High Dynamic Range Imaging for Archaeological Recording

This paper notes the adoption of digital photography as a primary recording means within archaeology, and reviews some issues and problems that this presents. Particular attention is given to the problems of recording high-contrast scenes in archaeology and high dynamic range imaging using multiple exposures is suggested as a means of providing an archive of high-contrast scenes that can later be tone-mapped to provide a variety of visualisations. Exposure fusion is also considered, although it is noted that this has some disadvantages. Three case studies are then presented: (1) a very high-contrast photograph taken from within a rock-cut tomb at Cala Morell, Menorca, (2) an archaeological test pitting exercise requiring rapid acquisition of photographic records in challenging circumstances and (3) legacy material consisting of three differently exposed colour positive (slide) photographs of the same scene. In each case, high dynamic range (HDR) methods are shown to significantly aid the generation of a high-quality illustrative record photograph, and it is concluded that HDR imaging could serve an effective role in archaeological photographic recording, although there remain problems of archiving and distributing HDR radiance map data.     

Beyond Metrics: Reappraising York’s Hungate “Slum”

Much of the excitement generated in Britain since 2007 by the York Archaeological Trust’s excavations of the city’s Hungate neighborhood, which Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree characterized as a “slum” in his pioneering poverty survey of 1901, derives from the unexpected volume and variety of material evidence uncovered about life in a poor community within a modern industrial city. Such material evidence and its often uncertain relationships to other historical data can enhance analysis by complicating understanding of the past, rather than echoing conventional wisdom. Findings from Hungate can thus contribute to nuanced understandings of urban social disadvantage not only at the neighborhood level in this one particular British city, but at the larger scales of analysis that encompass the growth of cities and interacting urban regions in Britain and around the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These understandings have contemporary relevance for a world in which over half of humanity now lives in urban areas, as misconceptions about “slums” continue to undermine efforts to reduce urban inequality.     

Consuming Citizenship? The Archaeology of Mexican Immigrant Ambivalence in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, the consumption of American-made goods was seen as an expression of one’s patriotism and loyalty to the nation. According to a number of historical archaeological case studies, racialized groups, such as African Americans and Chinese Americans, used consumption as a way of gaining access to the full benefits of American citizenship typically reserved for individuals deemed “white” by law. The material culture of Mexican immigrants living in early twentieth-century Los Angeles tells a slightly different tale. Despite being ascribed a legal whiteness, archaeological and documentary data suggest that Mexican immigrants expressed ambivalence toward their consumption of American goods and outright rejected the notion that exerting such buying power would lead to a broader acceptance in Anglo American society.     

The Sartre–Camus Quarrel and the Fall of the French Intellectual

Over the past thirty years, the disappearance, if not the death, of the intellectual in France has been the focus of significant conversation and debate. Yet a good bit earlier, two writers who epitomized that very figure of the intellectual, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, in works written after their bitter break, seemed to have already sensed this decline. The present essay explores what Camus's novel La Chute [The fall] and Sartre's autobiography Les Mots [The words] share thematically and, in particular, how both works anticipate the fall of the French intellectual.     

Folklore’s Timeless Past,Ireland’s Present Past,and the Perception of Rural Houses in Early Historic Ireland

This study examines how the archaeology of historic Ireland has been interpreted. Two approaches to the history and archaeology of Ireland are identified. The first, the timeless past, has its roots in a neo-Lamarckian view of the past. This perspective was particularly developed in the work of geographer and ethnographer, Estyn Evans. The second view, associated in particular with a nationalist approach to Ireland’s past, looked to the west of the country where it was believed the culture had been preserved largely unchanged and in its purest form. The continuing impact of these frameworks upon the interpretation of rural settlement in the period 1200–1700 is examined. It is argued that historians and archaeologists alike have underestimated the quality of buildings.     

Archaeology in the World of Display: A Material Study of the Use of History in the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897

History was an important notion in constructing an industrial capitalist society in the nineteenth century. This article deals with the manifest use of history at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897. At this exhibition, history was ubiquitous and was most fully expressed in the model of medieval and Renaissance Stockholm called “Old Stockholm.” The history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century exhibitions in general has been thoroughly studied in the field of humanities. However, the specific use of history and space has not attracted much interest. This analysis of the model of Old Stockholm is of the first archaeological study of remains of the great exhibitions ever to have been done. Even though the “Old Stockholm” pavilion was exceedingly popular in the summer of 1897, only very scarce documentation has survived. An archaeological excavation of parts of the temporary historical models, such as the “Hospital of the Holy Spirit,” showed convincing evidence of the hegemonic position which the use of history enjoyed at the exhibition and in the nineteenth century.     

Archaeology as Built for the Tourists: The Anasazi Cliff Dwellings of Manitou Springs,Colorado

Anasazi-era archaeology sites have been extremely popular tourist attractions since the 1890s, but one site—the cliff dwellings in Manitou Springs, Colorado—stands apart because it is a fake. The site was constructed at the turn of the twentieth century as a more accessible tourist alternative to Four Corners-area Anasazi ruins. The story of its construction and how it continues to cater to its visitors offers insight into the ways in which archaeology sites function as tourist destination. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings forces scholars to consider questions of authenticity, authority, and how people engage the past.     

Children’s Burial Grounds in Ireland (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cilliní</Emphasis>) and Parental Emotions Toward Infant Death

Cilliní—or children’s burial grounds—were the designated resting places for unbaptized infants and other members of Irish society who were considered unsuitable by the Roman Catholic Church for burial in consecrated ground. The sites appear to have proliferated from the seventeenth century onwards in the wake of the Counter-Reformation. While a number of previous studies have attempted to relate their apparently marginal characteristics to the liminality of Limbo, evidence drawn from the archaeological record and oral history accounts suggests that it was only the Roman Catholic Church that considered cilliní, and those interred within, to be marginal. In contrast, the evidence suggests that the families of the dead regarded the cemeteries as important places of burial and treated them in a similar manner to consecrated burial grounds.     

Geological controls on regional transmissivity anisotropy

A variety of data indicate that the Carbonate aquifer in southern Manitoba is a heterogeneous and anisotropic aquifer wherein groundwater flow follows preferred flow path networks. Specific capacity tests show that aquifer transmissivity can vary by up to four orders of magnitude within 1 km. Geostatistical analysis reveals a strong anisotropy in the transmissivity field, with better spatial continuity in NE–SW and NW–SE directions, coincident with the dominant orientations of fractures observed in bedrock exposures. However, discrepancies between the orientation of highest fracture density and best transmissivity continuity suggest that either additional geological factors control the preferred flow network or there is a biased representation of the fracture pattern because all direct fracture observations came from the northern part of the study area. In an effort to investigate whether the geographically biased fracture data set represents the fracture pattern for the whole region, Landsat images and digital elevation maps were processed to extract linear features that may indicate subsurface fracture zones in areas where bedrock is covered by glacial sediments. The results suggest a consistent fracture pattern throughout the study area, indicating that the two observed fracture groups might have gone through different processes in terms of permeability development. Alteration by mineral cementation and dissolution along fracture surfaces may have preferentially improved the fracture permeability in one orientation, while reducing it in the other. The in situ stress field is also believed to play a major role in the preferred regional flow network. This paper discusses the evidence for the preferred flow path network and possible geological factors controlling aquifer anisotropy in this region.     

Fracture spacing during hydro‐fracturing of cap‐rocks

Layered low permeability rock units, like shales, represent seals or ‘cap‐rocks’ in a variety of geological settings. A continuous increase in the fluid pressure gradients across a virtually impermeable rock layer will ultimately lead to hydro‐fracturing. Depending on the boundary conditions, such fracturing may lead to the formation of a set of sub‐parallel cracks oriented more or less perpendicular to the cap‐rock layer. In this article, we propose a new numerical model that describes interactions between multiple cross‐cutting fractures in an elastic low permeability rock layer. The width of each fracture and the spacing between them are modeled as a force balance between the fluid pressure and the elastic forces in the cap‐rock and between each fracture. The model indicates that the system of fractures evolves toward a spatially periodic steady‐state distribution with a fixed fracture spacing and aperture. The results are similar for incompressible and compressible fluids. The steady‐state conditions depend on only two dimensionless parameters, and the fracture spacing is only weakly dependent on the cap‐rock thickness. This is in contrast to fracturing produced by simple extension of an elastic rock layer beyond the fracture strength, in which case fracture spacing is proportional to layer thickness.