Archaeological maps: methods and techniques for territorial analysis (original) (raw)
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Characterization of Commercial Archaeology in Spain
En este informe se presentan los principales resultados de la "2ª encuesta a empresas de arqueología en España", así como las actividades previstas para la valorización de dichos resultados. El estudio se ha llevado a cabo en el marco del proyecto "Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe, 2012-2014", cuyo objetivo es definir y conocer la situación actual de la arqueología como profesión en el continente europeo (este documento se refiere únicamente al caso español). ¿Cuántos arqueólogos hay?, ¿cuántos son hombres y cuántas mujeres?, ¿qué formación poseen?, ¿para quién trabajan?, ¿qué tipo de tareas desempeñan?, ¿cuál es su salario?, ¿en qué condiciones realizan su trabajo?, ¿qué grado de movilidad geográfica existe en la profesión?, ¿cómo les afecta la actual crisis económica?, ¿qué medidas han aplicado para intentar adaptarse a esa situación?....son algunas de las preguntas a las que se pretende dar respuesta. [EN] This report presents the main results of "...
2018
Despite the technologies are now part of the archaeological discipline, they must not divert attention from archaeological issues and should be aimed at solving different historical and methodological questions, such the phases of a monument or innovative representation methods. The paper focuses the attention mainly on the use of range-data and image-based systems applied to the archaeological heritage, in order to highlight differences between the techniques and the related errors. Some considerations are necessary in order to find possible solutions for improving the quality and the accuracy of a survey project, considering the recent and innovative techniques adopted in archaeology. At the same time the authors provided, where possible, some solutions and suggestions for reducing the errors and checking the general quality of the work. Different experimentations have been made on some case studies that show how to manage technologies trying to reduce as much as possible the errors in the different phases of the survey pipeline. A specific part has been dedicated to the photogrammetric process from drones compared to traditional acquisitions, usually performed with aluminium poles, and the common errors in the representation of the archaeological excavations.
This paper has a twin methodological and interpretative focus. It presents the use of geospatial technologies applied to archaeological surveying. We use the high-resolution spatial and temporal data obtained from the study of the ancient Protohistoric and Roman landscape in the eastern area of the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Alicante province, Spain) to illustrate the methodological proposals. The observed spatial patterns allow us to infer certain aspects relating to the ancient use of the land, transformations in settlement patterns and the intensification of landscape use. 1. Rural landscape and surface record Studies of the ancient rural landscape face major challenges in identifying and explaining the archaeological vestiges. Most of the difficulties encountered during this type of research have been described in works devoted to that subject and it is beyond the possibilities of this paper to comment on and explain them (Alcock and Cherry, 2004; Mayoral and Sevillano, 2013). Nevertheless, along those initial lines we would like to refer to certain factors that, from our point of view, affect the question of the surface record. The first variables we find are natural and include soil conditions and topographic, climatic and edaphic particularities, as well as the vegetation, all of which condition the way in which the surface is seen. The impacts on surveys range from the soil visibility conditions caused by vegetation to the effect on slope topography of landslips that lead to greater surface dispersion. Another set of factors that conditions surveys is human secular establishment in rural environments and on farmland. Repeated occupation of the same niches blurs or erases earlier traces, making them difficult to identify and analyse. This particularly affects Mediterranean highland areas where terraces and banks have been built to parcel out farmland, mainly during the mediaeval and modern periods. Finally, we refer to ancient establishment methods, the intensity of land use and the properties of the surface archaeological record formed over the centuries. These formation conditions affect such aspects as the survival of building remains, movable find density and the way in which wider or narrower dispersions were formed. These factors sometimes lead to areas with a high density of surface archaeological record. These are places with high levels of dispersed remains consisting of thousands of fragments that often form virtual carpets of pottery remains covering hundreds of hectares. Sometimes they result from the superposition of pottery remains from different periods as a result of a dense historical stratification of rural sites. On occasions those extensive zones of finds are dated to a single period, which presents us with post-depositional processes and farming practices that have led to the formation of such complex spatial distributions of remains. These circumstances make it necessary to use archaeological surface investigation methodologies with multiple techniques with the aim of increasing the spatial and chronological resolution of the data obtained. Only by refining the procedures will we be able to progress in our understanding of the ancient rural landscape. In the following article we present the methodological proposals for surveying, analysing and interpreting these zones with a high density of surface remains. Based on specific cases from the Protohistoric and Roman periods in our study area we illustrate the methods and proposals for the archaeological interpretation of the evidence. The study area is the River Serpis valley, a mountainous region in the north of the present-day province of Alicante (Spain). In antiquity it was a territory presided over by fortified centres of a certain size from which a dense dispersed rural occupation was organised. These rural communities d basically farms and small villages d are fundamental to our understanding of the ways in
2014
The present report was elaborated by Associação Profissional de Arqueólogos (APA, Portugal) in the context of the DISCO 2014 project, coordinated by York Archaeological Trust. The nature of APA – a professional association of archaeologists – is coherent with the goals of DISCO 2014, since it is our objective to survey the profession in Portugal, define its major difficulties and influence the decision makers for possibly necessary changes. The project DISCO 2014 is, therefore, the essence of what APA needed to achieve among Portuguese archaeologists – define how many professionals there are, where they work and in which conditions. Furthermore, it was necessary to define which changes might be pivotal to ensure the good path of the discipline in the country and internationally. Upon knowledge of the nature of enquiries and methodology used by other countries (in December 2013), APA decided to launch two questionnaires – one individual, and a second one designed for organisations. The questionnaires were defined with the approval of YAT and were then launched in a Google Survey platform. Archaeologists were individually invited to fill out the forms digitally, through the Internet. Then, a survey of potential employers in Archaeology was performed so that a considerable and diverse number of organisations could be also invited to answer the questionnaire. In this case, we selected institutions which employed archaeologists. For the individual questionnaires we obtained 572 answers to 900 invitations. For the organisations questionnaire we obtained 102 answers. The specific goal of the present project is to identify the changes that have occurred in Archaeology since the 2008 crisis and how our profession has been affected in different countries. Portuguese results demonstrate that the crisis became particularly severe after 2011, as it is visible in the results of both questionnaires – individual and organisational. This economic pressure was due to with the interruption of large public investments as a consequence of the World Monetary Fund and European Central Bank intervention in the country. From the questionnaires there are particular problems possible to be identified, such as the reduction of permanent jobs, a higher mobility of archaeologists and a severe reduction in income. Academic investment and achievement, however, continues to be significant, even though funding for research has been reduced in the past two years. Socially, archaeologists in Portugal are almost all born in the country and have significant academic education, with a high percentage of professionals that hold post-graduate degrees, from universities in different locations. In the private sector archaeologists in Portugal have significantly lower salaries than equivalent university graduates in other areas. Labour contracts are volatile and work conditions very variable, depending on the private companies the professionals work for. 8 Recently, however, a Union of the Archaeology Workers (STARQ) has been created and the contractual problems are being discussed at that level. APA (Associação Profissional de Arqueólogos) works for the better quality of archaeological work developed in our country. In that sense, we have prepared a series of recommendations that we are directing to an array of institutions which can influence the decision making sectors in diverse areas of public intervention
(2017) Reflections on Current Archaeological Surveying
Rodríguez-Navarro, P., "Reflections on Current Archaeological Surveying", in DISEGNARECON. Journal of Architecture and Cultural Heritage, Italy, Vol 10, No 19 (dicember 2017), pp. 1-5
Archaeology is the science of studying the arts, monuments and ancient objects through their remains. Since its inception, the methodology used to carry out this study has been based on the detailed drawing of these objects, to which other types of physical and chemical analysis were incorporated. In this way, we can say that all the archaeological objects and sites that we wish to analyze are drawn for their better knowledge, restoration and dissemination. However, although we can say that modern archaeology has existed as a discipline since the 19th century, it has been during the last decade, with the maturity of digital applications, when archaeological drawing has experienced a real revolution. Already towards the end of the 20th century, with the appearance of computerized drawing and the incipient digital photography, we witnessed some changes, although not substantial, coexisting with these new technologies with manual surveying techniques. La arqueología es la ciencia que estudia las artes, los monumentos y los objetos antiguos a través de sus restos. Desde sus inicios la metodología utilizada para llevar a cabo este estudio se ha basado en el dibujo detallado de dichos objetos, al que se fueron incorporando otros tipos de análisis físicos y químicos. De manera que se puede afirmar que todos los objetos y sitios arqueológicos que se desean analizar, se dibujan para su mejor conocimiento, restauración y difusión. Pero aunque la arqueología moderna existe como disciplina desde el siglo XIX, ha sido en la última década, con la madurez de las aplicaciones digitales, cuando el dibujo de la arqueología ha tenido una verdadera revolución. Ya a finales del siglo XX, con la aparición del dibujo informatizado y la incipiente fotografía digital, fuimos testigos de algunos cambios, aunque no fueron sustanciales, conviviendo estas nuevas tecnologías con las técnicas de levantamiento manual.