Archaeological Computing

Despite a long history of research and conservation dating back to the late 19th century, when the current stage in the management of the three large Antequeran megalithic monuments started in 2004 there was an almost complete absence of high-resolution cartography to support their study and protection. To being to solve this severe deficiency, a high-resolution cartographic survey of Menga through terrestrial laser scanning, 3D modelling and photogrammetry was carried out in 2005. In this paper we present a short summary of that work, describing its technical and conceptual basis as well as the results that were obtained. In addition, we briefly discuss some examples of the highly positive impact this newly developed cartography has had on the management and research of this megalithic monument.

The concept of a visualscape was introduced less than a decade ago as a generic term with the aim of unifying and extending within a GIS the ideas and scope of current analyses of ‘human’ visual space, independently of their scale or context (Llobera 2003, 30). This chapter firstly starts with acknowledging that generic notions which make explicit the conceptual affinities of current visual analyses have the potential to encourage methodological innovation, and precipitate a fuller understanding of the interplay between humans and their surroundings. It then reviews recent works on three-dimensional visibility analysis found in the fields of geography, urban studies and archaeology, and discusses their conceptual contribution to the study of visual space. Focusing on these new developments it is argued that the visualscape could prove a more powerful and useful operational concept, if it is associated more broadly with the full range of technological possibilities used currently to describe the visual structure of landscapes and built spaces, rather than tied specifically to GIS applications.

The thesis concentrates on computational methods pertaining to ancient ostraca - ink on clay inscriptions, written in Hebrew. These texts originate from the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and dated to the late First Temple period (8th – early 6th centuries BCE). The ostraca are almost the sole remaining epigraphic evidence from the First Temple period and are therefore important for archaeological, historical, linguistic, and religious studies of this era. This “noisy” material offers a fertile ground for the development of various “robust” image analysis, image processing, computer vision and machine learning methods, dealing with the challenging domain of ancient documents’ analysis. The common procedures of modern epigraphers involve manual and labor-intensive steps, facing the risk of unintentionally mixing documentation with interpretation. Therefore, the main goal of this study is establishing a computerized paleographic framework for handling First Temple period epigraphic material. The major research questions, addressed in this thesis are: quality evaluation of manual facsimiles; quality evaluation of ostraca images; automatic binarization of the documents and its subsequent refinement; quality evaluation of binarizations on global and local levels; identification of different writers between inscriptions (two distinct methods are proposed); image segmentation (with improvements over the classical Chan-Vese algorithm); and letters’ shape prior estimation. The developed methods were tested on real-world archaeological and modern data and their results are found to be favorable.

This paper gives a broad introduction to the concept of crowdfunding, before quantitatively analyzing 35 archaeological crowdfunding campaigns in order to draw relevant conclusions on the method's potential for financing archaeological research.
It also provides a quick overview of some important do's and don'ts for people considering using crowdfunding to back their next archaeological project.

In the interest of accessibility this paper is published on Academia.edu rather than through an established journal.

Over the last fifty years the use of computer science and mathematics in archaeology has undergone continuous development and to date it has become an almost indispensable tool at any stage of the archaeological procedure: documentation, planning and data recording
during surveys and excavations, laboratory studies, landscape analysis, reconstruction of social systems, archiving, mediation within the scientific community and amongst a broader public. New technologies have revolutionised the discipline: archaeological
information systems, data retrieval systems, geographic information systems, 3D, the Internet, multidimensional data analysis, mathematical modelling and multi-agent systems. But the most ambitious contribution lies in the field of the formalisation of a general theoretical framework of the discipline, the independence of which from any paradigm and ideology could raise archaeology to the level of the leading scientific disciplines.

A review of the archeological and non-archeological use of visibility networks reveals the use of a limited range of formal techniques, in particular for representing visibility theories. This paper aims to contribute to the study of complex visual relational phenomena in landscape archeology by proposing a range of visibility network patterns and methods. We propose first-and second-order visibility graph representations of total and cumulative viewsheds, and two-mode representations of cumulative viewsheds. We present network patterns that can be used to represent aspects of visibility theories and that can be used in statistical simulation models to compare theorized networks with observed networks. We argue for the need to incorporate observed visibility network density in these simulation models, by illustrating strong differences in visibility network density in three example landscapes. The approach is illustrated through a brief case study of visibility networks of long barrows in Cranborne Chase.

This paper discusses the interim results of the AHRC RTISAD project. The project has developed and tested a range of techniques for gathering and processing reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) data. It has also assembled a detailed understanding of the breadth of RTI practice. Over the past decade the range of applications and algorithms in the broad domain of RTI has increased markedly, with current working addressing issues such as large resolution capture, 3D RTI, annotation, enhancement amongst others. Capture of RTI datasets has begun to occur in all aspects of cultural heritage and elsewhere. This has in turn prompted the development of policies and methods for managing and integrating the large quantities of data produced. The paper describes these techniques and issues in the context of a range of artefacts, including painted Roman and Neolithic surfaces, examples of ancient documents in a variety of forms, and archaeological datasets from Herculaneum, Çatalhöyük, Abydos and elsewhere. The paper also identifies on-going software development work of value to the broad EVA community and proposes further enhancements.

In this paper, a broad overview is given of the recent development of digital techniques in landscape archaeology, and of the way in which these have effectively revolutionised the way in which we do landscape archaeology nowadays. Within this development, a number of fields can be identified where computer techniques are highly successful in producing better scientific results more efficiently. The main contribution of computer techniques to landscape archaeology is found in their application to the prediction and detection of archaeological remains, to exploratory data analysis and to the visualisation of research results. A number of examples are shown illustrating this. The paper also tries to address the more fundamental issue if the application of digital methods and techniques is actually helpful for developing new interpretations and theory. It is concluded that we are still facing some stiff challenges there that are closely related to the attitude of archaeology as a science to theory, but also to the difficulties of developing software tools that actually do what we need them to do.

This dissertation is dealing with the accurate representation of archaeological materials in 3D modeling. It is believed to make a contribution in filling the gap between the archaeological perspective about artefacts’ temporal and spatial nature and materials modeling.
Its theoretical basis, as explained in the introductory chapter, is derives from philosophical approaches to artefacts. Concepts about artefacts’ cycle of life and artefacts’ state, or physicality, in relation to time and change are presented. Next, the appearance of archaeological finds is decomposed, mentioning the parameters which are responsible for their complexity. Then, the potential uses of 3D models of artefacts are mentioned, and the basic requirements for the successful implementation of computer modelling in the study of artefacts are underlined.
In the second chapter explanations about materials’ appearance, derived from physics, optics, as well as art conservation and cognate disciplines, such as material science and analytic chemistry, are presented. First, fundamental scientific axioms about the interactions between matter and light are introduced. Then, the most
common degradation mechanisms and phenomena, observed on artefacts are defined. These are broad topics, so the discussion is constrained to three material types; glass, metal and painted surfaces.
Computer graphics methods for modelling the appearance of materials, such as shaders and rendering techniques are included in the third chapter. In particular, various methods for simulating and visualizing the appearance of weathered
materials are presented. The third chapter ends with a critical approach to the work already done in the field, as seen from an archaeological computing point of view.
The practical part contains the evaluation of 3D models for three artefacts; a glass, a metal and a painted one, in their initial state as well as in various stages of deterioration, created in 3d Studio Max, using mental ray materials and global illumination techniques. The obvious goal is to provide a list of materials and renderings for the three artefacts. Apart from this, the aim of the present study is to describe a meaningful way of thinking in order to achieve the accurate visualization of archaeological materials. The whole process of creating the materials is described and the resulted renderings are compared with each other.

Archaeological network analysts often represent archaeological data as static networks and explore their structure.However,most networks changed through time and static network representations do not allow archaeologists to test assumptions about the dynamic processes driving this change. The study of visibility networks in archaeology is a good example of this. Archaeologists propose hypotheses of the role of lines of sight between settlements, which imply dynamic processes for the establishment of the observed visibility networks. However, commonly used methods do not allow us to evaluate these hypotheses. In this paper we introduce exponential random graph modelling (ERGM) as a method for bridging static and dynamic approaches to interpreting visibility networks. This method offers a number of advantages: (1) it explicitly addresses the assumptions inherent in visibility network creation aboutwhat relationshipsbetweennodes mean and the types of processes they allow for; (2) it allows one to investigate the range of network structures that these assumptions give rise to;and(3) itexplores thedynamic processes thatmighthave led to observed networks. This method is used to evaluate hypotheses of the role of lines of sight in facilitating visual controlandcommunication during the later IronAgein Southern Spain. This studyshows thatERGMs can be used as a reflective technique to evaluate competing hypotheses, and that ERGM results subse- quently require more contextualised evaluation. Future work on ERGMs should focus on incorporating geographical constraints to further enhance its potential for studying visibility networks.

We deal with the general issue of handling statistical data in archaeology for the purpose of deducing sound, justified conclusions. The employment of various quantitative and statistical methods in archaeological practice has existed from its beginning as a systematic discipline in the 19th century (Drower 1995). Since this early period, the focus of archaeological research has developed and shifted several times. The last phase in this process, especially common in recent decades, is the proliferation of collaboration with various branches of the exact and natural sciences. Many new avenues of inquiry have been inaugurated, and a wealth of information has become available to archaeologists. In our view, the plethora of newly obtained data requires a careful reexamination of existing statistical approaches and a restatement of the desired focus of some archaeological investigations. We are delighted to dedicate this article to Israel Finkelstein, our teacher, adviser, colleague, an...

Geography, location and place have traditionally been under-studied by the humanities. This is not because of a lack of interest in them, or because of a failure to acknowledge their importance, but instead because these are difficult concepts to handle effectively. Mental maps of places mentioned in a source are notoriously hazy even to a reader who knows the area well. Manually attempting to map these places on paper is a time-consuming and unsatisfactory process resulting in a map that would frequently be an end-point of the research: reliant on decisions taken early in the investigation process, too inflexible to revise and suitable only for reproducing poorly in a monograph reliant on grey-scale publishing on a small page.
Geographical technologies including geographical information systems (GIS) and virtual globes such as Google Earth have the potential to break down these barriers and are leading to the development of a new field termed spatial humanities.

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the social functions of Aegean wall painting, by examining the communicative impact and possible socio-symbolic significance of Theran murals in the urban landscape of Late Bronze Age Akrotiri (Thera, Greece). It uses a novel method of computational analysis to investigate the visibility of mural painting in the prehistoric townscape which combines the functionalities of 3D modelling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The benefits of this approach lie in that it considers virtually all observer locations in the study area, while it takes more fully into account the precise shape of built forms and the physiological structure of the human visual system than other established methods of visibility analysis used in landscape and urban studies. The application of the methodology in the townscape of Akrotiri highlights some previously unobserved spatial relationships that could have played a role in enhancing the communicative impact of Theran murals in the LBA built environment, consequently encouraging the wide production of mural decoration in the settlement.

The paper deals with a brief description of OpenArcheo2, a wholly new archaeological information system currently being developed. The system subverts the usual perspective of solutions dedicated to the management/analysis of “raw” archaeological data, focusing entirely on interpreted information. Representation of archaeological knowledge becomes, therefore, the primary objective of the system, as can be clearly seen from the conceptual model and the ontology concisely presented in this paper.

This paper discusses the interim results of the AHRC RTISAD project. The project has developed and tested a range of techniques for gathering and processing reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) data. It has also assembled a detailed understanding of the breadth of RTI practice. Over the past decade the range of applications and algorithms in the broad domain of RTI has

This paper presents a biographical account of a second generation computing archaeologist’s engagement with seminal methodological and theoretical perspectives of arcaheological computing. On this basis, it advances the view that the seminal work of archaeological computing pioneers such as Spaulding, Gardin and Clarke in the field of artefact description and typology, and the complex and fluid insights it created on the emerging nature of archaeological knowledge, remains an essential source of intellectual stimulus for the development of adequate conceptual representation models of material culture.
the context of digital infrastructures for knowledge and communication in the cultural heritage disciplines, as shown from current research digital heritage projects.

Non-destructive geospatial survey methods for the interpretation of archaeological sites have become increasingly more popular within the last decade due to the significant technological progress in equipment and data processing techniques. Individual methods ...

Although the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has a long history in archaeology, spatial technologies have been rarely used to analyse the content of textual collections. A newly developed approach termed Geographic Text Analysis (GTA) is now allowing the semi-automated exploration of large corpora incorporating a combination of Natural Language Processing techniques, Corpus Linguistics, and GIS. In this article we explain the development of GTA, propose possible uses of this methodology in the field of archaeology, and give a summary of the challenges that emerge from this type of analysis.

In the last decade integrated non-destructive survey methods have offered new possibilities for the identification and recording of buried archaeological sites, whilst reducing to the minimum destructive intervention and the cost of investigating large sites. Using the Roman town of Ammaia (Marvão, Portugal) as a case study, this paper discusses the ways in which the informative potential of archaeological datasets derived via multi-method surveys can be best exploited through the use of computational methodologies. The first part of the paper offers a brief account of how GIS-based data integration, data fusion, 3D reconstruction and visualisation have been used until now to enrich the interpretation of archaeological datasets collected at Ammaia. The second part discusses in more detail the yet largely unexplored potential of urban network analysis to enhance the interpretation of ancient street networks revealed with non-destructive survey methods, as well as some of the problems involved in the interpretive process.

""This paper aims to make a conceptual and methodological contribution to the spatial analysis of past architectural
spaces, by suggesting some new methods for the investigation of human sensory engagement with the built environment.
The Late Antique church of San Vitale at Ravenna is used as a case study to demonstrate the potential of the
proposed techniques to illuminate social aspects of past built spaces.""

Witcher, R.E. (2019). Epilogue. Modelling Roman agricultural production: people, pots and power. In J. Remesal Rodríguez, V. Revilla Calvo, D. Martín-Arroyo Sánchez & A. Martín i Oliveras (eds) Paisajes productivos y redes comerciales en el Imperio Romano / Productive landscapes and trade networks in the Roman Empire: 247-254. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona. 978-84-9168-263-9

Throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, writers sought to explain the presence of a mountain of pottery sherds—a mons manufactus—on the bank of the River Tiber at Rome. One enduring interpretation can be traced back at least as far as Giovanni Cavallini’s Polistoria of the mid fourteenth century: these ceramic sherds were the remains of vessels used to bring to the ancient city tribute from Rome’s provinces and client kingdoms. The hill therefore was a material manifestation of the city’s imperial power, a monument to the emperors’ ability to concentrate the wealth of the world at its centre. After almost 150 years of archaeological investigations, starting with Heinrich Dressel’s excavations in the 1870s, we now know that Monte Testaccio is formed from millions of smashed amphorae filled originally, not with gold from Persia, but with green gold from Hispania: olive oil to feed and fuel the city’s million-strong population. This ‘unique archive’, as José Remesal describes it, documenting the supply of a staple agricultural product to the city of Rome, is an appropriate place to begin this edited collection on the productive landscapes and trade networks of the Roman Empire. For more than simply waste packaging, these amphorae at the end of their life-histories have rich stories to tell about distant landscapes, about rural production and urban consumption, and about the complex technological, social and political organization needed to transport them thousands of kilometres across the Mediterranean. From Monte Testaccio, the other papers of this volume then spread out to consider case studies as far removed as coast of south-western Spain and the Dobrogea in eastern Romania, and from Hadrian’s Wall in Britain back to the heart of empire in the hinterlands of Rome and Pompeii. This epilogue draws out some of the key themes that emerge from these contributions and identifies some challenges and avenues for future research.

The problem of finding a prototype for typewritten or handwritten characters belongs to a family of "shape prior" estimation problems. In epigraphic research, such priors are derived manually, and constitute the building blocks of "paleographic tables". Suggestions for automatic solutions to the estimation problem are rare in both the Computer Vision and the OCR/Handwriting Text Recognition communities. We review some of the existing approaches, and propose a new robust scheme, suitable for the challenges of degraded historical documents. This fast and easy to implement method is employed for ancient Hebrew inscriptions dated to the First Temple period.

So far only a few intra-site spatial analyses have been carried out for Neolithic settlements in the Paris basin. Case studies were performed mostly by means of distribution mapping and simple frequency calculations by material category, but rarely with statistical multivariate analysis.
Different cases can be recognised among the published studies: models were constructed for one type of feature, for sites with juxtaposition of elementary features, for the reconstruction of activity areas within an extensively excavated single phase occupational layer and recorded by surface unit and finally for the comparison between assemblages of domestic units.
One case study is presented here. The Neauphle-le-Vieux site (Yvelines) near Paris is an Early Neolithic settlement located in the Seine valley. It was assigned to the Post-Linear Pottery culture of the Paris basin, the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, dated between 5000 and 4700 BC. In this small settlement that yielded a single occupation level and two pits, distribution maps for each material category made it possible to identify three refuse areas at the surface. A factor analysis highlighted differences within refuse areas and pits. Activity areas were then reconstructed and explained based on the functional interpretation of the artefacts.