over geographical region and tests the statistical significance of these changes. Results show a significant rise in crop-processing wastes, most probably from a specialized focus on barley processing at settlement and storage sites during the 3rd millenniumbc (Ninevite 5 and Early Jazira Periods). This shift to a greater representation of barley-processing by-products represented in middens can most probably be linked with an emerging specialization in pastoral production and re-settlement in arid regions of the northern Mesopotamian steppe in the 3rd millennium bc.     

A neolithic case of down syndrome?*

Abstract

The aim of the study is to draw attention to the existence of a Neolithic figurine from Greece with characteristics compatible with Down syndrome. We have reviewed the relevant medical and archaeological literature, and we have compared photographs of the figurine with photographs of a patient with typical Down syndrome (DS). From the above data we conclude that the 7000 years old artefact may well be the most ancient representation of the disease in Western civilisation.     

Monitoring Islamic Archaeological Landscapes in Ethiopia Using Open Source Satellite Imagery

The African landscape is set to change dramatically in the coming years, and will have a detrimental impact on the inherent archaeological and cultural heritage elements if not monitored adequately. This paper explores how satellite imagery, in particular open source imagery (Google Earth, multispectral satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel-2), can be utilized to monitor and protect sites that are already known with particular reference to Islamic archaeological sites in Ethiopia. The four sites used are in different geographic and geomorphological areas: three on the Somali Plateau (Harlaa, Harar, and Sheikh Hussein), and one on the edge of the Afar Depression (Nora), and have varied histories. The results indicate that open source satellite imagery offers a mechanism for evaluating site status and conservation over time at a large scale, and can be used on data from other areas of Africa by heritage professionals in the African continent at no cost.     

数字近景摄影测量在秦始皇陵百戏坑考古中的应用研究

既要保留遗迹在不同阶段的信息资料,又不影响发掘研究工作的继续进行,一直是考古工作者探索研究的问题。为配合秦始皇陵百戏俑坑的考古发掘工作,为后续考古研究和文物遗迹的保护提供必要的基础信息资料,针对大场景考古发掘现场,通过数字全站仪对文物挖掘现场布设的一定数量控制点进行观测获取其三维点位坐标。利用非量测数码相机获取现场多航带序列影像,通过数码相机检校、自动空中三角测量、影像特征提取与影像匹配、数字微分纠正等数字近景摄影测量方法,获取反映发掘现场文物分布情况的数字高程模型(DEM)和正射影像(DOM)数据。在生成的正射影像图上进行文物轮廓线条的提取,获得发掘现场文物的正射投影矢量图。实现文物位置、形状及分布的平面量测。实验证明:该方法不仅可大面积、快速获取文物挖掘现场文物分布的正射投影平面图,实现考古数字制图,而且能保证一定的精度。具有较高的推广应用价值。     

Canine Digging Behavior and Archaeological Implications

Abstract

Pit features, frequently reported at archaeological sites, are usually thought be culturally produced. The numbers and forms of pits found at an archaeological site influence inferences of human activity; therefore, the inferred cultural origin of pits at archaeological sites needs to be demonstrated, rather than assumed. Ethnoarchaeological study of dog digging behavior, combined with our understanding of the long symbiotic relationship between human beings and canines, suggests that canine disturbance may be a significant factor in site formation processes. Canines are the probable agent for certain commonly reported pit forms, and are probably implicated in the disturbance of human-dug pits much more often than commonly understood. Dogs dig under a variety of conditions, including those expected in hunter-gatherer, pastoral, and agricultural sites. Excavation of recent dog-holes reveals marked similarities with certain features reported in the archaeological literature.     

Archaeological Site Information Modelling and Management Based on Close-Range Photogrammetry and GIS

New challenges in management and restoration of archaeological sites require the utilization of advanced technologies and systems to assist in preserving the important legacy of human heritage. These challenges include monitoring and preserving of site landscapes, maintenance and rehabilitation of archaeological structures, and quality and safety management. In this research, an integrated methodology based on photogrammetry and Three-Dimensional (3D) Geographic Information System (GIS) is developed to capture and model essential details needed for the proper management of archaeological sites. Recent advances in digital imagery and modelling utilize photogrammetry as an efficient technique for 3D modelling of archaeological sites to derive accurate measurements of size, shape, position, and texture of objects using two-dimensional digital photographs. Spatial data that include aerial stereo photographs, satellite images, close-range photos, terrestrial surveying and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are integrated within the design of the proposed model. The approach is validated with a case study of Ajloun Castle, one of the ancient and important preserved structures located in Jordan. Various sequential levels of details have been developed for the castle: Orthophoto, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), structures geometry and site layout and 3D textured model. The suggested methodology is expected to be efficient in modelling and documenting archaeological structures. The developed model is utilized to assess the management of archaeological structures through feasibility analysis, rehabilitation decisions, and safety planning.     

Pollen-Analytical Results from Lake Katajajärvi – Aspects of the History of Settlement in the Finnish Inland Regions

Abstract

The Early Metal Period (1800 cal BC–AD 300) of the Finnish inland regions is characterized by a scarcity of archaeological remains. Its latest stages, in particular, have proved to be difficult to interpret. This paper discusses the continuity of settlement in the Early Metal Period as indicated by archaeological survey and pollen-analytical data. The study area is situated in Repovesi National Park in southeastern Finland. The pollen analysis was constructed from a sediment sequence taken from Lake Katajajärvi. The archaeological survey data from Repovesi National Park supports earlier hypotheses of the small number of Early Metal Period sites. In the pollen data, the first anthropogenic impact is recorded from about 2600 BC onwards, with weak signs of cultivation around 2370 BC. From around 1900 BC onwards a clear change in tree, shrub and herb pollen percentages indicates anthropogenic impact, possibly grazing, in the area. The pollen-analytical results also revealed a cultivation period of about 900 years at the end of the Early Metal Period, providing proof of continuity in settlement during a period characterized by a scarcity of archaeological material. A new beginning of cultivation from cal AD 1160 to 1250 onwards can be considered as indicating population growth, developing settlements and the colonization of new areas. The results from Repovesi are challenging from an archaeological point of view, because they represent slash-and-burn cultivation that appears to have been practised in total wilderness conditions. Comparison of the Lake Katajajärvi results with other areas raises new questions that call for a discussion of early slash-and-burn cultivation in new perspective.