The Dramatic Abandonment of a Late-Antique Settlement in the South Caucasus: The First Archaeological Findings from Qaratəpə, Bərdə Rayon,Azerbaijan

This paper presents the first results of a new project investigating the provincial structure of the eastern Caucasus region in the late Antique and early Islamic periods. Excavations at the newly discovered rural archaeological site of Qarat?p? have so far revealed two phases of use: a burial ground dating to the 12th century a.d. and an unusually large earthen structure burnt in a catastrophic fire. Owing to the rapid abandonment of this building, whole ceramic and glass vessels were recovered from the fill of one of the rooms. The presence of charred seeds and roof timbers allowed for the acquisition of radiocarbon dates for the construction and abandonment of the building, placing the latter at the end of the 6th century a.d. These findings reveal crucial clues as to the transformation of the rural zone prior to the expansion of Islam, and a unique material assemblage dating from this period.     

Reflections on Collaborative Archaeology and Large-Scale Online Research Infrastructures

ABSTRACT

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an archive working at a national level in the UK, ensuring that archaeologists have access to high quality and dependable digital resources, including openly licensed legacy data for reuse. The ADS acts as a metadata aggregator for archaeological data held by larger heritage agencies and smaller regional organizations and participates in international aggregation infrastructure projects such as ARIADNE, which allows users to access archaeological resources held in many countries from a single interface. Large-scale infrastructures can facilitate the building of long-term, complex relationships and active collaborations, not just technical solutions. This paper reflects on the roles of stewardship and equity within ARIADNE and the ADS, two large-scale online research infrastructures, and how these types of infrastructures may help to create a more collaborative archaeology, including lessons learned, challenges and opportunities, and thoughts for the future.     

Local sustainable development: a knowledge base for adaptation planning

Towards the end of the century, Serbia will face a dramatic increase in annual temperature between 2°C and 6°C and decrease in annual accumulated precipitation up to 12%. Recent 2014 floods in Serbia, with more than 30 victims, and more than 30,000 displaced people, with overall damage close to €1.5 billion, reflected those trends and the likely risks that region will face due the changing climate. Those risks may influence the development process at the local level. This paper assesses the existing priority measures in local sustainable development strategies and re-interprets their characteristics using a methodological framework for the definition of adaptation measures. It offers a new understanding of the ongoing local sustainable development approach in the potentially most vulnerable municipalities in Serbia. The study focused on following properties of developmental measures: cost-effectiveness, structural characteristics, target realm, spatial determination, time frame, climate responsiveness, and sector and budget allocation of development measures at the local level. The results of the analysis suggest that the initiation of adaptation planning should consider the improvement of the methodological framework – the introduction of inter-sectoral and cross-sectoral planning practice, cost–benefit analysis, the involvement of individual actors in planning and dynamic planning approaches.     

Suburbanization and sprawl in post-socialist Belgrade and Sofia

The goal of this research is to examine the processes of suburbanization and sprawl in two post-socialist capital cities in Southeast Europe – Belgrade, Serbia and Sofia, Bulgaria. Our analysis begins with a survey of relevant historical developments in the two cities, which illustrates the impact of major political, economic and social drivers on urban development processes and form. We follow this with an empirical study aimed at identifying contemporary features of peri-urban processes occurring in the two cities. Specifically, we explore spatial patterns, general population trends and changes in urban densities. Our study confirms earlier observations by other researchers that processes of suburbanization are occurring in Belgrade and Sofia. Yet this research goes further and emphasizes the specific combination of conditions inherited from the era of state socialism and the features of South-east European urban culture. Thus regarding the form of urban expansion, we observe relatively weak trends of sprawl with strong local specifics. On this basis, we discuss our empirical results with the objective of identifying the specifics of studied processes in Belgrade and Sofia as a grounds for the articulation of an appropriate policy framework.     

The Baelo Claudia Paradigm: The Exploitation of Marine Resources in Roman Cetariae

The Roman city of Baelo Claudia (Baetica, Hispania) is one of the best known halieutic sites of the Mare Nostrum, dating from between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD. Recent archaeological investigations have included the discovery, excavation and interdisciplinary study of two new fish-salting factories (so-called “Conjuntos Industriales” XI and XII), providing valuable new information on the exploitation of marine resources. This paper provides the first synthesis of all of the available archaeological evidence for the first three phases of the fishing-product cycle (marine resources/fishing equipment/processing facilities and food products) at this unique site on the Strait of Gibraltar.     

Geophysical investigations of WWII air-raid shelters in the UK

Just before WWII, the British government prepared for an aerial onslaught that was predicted to raze cities and cause mass casualties. By 1938, the Air Raid Precautions Act officially stated that population protection would be through dispersal, meaning evacuation and small-scale protection, local authority responsibility often devolving to householders. Archaeological records of remaining air-raid shelters are relatively rare and under threat. This paper reports on geophysical surveys on three sites in Stoke-on-Trent and London. Results found three intact Stanton shelters in Stoke-on-Trent, located by GPR, electrical resistivity, magnetometry, gravity and electromagnetic methods. In London, partially demolished shelters and an intact, mass public shelter were both detected by EM and GPR methods, with subsequent intrusive investigations confirming results. Study outcomes show hitherto-neglected wartime shelters are in varied condition, with geophysical surveys able to detect, characterise and assess them, helping bring WWII British history into the wider scientific community and public domain.