UK Chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology: Proceedings of the CAA UK Chapter Meeting University of Liverpool, 6th and 7th February 2009 9781407307329, 9781407337289

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
LIST OF FIGURES
Preface
Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Collections
Metadata for the mundane: Reasons and mechanisms for community archaeologists and small commercial units to document their digital photographs
Audio Podcasting and Archaeology
Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes
Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces in the Near Eastern Neolithic
Exploring the use of space using relativity
Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context
Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras el Bassit, Syria
Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology

Citation preview

BAR S2182 2010

UK Chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology

WILSON (Ed)

Proceedings of the CAA UK Chapter Meeting University of Liverpool, 6th and 7th February 2009

Edited by PROCEEDINGS OF CAA UK 2009

Andrew T. Wilson

BAR International Series 2182 2010 B A R Wilson 2182 cover.indd 1

15/12/2010 14:24:25

UK Chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Proceedings of the CAA UK Chapter Meeting University of Liverpool, 6th and 7th February 2009

Edited by

Andrew T. Wilson

BAR International Series 2182 2010

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 2182 UK Chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology © The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 2010 The authors' moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781407307329 paperback ISBN 9781407337289 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407307329 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2010. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

BAR PUBLISHING BAR titles are available from: BAR Publishing 122 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2 7BP, UK MAIL E [email protected] P HONE +44 (0)1865 310431 F AX +44 (0)1865 316916 www.barpublishing.com

C ONTENTS Preface Andrew Wilson

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Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Pam Young and Sarah Hammond Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collection Documentation at the British Museum . . . . . . . . . . Current Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Merlin Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collections Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Image downloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Online Research Catalogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Making use of the data online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limitations of the online database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metadata for the mundane: Reasons and document their digital photographs Alan Gillott Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . Provenance: the problem . . . . . . Diplomatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Camera Metadata . . . . . . . . . . GPS Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exif User Data . . . . . . . . . . . . IPTC Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . Copyright and Artist . . . . . . . . . Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes . . . .

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mechanisms for community archaeologists and small commercial units to

Audio Podcasting and Archaeology Alan M. Greaves Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why Audio? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Examples of the use of Audio Podcasts in Archaeology Pedagogic Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case Study: Methods of Archaeology Fieldtrip . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modelling Early Bronze Age Jason Jorgenson Modelling The Past . . Process Overview . . . Landuse Analyst . . . . Future development . .

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Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces Alexis McBride Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Near Eastern Neolithic . . . . . . . . . . . Neolithic Communal Spaces . . . . . . . . Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Internal Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpersonal Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

in the Near Eastern Neolithic . . . . . . . . . .

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Exploring the use of space using relativity Ehren Milner Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relativity-transforming space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparisons to a known quantity- the Cognitive Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Processing the spatial survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The methods used to transform X, Y and Z values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The precision and potential of relativistic methods to provide comparisons between sites Future applications of this method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3-D spheres and the 4th-dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Konstantinos Papadopoulos Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodological Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Natural Illumination & Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Artificial Illumination & Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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el Bassit, Syria . . . . .

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Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context

Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras Ulla Rajala and Nicolas Beaudry Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Canadian Archaeological Project at Ras el Bassit . . . . . . . . . . . . . Surveying the church and its surroundings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Creating a 3D model of the church in its context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment Palitha Edirisingha, Mark Pluciennik and Ruth Young Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Those Involved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Socialisation and Engagement in Distance Learning . . Second Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Session Design and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . Training Students and Lecturers in SL . . . . . . . . . Session Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Student Experience and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . Issues in the use of SL as a Teaching Medium . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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L IST OF F IGURES Audio Podcasting and Archaeology 1 Screen capture of the Pot-Casting project VLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Questionnaire results for Question Four . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Comparison of questionnaire results for Questions One and Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Questionnaire results for Question Seven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes 1 Breaking down the composition of a settlement’s diet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Calculation Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Animal Portion of Diet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Plant Portion of Diet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Initial Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Initial Herd Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Herd Size calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Animal Herd Breakdown Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Animal Diet Composition Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Animal Contribution Breakdown Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Cost Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Cost Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Cost Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The main screen in Landuse Analyst© . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 LA’s Diet Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 LA’s Crops Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 LA’s Crop Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 LA’s Crop Parameter Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 LA’s Animal Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 LA’s Animal Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 LA’s Animal Parameter Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 LA’s Assemblage Conversion Utility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 LA’s Calculations Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 LA’s Results Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 LA’s Log Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 LA’s Help Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces in the Near Eastern Neolithic 1 Standing stones at Beidha 17 , Nevalı C ¸ ori 37 , and G¨obekli Tepe 80 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 2 Benches at Jerf el-Ahmar , Nevalı C ¸ ori 37 , and G¨obekli Tepe 76 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Examples of potential movement paths in the Flagstone building, C¸ay¨on¨u H¨oy¨uk; building II, Nevalı C¸ori; Skull building 2a, C ¸ ay¨on¨u; and building 8, Beidha. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Viewsheds in building II, Nevalı C ¸ ori; enclosure D, G¨obekli Tepe; Skull building 2a, C¸ay¨on¨u; and building 8 Beidha if the viewer is 1.5m tall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Maximum and contextual capacity of building 8, Beidha and Terrazzo building, C¸ay¨on¨u. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Interpersonal distances in building 8, Beidha; Flagstone building, C¸ay¨on¨u; Enclosure D, G¨obekli Tepe; and building II, Nevalı Cori. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exploring the use of space using relativity 1 Relative Spaces and relative perspectives in relativistic systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The centroid based Cognitive model with centroids from each survey and parsimonious distributions. . . . . . . 3 Case Studies and transformed distributions (artefacts/ecofacts to the right for all with Kilpheder House 500 to the left). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Prevailing winds within Scotland with locations of longhouses as circles and case studies as triangles. . . . . . . 5 The simplified formula use and the transformed vertices of the cognitive model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Ring sectors and points used to extract values from the grids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The transformed grids of the cognitive model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context 1 Tholos C interior from the South showing the entrance and the window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Burial Building 19 in its current state of preservation from North West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv

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Top - Reconstruction of Tholos Tomb C. View from North East. Earth and stones act as a counterweight for the forces exerted by the vaulted roof. Bottom left - Close up view of the reconstructed east side of tholos Tomb C. The door is made up with the trilithon principle (three stones). Bottom right - The interior of Tholos Tomb C from the South West side. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Hypothetical reconstruction of Burial Building 19, which presents the only way of construction of a vaulted roof in order to be stable. View from South West. The exterior is rectangular, the interior forms a semi-vault and the gap between the two is filled up with a great amount of earth and stones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 First phase of Burial Building 19. From top to bottom, left to right: Final Gather and Global Illumination enabled, Global Illumination disabled, Global Illumination enabled & Final Gather disabled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Lighting Analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of April 2007 at 7 AM. It is the time of that day that a ray of light gets directly into the interior of the tomb. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) 7 Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of April 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of January 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Tholos Tomb C without a capstone at night. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Artificial Lighting in Tholos Tomb C (1st Phase) - Olive Oil. According to the luminance values the lamps provide illumination locally, which means that can be used for a specific task, rather than to globally illuminate the tomb. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Artificial Lighting in Tholos Tomb C (1st Phase). Torch with intensity of 1500 candelas providing illumination of approximately 100–130 lux. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Lighting analysis of the second phase of Tomb C on the 30th of July 2007 at 7 AM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lighting analysis of the second phase of Tomb C on the 30th of January 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tholos Tomb C without a capstone on the 30th of July 2007 at 3 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Lighting analysis of the first phase of Burial Building 19 on the 30th of July 2007 at 6 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Artificial Lighting in Burial Building 19 (1st Phase) - Beeswax. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras el Bassit, Syria 1 Location of the site (drawing by N. Beaudry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A view of the church complex and its standing western wall after clearing in 2002, facing NE (photo by N. Beaudry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The reconstructed plan and section of the church (drawing by N. Beaudry). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The site plan after the 2008 season (drawing by U. Rajala). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The rendered 3D model of the standing structures (illustration by U. Rajala). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology 1 Schematic diagram of a Saami tent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Kalasha menstrual and birthing hut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Saami tent in SL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Kalasha menstrual and birthing hut in SL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Preface Andrew T. Wilson School of Archaeological, Classics and Egyptology University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

It is with great pleasure that I write the preface to this volume that records contributions made at the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archæology UK Chapter 2009 (CAA UK 2009). This was only the second time the CAA UK chapter conference has been held outside its home of Southampton, since its reintroduction in 2005. As a graduate of the University of Southampton, it was a great privilege to be given the opportunity to host the conference this year. Over the last four years the conference has grown from strength to strength and this year was no exception. The conference was held in the beautiful surroundings of the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum. The Victoria Gallery & Museum is housed in the Grade II listed Victoria Building on Brownlow Hill, the University’s original site. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, the Victoria building’s distinctive red brick exterior inspired the term ‘red brick’ university which became synonymous with late nineteenth century civic universities. I would like to take this opportunity to thank a number of people who have helped throughout the duration of organising this year’s conference: Maria Young, Wendy Healey and Briony Wycherley for all of the help and support they have provided during the mammoth task of organising this conference, thank you. I would also like to pass on a special thank you to Sian ONeill and Chris Briggs for all their help over the two days of the conference. I am also greatly indebted to a large number of anonymous referees who read the papers during the editorial process. Each paper was read by at least two members of the research community. I’m sure that all the authors would like to relay their thanks to these individuals. I really hope that you enjoy reading the papers gathered here and if you managed to make it to the conference, through all the snow we had, I trust that it helps invoke happy memories of a very cold but fun weekend spent in Liverpool. Thank you, Andrew Wilson

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Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Collections Pam Young Merlin Plan Manager The British Museum Great Russell Street London, UK

Sarah Hammond Documentation Manager The British Museum Great Russell Street London, UK

Abstract—2009 is the 250th anniversary of The British Museum opening its doors to the public. Until now, the stored collections, which form the majority of our collection, have only been accessible to researchers with a clear idea of what we hold and what they want to view. From 2009 we will be able to offer a new kind of public access, with the entire collections database being freely available online by the end of the year through the Museum’s website. The first phase, flat works on paper, went online in October 2007, with releases of material from antiquity departments throughout 2008 and numismatics in 2009. This will mean over 1.8 million records are available, many with images, with new records being added at a rate of c.80,000 a year. Archaeological artefacts from sites worldwide make up a large proportion of the collection, and it will be possible to search them by areas such as material, provenance and period in a way which was previously impossible. This paper will trace the history of the documentation and digitisation of the British Museums collections, and look at the benefits to the archaeological community of having access to our database. We will also examine the limitations of the database, and the problems inherent in creating such a resource. To conclude, we will discuss the future of the online database, and possible collaborative projects with other institutions.

to all antiquities, whether they came from formal or informal excavations, were surface finds, or come from now unknown contexts. The British Museum was founded in 1753 by the bequest of Sir Hans Sloane, and first opened to the public in January 1759, when admission, although free, was by ticket only. In the intervening 250 years, access to the collection has been via galleries, student rooms and publications, but the full release of Collections Online (COL) in 2009 marks a new form of access. Academics and the general public can use this resource free of charge to answer enquiries directly without having to contact a particular curatorial department, speeding up research and allowing people to target their visits for recreation or study. COL was launched in October 2007 providing a web version of our internal collection database (Merlin). By 2010 in excess of 1.8 million records relating to objects, science and conservation data, and an archive of anthropological photographs will be available online. Approximately 25% of these records will have at least one digital image. A key feature of the system is that it is updated weekly to reflect changes to Merlin, including new records and edits to existing ones, together with newly created images. To date (Nov 2009) entries for objects from all curatorial departments are available with science and conservation data due to be added in March 2010. While the Museum has around 40,000 objects on display, this is only a small proportion of the collection, so COL is an excellent way to give a better idea of what is in the Museum.

I NTRODUCTION “The museum has an enduring commitment to making its collection available worldwide” 1 The collections of the British Museum are vast, comprising over 7 million objects. A large proportion of these are archaeological, either from formal excavations, or from antiquarian collections. They stretch from stone tools from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, through to excavated material from British Post-Medieval sites. They cover the entire world, with archaeological material from Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Some have been in the Museum since the 18th Century, and archaeological material is still entering the Museum today, often through rescue excavations, such as those undertaken near Merowe in Sudan, or research, such as those the Museum assists with as a result of Treasure Act finds. In this paper, the term ‘archaeological’ is being used to refer

C OLLECTION D OCUMENTATION AT THE B RITISH M USEUM Electronic documentation began in the late 70’s with a pilot project in the department of Egyptian Antiquities (now Ancient Egypt and Sudan) using a bespoke system called BMUSE. Later when a dedicated documentation section was created this was extended to other curatorial departments using the Museum Documentation Association’s (now Collections Trust) GOS system. The early focus of this work was on audit, as a result of pressure from the Public Accounts Committee 1

Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Collections to create an inventory of the collection. The introduction of MAGUS in 1988 provided the opportunity for creating more detailed catalogue entries. Curatorial staff had access to the database for the first time, and from 1993 registration of new acquisitions was allowed to be done electronically instead of in paper registers. The Museum began using its current system, Merlin, in 2000. Supplied by System Simulation Ltd. (SSL) the Index+ database met the needs of the Museum for a collections database which was SPECTRUM compliant, included a windows client server and had image support and the capacity to support Unicode characters.

The thesauri include Object Name, Material, Place, Cultures and Periods, Techniques and Wares. All of the terminologies relate to the collection as a whole which often means one term can have different meanings geographically and chronologically. Rather than create multiple terms detailed Scope Notes are added to explain how the term is used in different contexts. Even if others apply the terms differently the British Museum use is therefore clear, for example: Bronze Age: Bronze Age is a cultural term widely used from Europe to the Far East, and is subject to local regional subdivisions with their own chronologies. Examples: Britain and Ireland: c. 2150 BC - 800 BC France: c. 2150 BC - 800 BC Greece: c. 3200 BC - 1100 BC Italy: c. 2200BC - 975 BC Korea: c. 2000 BC - 500 BC Low Counties: c. 2000 BC - 800 BC Scandinavia: c. 1600 BC - 550 BC

While the focus of this paper is on archaeological collections it is important to remember the diversity of the British Museum collection and the significance of the decision to create one database for all objects. Different types of object may use different fields but the underlying database and terminology controls are the same allowing searches to be made across the entire collection. This has been hugely beneficial for the development of thesauri and authorities and has made the transition to Collections Online much easier.

I MAGING In 2001 the Museum developed its digital assets management system in-house, which allows collections images to be added to Merlin records. The system, simply known as Digital Assets, is a relational database which was written by programmers in the Information Systems department and launched museum-wide in 2004. It is a SQL database which offers support for 2D images of most types, such as jpeg, tiff and psd formats, but has limited capability for dealing with rich media such as mpegs, flash files, podcasts or broadcast material. There are currently over 750,000 images on the database, of which over 500,000 are available through COL.

C URRENT S ITUATION Merlin currently stores over 1.8 million records for registered objects from the eight curatorial departments. In addition to this the database holds approximately 40,000 records for anthropological photographs that historically were not accessioned as part of the main collection but classified as related or archival material. The Conservation database contains over 90,000 records detailing the conservation treatment history of the objects. Scientific data had, in the past, been recorded in paper files and Excel spreadsheets but a recent Mellon Foundation supported project led to the construction of the Scientific Research database in Access.

Except for the photography team and illustrators employed by the Museum, most images are created with PCs rather than Macs, despite the superior image handling capabilities of Macs. Although cost is one reason, the main factor is that the Museums digital assets and collections database software is not currently multi-platform, so to enable loading of the images each person working on images would require access to a PC as well as to a Mac.

Any member of staff that has been trained to use the database can enter new records, and, at present around 7000 catalogue entries, and an average of 800 new terminology records are created each month. Many of these are new acquisitions but the bulk are entries for the backlog of registered material. The database contains complex terminology controls to aid retrieval across collections. These terminologies have been built up in-house over a long period, in collaboration with curatorial and scientific staff. The diverse nature of the British Museum collection meant that no available terminology resource was sufficient to cover the cultural and geographic breadth of the collection. The key terminology controls consist of thesauri, authority files and drop-down lists. The two authorities are the Bibliographic Authority, containing details of catalogues and publications relating to the collection, and the Biographical Authority containing details of people and institutions relating to the collection. This can include not only donors but excavators and former owners which can be important in tracing the history of antiquarian collections. Information held in the Biographical Authority includes names, dates, bibliographic references and brief biographical details meaning it can be used as a stand alone research tool.

For image capture, the Museum uses mainly Epson 10000XL flatbed scanners with transparency lids. We also have one A2 scanner, a Contex Copymate 18, which scans through WIDEcapture 1.3. Mid-range digital cameras are used for new photography in curatorial departments, and Nikon D200 and D700 digital SLR cameras are used by the professional photographers employed by the Museum. Across the Museum, various editions of Photoshop are used for image manipulation. Most images, with the exception of the illustrators archive, are created at a minimum as 300dpi tiff files with 24RGB colour. The illustrators archive material is high quality line drawings produced for publication, mainly in archaeological reports. The digital files are produced as 1200dpi bitmaps, and stored as tiff files. This is the same standard that the professional illustrators working in the Museum use when creating new electronic images for publication. 2

Pam Young & Sarah Hammond M ERLIN P LAN

I MAGE DOWNLOADS

In conjunction with the project to put the database online, the Merlin Plan team was assembled to increase the number of images attached to the catalogue records, over a three year period. The aim is to digitise 400,000 images by late summer of 2010. The Museum holds over 1 million glass plates and transparencies of its objects as well an unknown quantity of archival images of sites and excavations. In addition the Museum has a large illustrators archive that is also being scanned by the Merlin Plan team. For many archaeological objects these drawings provide much more detail than photographs. Even if the catalogue entry is basic a detailed line drawing can provide all the necessary information for comparison and study.

The Working Party responsible for COL made the decision that all images should be freely available to web users, within agreed limits. When published online, the images can be downloaded in a low resolution format simply by rightclicking on the image and saving. The Trustees made the decision to allow members of the public to obtain free downloads of jpegs at 300dpi. These have a maximum size of 2,500 pixels along the longest side, giving an A5 image when printed. This service requires registration on the website, to prevent bulk downloading of the images, and the quantity is limited to 100 images per email address each month. The images are automatically generated and emailed as an attachment to the recipient without the need for human intervention. They can then be used in print publications with a print run of 4000 or less, at no cost, with a copyright credit Trustees of the British Museum, subject to the terms and conditions which are available on the website. A small amount of research has been done into who is using these images, and it appears that the top users are requesting the images for personal research projects, such as their PhD, or for teaching purposes in schools and colleges.

Information from published catalogues, monographs and site reports is being added using OCR software to further enhance each entry. For archaeological material, this includes information such as typologies, findspots, measurements and dating information as well as physical descriptions. Text from older catalogues has also been included to demonstrate changes in interpretation over time.

If the print run is over 4,000, or for commercial use, the customer is directed to order an image through the picture library at www.bmimages.com and pay reproduction fees. These will again be jpeg files, but printable up to A4, and can also be used in digital media rather than just print format. From this resource it is also possible to order new photography if there is no image present or a different view is required. Images obtained through the picture library are commercial quality by default, and have been colour managed and cleaned by Photography and Imaging staff, whereas those downloaded from COL may not have been.

C OLLECTIONS O NLINE In 2006 the Museum took the decision to put Merlin online with the aim of giving the widest possible public access to the data. A Working Party was set up including representatives from curatorial departments, the Web team, Documentation and IS to decide exactly how to put the database online. Rather than selecting groups of records to work up and release in batches the decision was taken to put all records online giving researchers the same information that is available internally. Collections Online is a reflection of the Museums working collection database. It would not have been practical to rewrite 1.8 million entries for a web audience so our priority was to release everything despite the fact that much more work is needed to improve all of the records. The only fields that have been withheld are administrative fields and sensitive data including purchase prices, valuation, personal addresses, storage locations and national grid references.

O NLINE R ESEARCH C ATALOGUES

Users are given four search options: a Basic free text search (default), a Publication Reference search, Museum Number and Provenance (acquisition names) search and the Advanced search. Help is provided to assist with each option and explains how to enter museum numbers or navigate the various terminologies. The Advanced search provides more accurate results as it allows users to combine terms from the thesauri and authority files with free text and date ranges. It is also possible to filter results to only show those with images.

The idea of making the collection freely available has been taken a step further with the publication of Online Research Catalogues (ORCs). Formatted like a traditional printed catalogue, these combine introductory text, maps and essays with links to the individual COL records for each object. The benefit of publishing catalogues in this format is that they can be easily updated with new information or images without the cost of republishing in paper format, and they are freely available to anyone with internet access. They provide the Museum with savings as there are no printing costs, which balance the lack of income from the sale of printed volumes of the catalogue.

Providing a feedback mechanism for users is another key feature. There is a link at the bottom of each object record where people can email the Museum to report errors, omissions, or to provide more information about the object. This information is checked by curators and if appropriate, will be added to the object record.

Currently “Enkomi”, the first part of a series of catalogues on Ancient Cyprus in the British Museum is online, providing access to the Museum’s academic research. The catalogue includes some site maps, scanned pages from excavation notebooks, and information about the tombs, as well as object information. Future catalogues include Kourion & Amathus 3

Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Collections in the Ancient Cyprus series and a catalogue of Roman Republican coins which will be going online in the near future.

collection is in Sheffield City Museum. Some, however, were purchased at auction in 1893 by the British Museum, and some by other antiquarians whose collections have since arrived in the Museum. By having the collections of both the British Museum and Sheffield City Museum online, it is possible for the first time since the late 19th Century to re-unite the assemblage, albeit virtually rather than physically.

M AKING USE OF THE DATA ONLINE There are a number of benefits to all users of the Collections Online function, not least that every object which has been entered onto Merlin is now fully searchable by members of the public, with instant results. This cuts down on staff time in terms of enquiries, from specific information about objects to more general enquiries about whether the Museum holds finds from certain sites or antiquarian collectors. It also allows visitors to tailor their research visits, saving them time going through paper records or multiple trays of objects in search of one item. Much of the archaeological material, especially the bulk finds, is held off-site in storage, making physical access to it more difficult.

L IMITATIONS OF THE ONLINE DATABASE Collections Online does not, and is not intended to, take the place of a visit to the Museum, or access to full publication and paper records. It not written for a specialist audience this is our working database put online. Thus some records have been edited with up to date research findings and interpretation, while others are a basic skeleton record which may say no more than flint tool’, with no supporting image and minimal site details, which limits the interrogation possibilities of the database.

The search functionality means that the data can be interrogated in a variety of ways. For example, it is possible to search across the entire collection by a number of factors including site, period, material type, typology, publication reference or excavator. These search terms can be combined to form specific searches, such as Bronze Age pottery from South Yorkshire. When published catalogues exist, this data is available to anyone with access to a library containing archaeological information. Here, however, it is available to anyone with internet access, giving access to a much wider audience.

The database does not contain full archaeological reports, site drawings or maps, so users cannot recreate a site from the data. This is something which may be possible to address in the future through Online Research Catalogues, as has already happened to a certain degree in the Enkomi catalogue. Much of the Museum’s collection has not been researched, beyond the information given when the object entered the collections, so the information may be inadequate, and added to the database from outdated paper records. Detail is dependant on curatorial input, and with over 1.8 million records to edit, this will be a lengthy process. Not all records have images, and this is especially true of archaeological material, in particular bulk finds. However, small find records created from the object and site publication will often have very full records, and there is now a project to add the line drawings from publications to records, especially those of the Prehistory & Europe department.

Material in different departments can be searched at the same time, meaning that material from the same culture, but held in different departments can be searched, for example Ptolemaic Egyptian material is curated by both the Ancient Egypt & Sudan and Greek & Roman departments. Numismatic material, even from archaeological excavations, has historically been held in the Coins and Medals department while the rest of the finds have been in the relevant antiquities department. The inclusion of the Prints and Drawings collection means that scenes of archaeological sites can also be searched, such as Denon’s drawings of Egypt from the Napoleonic survey of the country along with antiquities from the sites depicted. The anthropological photographs also depict archaeological sites as they were in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in countries as varied as Greece and Peru. Coins and Medals records also complement the archaeological component of the collection, not only by including the numismatic component of site assemblages, but also with examples such as a medal of Stukeley referring to Stonehenge providing additional contextual information for the collectors, sites and artefacts.

There is also a huge quantity of archaeological material not yet available on the website. From Britain alone, many large site assemblages, such as Mucking (a multi-period site in Essex), St Peter’s Tip (an Anglo-Saxon cemetery) and Grimes Graves (Neolithic flint mines), are not yet on the database. There are similar international assemblages which have yet to be added, and only a small proportion of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic artefacts from around the globe have been fully documented, although there are ongoing projects to add these to the database. The archaeological data linked to these objects can vary immensely depending how and when they were acquired. Single objects from antiquarian collections are often described only by the parish or nearest town as a findspot, with information about former owners or collectors where relevant. Material from 19th century excavations will often have more specific findspots, but often only down to information such as mound or burial. If material from the same site has been acquired from multiple donors there may also be inconsistencies, making it

Having data online allows easy comparison and unification of archaeological archives. For example, the collections of 18th and 19th Century antiquarians were often split during their lifetime or after their death. Examples include Dr WA Sturge, AW Franks, and Rev. W Greenwell in the UK, or G Klemm in Germany. For instance, Thomas Bateman excavated barrows near Sheffield in the 19th Century, and most of his 4

Pam Young & Sarah Hammond necessary to search at parish or county level in order to retrieve all records.

The tablet imaging is being done by photography, with shots of every side and edge being taken then knitted together into one high resolution image which is added to the database. The camera used is a Nikon D40 with supermacro lens. A flatbed scanner is also being used for imaging small fragments of tablets. The ability to release these images online within days of them being produced is a key to getting funding for this project, as the results are immediately accessible without the normal wait for a printed publication at the end of a research project.

It is only the modern excavated material which will have details such as context, feature and small-find number, and will often have a full paper archive in the Museum to support this. Even in these cases, due to historical inconsistencies in the way data has been entered, it can be difficult to sort objects by specific findspots. The fields for site details and stratigraphy are free text, which means they may have been used differently across the Museum. As the database has to record such a wide variety of objects from many different cultures, it will never record archaeological collections to the level of detail required for full interpretation of a single site.

Other facets of the project include pulling together all previous research and publications relating to the Library and adding this information to the database, to get a clear idea of what work has been previously done on the Library, and also using the computer database to get a clearer picture of what it contained. As part of this project it is anticipated that there will also be a full online catalogue of the Library, which will hopefully have an Arabic interface. The project is also part of a wider cuneiform digitisation initiative, working with institutions in Europe, America and Syria to establish a palaeography for cuneiform script.

Although detailed findspot information is included where possible, this is not always the case. National Grid References have been excluded from the online database for security reasons, as a number of modern additions to the collection have come via the Treasure Act and their findspots need to be protected. The database is also not linked to any Sites and Monuments Records, meaning that connections to other objects from the same site have to be done manually.

Sturge Collection: The Sturge collection of prehistoric flint is a collection of over 100,000 pieces of flint collected by Dr W A Sturge from 1907 until his death in 1919. Much of the material comes from from the Icklingham area of Suffolk, where it was collected from the surface of fields. Other artefacts in the collection came from other collections such as that of Bateman, and originate not only from Britain, but from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

C ASE S TUDIES Siraf: 2 is the site of a trading city on the Persian Gulf in Southern Iran, active from the 9th to 11th centuries AD. At this time, it was one of the wealthiest cities in the world. It was excavated from 1966 to 1973 by a British and Iranian team and the finds were subsequently split between a number of institutions in Iran and Britain, including the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The British Museum holds 32,000 finds from the site in the Middle East and Coins and Medals departments, with some objects relating to Siraf also being held in the Asia department. All the finds are now being catalogued directly onto Merlin with full site details, classifications and images. These records are then being released directly onto Collections Online, meaning that finds from across the Museum can be searched at the same time, and compared with objects from the excavations which are held in other institutions.

For the Icklingham material, the only context much of the material has is the field number, as taken from the 8´´“ Ordinance Survey map of the area. At the current time, only 4000 pieces are documented on the collections database, most of which were published separately in catalogues of the collection in the 1930s. Until such time as this archive can be fully researched and documented, through direct reference to the objects and to Sturges paper archives, the presence of COL will not aid access to this material or further research into the collection.

Ashurbanipal Library: 3 Ashurbanipal was an Assyrian king who ruled from Nineveh (in modern Northern Iraq) from 668 to 630BC. He had a royal state library, the oldest surviving royal library in the world, and sent agents around the country to find new manuscripts for it. Over 30,000 cuneiform tablets were excavated at Nineveh by the British Museum in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, many of which are now in our collections. A number have been published in the form of line drawings or black and white photographs, and now thanks to Andrew Mellon Foundation support, all the library tablets in the Museum will be digitally imaged. One of the driving forces for this project is the opening of the new Institute of Cuneiform Studies by the University of Mosul, beside Nineveh. The library will form a key part of its teaching. The digital images created in the British Museum will provide virtual copies of the tablets, which will be available to the Institute.

C ONCLUSIONS The site is currently receiving c.330,000 visits a month, which is approximately 14.5% of the entire www.britishmuseum.org site traffic. Visitor research done on Collections Online in 2009 via a pop-up questionnaire has given us a brief overview of what our users are looking for. This survey covered the entire COL site, not just the archaeological and antiquarian components. Over 1000 people responded, and of these, half were first-time visitors to the site. The other 50% had visited the site at least once previously, and 42 of the respondents stated that they used the site every day. Most users were academics or other researchers, and interestingly more were looking for images of specific objects (53%) than information about objects (46%). 5

Collections Online: New Access to the British Museum’s Archaeology Collections At the present time, the British Museum is one of few museums to release their entire collection database online including conservation and scientific data. As it is updated on a regular basis, the site is not and never will be a static entity. As well as adding new records and images to the site weekly, more data will be released online as further research is undertaken. The site will continue to be improved, with user feedback and further online surveys providing the direction that these improvements should take. Although the system is not yet perfect, it does provide access to the entire collection, with images where possible. R EFERENCES [1] Neil MacGregor, 250 years on: What does it mean to be a world museum?, http://www.britishmuseum.org/the museum/museum in london/event archive/250 lecture. aspx, 2009. [2] Seth Priestman, The british museum siraf project, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research projects/ british museum siraf project.aspx, 2009. [3] Jonathan Taylor, Ashurbanipal library phase 1, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research projects/ ashurbanipal library phase 1.aspx, 2009.

6

Metadata for the mundane: Reasons and mechanisms for community archaeologists and small commercial units to document their digital photographs Alan Gillott RDG Associates York UK

majority of photographs are now digital 9 . This swing to digital photography has brought with it a sea change in attitudes: the assumption that digital film is ‘free’ has left workers with a feeling that digital image space is infinite and the number of images collected has increased commensurately 9 . There is a separate research activity needed to properly define what should be recorded photographically.

Abstract—Proposes the use of existing metadata standards to embed image descriptions within the photographic file; and also identifies the need to encourage software manufacturers (GIS, X-Ray, LIDAR etc.) to use existing Exif and IPTC protocols to provide proper embedded documentation. While there are many projects to define and prescribe metadata for digital images ranging from archive standardization to inter museum transfer, the fact is that there is no practical archaeology biased standard available for immediate use. Archaeologists routinely create, store, archive and exchange digital images with an incomplete understanding of their provenance either for today or for the future. The difference between provenance and preservation is poorly understood: the role of ownership and authorship in the provenance of digital media is explored as well as the need to preserve technical metadata as a possible element for use by the science of diplomatics.

The larger excavation units are already looking at the cost of capturing image descriptions and investing in mechanisms to marry images with their descriptions: the intent being to use this merged information to populate database indices for electronic searches and data deposition 10 ; the merged data then being an easy single resource for a museum or repository to readily create catalogues of images available to researchers or to the general public.

I NTRODUCTION

There are already standards and procedures in place for the formal deposition of digital archaeological records at ADS 1 , and Museums 23 . The preparation is onerous and expensive: it can effectively double the cost of deposition; and there are no tools available to make this process easier: nor are their likely to be until there is a universal consensus of what is required and economically priced tools are developed offering tracked electronic digital recording for archaeology.

However, many archaeological units are small, underfunded, and lack the resources to build any sort of image database or develop tools to properly document images 10 . In addition, the requirements of the main deposition agencies, for example ADS, require the descriptions to be independent of the data 1 ; this mechanism is to facilitate the process of deposition and the issues of long term storage, but it does not address the provenance of the images saved. There is a silent presumption that because the image is deposited with a secure facility its provenance is assured: in the opinion of this author a spurious one; and any image separated from its description is unprovenanced 9,7 . Ignoring the exceptional situation of a formally deposited digital archive, there is the situation of the not deposited archive languishing on university, archaeological project or individual archaeologists computers, many of which now include thousands of digital photographs and other images.

The primary record for many archaeological excavations is paper based; and where electronic databases are used, the data is transcribed from paper to the database, though there are projects underway to explore more on site digital recovery 2 . However, the increases in the cost of film also mean that the

This paper describes the technology presently available to improve the provenance of images at low cost and recommends that archaeologists and specialists taking photographs of finds and other material, take advantage of the underlying computer technology to document their images so that the provenance

Archaeology is by its very nature destructive. In many cases the photographic image, along with accompanying drawings and descriptive records are the only record of an archaeological event 9,27 . While this paper focuses on digital images, much of the tenor of the paper applies to any digital archaeological record, or for that matter, academic record of a transient event 9 .

7

Metadata for the mundane is part of the image, and not an independent file description. It also suggests that while doing so does not protect the author from fraudulent misuse of their images, it does allow for ownership to be claimed; previous owners retained; and for accurate descriptions to be maintained.

tions of plagiarism, helps readers decide if they are worth reading, and honours sources. The underlying tenor of the material is protection from plagiarism 3 rather than placement of the material as part of the sum of all knowledge. Michel Foucault puts it better in his the Archaeology of Knowledge, this quotation is from the translation by Sheridan Smith:

The discussion further enjoins the developers of image software to provide aides to help researchers add descriptions and ownership information closer to the source of the image and thus reduce clerical errors and better identify manipulated images.

“Scholars have asked not only what these documents meant, but also whether they were telling the truth, and by what right they could claim to be doing so, whether they were sincere or deliberately misleading, well informed or ignorant, authentic or tampered with.” 8 .

P ROVENANCE : THE PROBLEM

He later goes on to say: Provenance is not one thing: it is a single term that covers several types of validation that apply to scholarly work. Originally it referred to the proof that an item of value was original and is what the seller purports it to be. A work of art therefore is usually accompanied by paperwork that documents its ownership through time. In an academic paper provenance is determined by the references to previous work; and a scholar with enough time on their hands can trace references back from publication to publication tracking an idea from its inception: it is perhaps an interesting variation on ’Telephone’, a game where participants whisper a simple phrase to their neighbour round a circle and everyone is amused by its transformation, as scholar after scholar reinterprets an original idea. This process is best described by Michel Foucault in his book L’Archeologie du savoir 8 .

“...history is one way in which a society recognizes and develops a mass of documentation with which it is inextricably linked” 8 ; Provenance can be roughly classed as follows: •

Alongside the chain of old work is the mechanism by which evidence of new work is documented from its inception through to publication. This chain of evidence is clearly important to validate the scholarship of the published idea; and is crucial for ideas that lead to patents, where the concept of original art is used to determine ownership of that idea 5 . The accuracy and ability to demonstrate provenance is worth millions, even billions of pounds sterling 6 .

Published product, where the publisher determines if the text of the final paper submitted for publication is a satisfactory summary of the developed work product. This process has few formal procedures but one of the better known is ’peer review’ where other researchers in a similar field examine the work for its likely veracity. Images can be subjected to forensic testing as part of this process to determine if there is evidence of tampering 28,25 . None of these procedures is foolproof.

This process is no different for the development for digital publication. •

After being satisfied by the worthiness of the publication 7 there is a need to be satisfied by the nature of the cited documents: this is a minor issue where the document is in printed format, a major one where a document might exist in many variations. This latter situation will be familiar to scholars of ancient manuscripts where each copy of a mss. may contain vital textual differences and all extant editions may differ from a missing original: the curation of digital documents is a variation of this issue whereby available copies might not be what they seem and researchers may have to track back to its original version 7 .

•

Digital Equivalency, where the cited item is a copy of a published document. In the mainstream world of print publication this type of provenance has not been seriously questioned as most digital copies are readily compared with the printed journal. In the future, as the processes of taphonomy make the print versions more and more difficult to access, then digital veracity will become more important 7 Copyright, where the ownership of an image as original art is documented and demonstrated.

Copyright is a thorny issue and has been addressed through international treaty and national legislation (World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty of 1996) 16 . A digital image may pass through a variety of national legislative domains where the rules of explicit and implicit assertion change both in time and space, that it is advisable to explicitly assert copyright as early as possible in the lifetime of a digital object. Copyright can be assigned but it can be difficult to retrospectively assert. It should be noted that it is, by international treaty, illegal to remove or alter rights management information 16 . This is relevant to anyone building web pages using copyright images as the assertion may not be readily visible: converting an image from JPEG or TIFF to GIF will strip hidden copyright

Digital photographs are a special case of this problem as they exist only in digital form; they are readily manipulated; and are invariably deleted from their original recorded medium. Discussion of provenance is obscured by authors of guides to academic writing who focus on plagiarism rather than knowledge. Booth et al in The Craft of Research 3 lists citations as helping the author, by protecting him or her from accusa8

Alan Gillott assertions from the image, and some web servers may do the same.

documents and has now become a very sophisticated science that focuses on anomalies in the nature of the record 11 .

The provenance of digital images is a combination of the provenance of work product and digital equivalency. Does the image match its description and has this image been modified in any way that makes it unacceptable as evidence? Who has owned the image? Who was the original author?

P HOTOGRAPHS Photographs are in themselves artifacts that exist in time and space independent of the item of which they are an image. A photograph can only be verified by comparison with either other photographs of the same subject or the subject itself. Unfortunately the subject can change over time so if the image is documenting the physical state of the subject at a particular time or its context in relation to other objects, then the burden of provenance is greater. In archaeology, many images are records of state and context immediately prior to destruction. A context photograph may contain a data board documenting the image. This data board itself may obscure context data 9 and it is not unusual for a duplicate image to be taken with the board removed.

In archaeology, the work product is the data sheets produced on site. There are a number of examples of computer systems created to record that data electronically (Oxford Archaeology, Wessex Archaeology, Framework archaeology, York Archaeological Trust, and others). Such a system is described by Gary Lock in his Using Computers in Archaeology 21 . These systems are a form of Work Product recording except that the controls needed to establish working provenance are not included: the cost of such controls in terms of typical archaeological funding practices would be prohibitive.

In an excavation context, a paper register is usually maintained to document each shot and its relationship with other aspects of the project, unit, feature, context, direction etc. The exact information recorded is specific to the recording discipline adopted by the excavation director. This information is typically recorded on a spreadsheet or into a database table: if the image is digital there is often a logical link to a copy of the digital image. In at least three of the systems mentioned earlier the digital image is also renamed to relieve limitations in the database software.

D IPLOMATICS Forgery is not always willfully criminal. Hirtle 11 cites the case of the USS Constellation built in Norfolk, Virginia, probably in 1854. By 1909 the ship was listed as being built in Baltimore in 1797 as a sister ship of the more famous USS Constitution. Wooden ships were routinely rebuilt and it appears that what began as a single gun deck sloop acquired a second gun deck and other changes which made it resemble the earlier frigate. In a series of discrete, disconnected events, it accumulated the provenance of the earlier ship, partly possibly to underscore the pride of the City of Baltimore and partly to meet the exigencies of US Naval documentation. In the 1950s, an FBI investigation began to identify much of this documentation as forgeries, including proof, for example, that a 1918 document was typed sometime after 1946.

The practice of using a data board typically is not followed for site surveys, buildings recording where many images may be taken of an interesting feature and where the use of artificial labels is either impractical or will obscure essential detail; publicity or progress images; and often for finds where the use of both a scale and an adequate description is impractical or interferes with camera setup. In short, the management of digital images in an archaeological context has become a problem of some magnitude.

The practice of backfilling documentation is not unknown in business: it is easier to spend an hour to write up a missing document than to waste that same hour of several peoples time, especially when they may be motivated by political rather than practical considerations, arguing that the document is unnecessary.

C ASE S TUDY

Similarly, when compiling an archaeological archive, time is devoted by archivists and project staff providing missing requisite paperwork; and ensuring the archive is consistent, correcting register or context sheets ready for deposition as an accurate account of the excavation. (Note Cullens 7 remark about authors being at the mercy of cataloguers): a process that would be avoided were there a fully functional electronic workflow software application for archaeology. Ironically it is this correction process that in the long term provides archival provenance to the material.

At the beginning of 2009, one of the UK archaeological units was curating approximately a million and a half digital images which included primary photographs, scanned plan and section drawings, rectified images, CAD and GIS output, Photoshop output and assorted image copies. Provenance of primary images was maintained both on paper and in the project databases but administratively speaking, the provenance relied on a file storage relationships where data was stored within a project file store hierarchy. In order to satisfy the requirements of the database application images are renumbered into a specific sequence starting with zero for each project.

The science that addresses this is called diplomatics. Diplomatics was first developed in Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as a means of verifying the authenticity of

The relationship between primary images and their rectified derivatives was essentially maintained by consistency of file name in two related folders. 9

Metadata for the mundane Bearing in mind that a single excavated context will have at least 3 associated digital colour images and three regular black and white images, a single project will require the management of from several hundred to several thousand images. The sheer scale of the archive is overwhelming and there is no practical management software available within the typical budgets allocated for archaeological investigations to manage such a collection.

This is not an unreasonable cost and happily sits within ADS budget guidelines of less than 3-5% of the budget 26 . However, it is not unusual for a relatively small project to have 1000 digital images and projects with 8000 – 10,000 images are not unknown: 1000 images potentially represent 250 hours of work or 7500 to prepare the descriptions (see discussion on metadata below) required for deposition. The Museum of London has recognized this and allows depositors to use any file name and state that the ‘metadata’ is in the image 23 : this would have made considerable savings except that other new requirements, in particular to create and record a checksum, increases the cost of preparation 23 .

The majority of this data is stored as compressed JPEG files 18,19 and occupy on average 2.5 megabytes each. This represents a minimum occupancy 3750 gigabytes: a minimum given that a number of these files are for use by GIS, CAD and publishing software and are much, much larger. It is also worth noting that these images, if stored as uncompressed TIFFs would occupy more than a terabyte. A far cry from the ‘problematically large’ 6 gigabytes used for the Eynsham Abbey publication described by Paul Backhouse 2 .

Units are going to be very tempted to cull images from the archive in an attempt to reduce the cost of preparation and deposition. According to Hirtle 11 such an archive is not a complete archive: nor would it be as amenable to research into provenance using diplomatics techniques.

Management recognizes the risk represented by this huge archive, particularly where image names are duplicated over and over differentiated only by their location in the folder hierarchy. Yet any project to correct the situation would only be realized at great cost, as not only would the images need renaming, but also every record describing them; furthermore, several hundred project databases would need reprogramming to correctly reference the images.

M ETADATA Where does this leave us? In particular, where does this leave small time archaeologists and community projects which have infinitesimally small budgets compared with the university and commercial archeological units who are clearly struggling to manage this enormous volume of data.

It is worth noting that these numbers do not include the images taken by archaeological specialists who will take their own images for their own records. This practice also creates a provenance disconnect for these images. The nature of the business of archaeological subcontracting means the few of these specialists have time to maintain rigorous documentation of their images.

The primary difficulty is the relationship of the image to its description: the image in all the systems described above, including the repositories, is at the lowest level of the data hierarchy and is typically referenced by an indirect file name: the ADS requirements encourage the use of a descriptive file name (ADS 2008, deposit create1.cfm?sect=3). Unfortunately, the demands of database software; a natural reluctance to mess with primary data relationships; and the cost (time) of making the changes, logging the changes, and reviewing and correcting the changes makes this recommendation problematic. When the image is at the lowest level of the data hierarchy, when it is separated from its description, it is essentially without provenance. This includes images shared by email, copied to alternative locations, or even embedded in reports and presentations, even when accompanied by brief attributions.

D EPOSITION An archive is “a contextually based organic body of evidence... the whole of the written documents, drawings and printed matter” 11 . Reading Hirtle it is clear that the archive really should contain everything, possibly even the receipts for petrol used to ferry excavators to and from the site. Ultimately, those are the archive of the excavation unit and would be preserved in that context. The deposited archives are the scientific data obtained as part of an archaeological project and should be whole and complete: they are also properly part of the archive of the excavating unit.

The data used to describe a photograph, or indeed any electronic artifact, is usually called metadata which means data about data 20 . This is a difficult term to use particularly in the vernacular, because it carries both the taint of technicality without being well defined. The words early genesis was for compiler and data dictionary software writers to tightly define the syntax and scope of a data field rather than the semantics of its content. The term is now, in archaeology, applied very broadly as a loose description of the content of a file or data field.

Estimating the cost of preparing a digital archive is not easy. The digital archive for Eynsham Abbey, referenced earlier, cost around 6500 26 ; and this involved some 500 files. Robinson’s paper does not allocate where the costs were incurred between preparation for deposition and deposition. In my experience it takes a minimum of 15 minutes to prepare a file for deposition so these 400 documents represent 125 hours of preparation. Splitting the cost evenly over the two components gives an hourly rate of 26, which is close to my guestimate of 30 per hour for labour including all overheads at year 2009 rates.

Properly, the JPEG standard is a more formal metadata for any jpeg image, much as the database schema or a spreadsheet cell format is metadata for a spreadsheet. Insofar as an image is a computer object the descriptions are more properly 10

Alan Gillott ‘properties’ of the image. The use of the term ’properties’ in the sense of object technology helps us to understand that the properties remain with the object however and wherever it is manifest.

As tempting as it is to use a photo-utility to strip this data from the image, there are two good reasons not to. Firstly, the colour palate used for the picture is recorded in metadata 12 and is also used for correct colour processing during lossy compression. This information is used by printer technology to properly determine the colours to be used in printing.

In the case of an academic paper, provenance is provided by the publisher, publication, title, year, authors, abstract and citations: these are manifest openly on the paper so generally travel with every copy of that paper, be it printed or electronic. These can also be described as that paper’s properties or metadata.

Secondly, as the same document points out: “Providing a point of reference for the verification as to the originality of the image and metadata” 12 . This agglomeration of technical information is a key source of provenance information allowing one to review the metadata for anomalies such as; are the shadows right for the time of day and camera orientation? Is this the camera used on site on that day by that individual? Are the lens data consistent with that make and model? The latest version of the Museum of London deposition guidelines recognizes the need to document some of this additional technical material 23 . In a commercial unit, a register is maintained of which camera has been allocated to which site on which day: this is a cogent reminder that the documentation of any excavation or survey should include a register of cameras and the photo log should indicate which camera was used for each shot. On a small dig, where excavator’s cameras are also used and the images collected, the excavator’s cameras should also be registered. It may be that not all the images are formally collected as a part of the record and if one of the other images is subsequently published, the register and site record can be used should there be any question over provenance. There is also a copyright issue which will be discussed later.

How can this be implemented with photographic images? Certainly, this type of data similarly can be appended to the surface of the image: while images can be seen stamped with a watermark 22 or copyright statement, it is not practical to print on the surface a complete provenancing statement: such a statement could be quite large and would either obscure the image or add too much area to the printed surface rendering the image as aesthetically useless or, when displayed in a small area, uninterpretable. The designers of the various image standards have conveniently made provision for user created metadata amongst the hidden technical metadata that accompanies the file. This paper is going to discuss three of these: Exif 19 , IPTC 13,15,17 and touch on XMP; 15,16,17 . Exif and IPTC data is readily manipulated by ordinary computer users using their standard OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) file store utilities or with free downloadable extensions or applications. XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) is mentioned because it is the ’future’ for both image and other electronic data. XMP has been designed to subsume the functionality of Exif and IPTC information and as such the user interfaces described below will continue to function unchanged 17 . XMP is intended to be used to provide metadata for a wider class of electronic objects, for example, the pdf format many papers are now published in; and it is also designed to allow application software to add private fields to allow for function such as process control to be used to manage the lifecycle of all sorts and conditions of documents 16 .

For both of these reasons it is vital that those managing images do not succumb to the temptation to strip this information to save space the absence of technical camera metadata (or scanner metadata) is an indication that the image may not be what it seems. Removal may also cause a printed reproduction to be incorrectly coloured.

GPS DATA A GPS enabled camera with Bluetooth capability can communicate with a Bluetooth enabled GPS unit to read location information at the time the picture is taken and include GPS coordinates, including latitude, longitude, altitude, speed and bearing, some 31 fields in all 19 . Some of this information can also be provided by geo-location software in association with a map. While this data may not be of much practical use in an archaeological context, the growing use of sophisticated web based publishing tools may be able to utilize this data in a museum or post publication context. Populating images with GPS data is time consuming and may only be worth doing for images selected for publication. It is also worth bearing in mind that photographs of sensitive sites should not be published with location information included: it provides accurate locations for use by looters, vandals or could have political ramifications for the photographer. The news media often remove GPS coordinates along with identity information to protect the identity of the photographer 17 .

C AMERA M ETADATA The modern digital camera saves a lot of information about the state of the camera at the time a photograph was taken. Much of this data is technical and of little interest to the viewer: data collected includes aperture and exposure sizes; times; color palate, was flash used; make; model and possibly serial number of the camera; and in some SLRs, similar information obtained from the lens. A photographer will be interested in this information, if for no other reason than to find out what went wrong. (Archaeological sites are not camera friendly environments, nor are archaeologists in the field, so where ruggedized cameras are used it is not always easy to see the exact configuration of the lens: this can be obtained from the metadata and used to show field operatives, for example, how to use the telephoto lens settings in low light) 11

Metadata for the mundane TABLE I: Exif user tags. 18,19 Identifier

Field

270

Image Title

Max Len

Basic short title

306

Date Time

Date taken

315

Artist

The photographer

33432

Copyright

The current copyright owner

42016

Unique Image Id

Useful to create a key to database metadata entry

37510

User Comment

40091

TABLE II: Some appropriate IIM IPTC Fields 15,14,17

Comment

Field Object Name Byline

Comment This is sometimes presented as Title This is sometimes presented as Author or Creator. This should be the actual photographer, the photographers organization or a contact in the photographers organization.

Job Title

Job title of the creator

Caption

Large field available for user data

This is sometimes presented as Description. This field supports up to 2000 characters (IPTC 2005a, 9)

Description

XPTitle

Ignored if Image Title (270) exists

Writer The individual responsible for creating the Caption

Copyright

40093

XPAuthor

Ignored if Artist (315) exists

Many utilities derive the Copyright from the byline

Keywords

40094

XPKeywords

Used by a number of utilities to provide keyword support even when other IPTC fields are not used (Picassa)

40095

XPSubject

City

Location information

Sublocation State/Province

E XIF U SER DATA

Country

This section and the one that follows on IPTC metadata describe the data that archaeologists can and should use to document their images and points out some of the implications of rights management and copyright legislation on metadata, be it embedded or in the external data record. This is followed by a section on a few exemplary tools that could be used to manipulate metadata within the budget of a community excavation or by a small unit undertaking a low cost project.

Credit

The individual or organization to be credited for the image

Source

Should be the original photographer, particularly if the byline and copyright fields name an organization or contact

Headline Instructions

Table I shows the relevant Exif user tags. Tags are, in this context, just the term used for fields. Instead of metadata tags being maintained as fixed fields in a table, like a spreadsheet or database, each tag consists of an identifier, data format code, and a data field. Only those tags that are used need to be maintained and they can be stored in any convenient sequence.

The publishable title or headline. A place for special instructions associated with the image

and Subject fields displayed as a result of executing the Properties verb (Right Click, Properties) against an image file in the Windows Explorer shell. These tags allow Microsoft to make a common set of file properties across all types of file object in the File management subsystem, available to end users in a consistent manner. These fields are not proprietary to Microsoft and can be put to good use. For example there is no reason why the ADS identified metadata cannot be repeated in the XPKeywords tag.

These fields are sufficient to provide basic descriptive material to identify the image and supply sufficient rights information for the image. The Image Title or Image Description field can be thought of as a short caption and is limited in size. The User Comment field is best use to provide the rest of the information about the image. The preferred metadata that ADS asks for in their guidelines is: title, photographer, date taken, period, monument type, object type, method, country, district (county) and parish (ADS 2008, deposit create2).

IPTC M ETADATA It is not surprising, when you consider the needs of institutions whose livelihood is built around photographic images, that this limited set of tags is insufficient to address the needs of the professional photographer and image library managers. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) published an extension to the Exif tags specifically to meet the needs of their membership 13,15,17 . The fields provided by the IPTC both mimic the Exif fields and as well as extend and complement them. The fields, for example, recognize that in addition to the photographer, an institution with which the photographer is contracted at the time image was taken, have rights of acknowledgement even if the image is now owned by yet another party: analogous to an image photographed on behalf of an archaeological unit and assigned to the receiving museum or archive owner.

Clearly Title, Artist and DateTime satisfy three of ADS’ criteria; the rest can be satisfied by making use of the User Comment field. At present it is typical for the photographic register to record only the initials of the photographer, or possibly even the individual entering data in the register. While the latter practice is a concern for the Project Manager and managements ability to identify a persistently poor photographer there is a legal question about the use of initials instead of the photographers name that is discussed later under Copyright and Artist. Tags 40091 to 40095 are included in this table as they correspond to the Microsoft Windows’ Title, Author Keywords 12

Alan Gillott These fields are naturally oriented toward the needs of the press photographer. The IPTC 1.0 and 1.1 core standard have a significant number of changes but for the purposes of this paper comment has been limited to the base functionality as this is the most likely to be implemented in available software. Later extensions include the photographers address, email and web site 14 and in the 2009 standard, for example, the location has been split to document both the location from which the photograph was taken and the location of the subject 17 ; there is also a lot more information about the subject that is very specific to press and magazine photography. Also omitted are the fields such as Intellectual Genre, Scene and Subject 15 as these are encoded rather than textual fields.

out of copyright if, after a reasonable search, the copyright owner cannot be found 24 . It is important therefore to always assert copyright 7 and that creators should establish authorship of their work. By simply clicking the shutter of a camera, the photographer becomes the first owner of the image: the image by contract may become the property of the employer but it is the photographers right to be known as the author of the image. As author, the photographer should assert that right 7 . On a community, or even University, excavation, it is unusual for such a contract to be in force, so technically, even if taken on departmental cameras and collected into a common repository; images actually remain the property of the student or volunteer.

Use of standard Exif metadata is probably sufficient to achieve minimum documentation of an image but the IPTC fields do allow for better management: for example the supported keyword field which is used by some image software. Also the location information is broken out into fields suitable for recording the requisite country, district (county) and parish information (ADS 2008, deposit create2).

By properly asserting copyright and authorship it becomes easier to show, when copyright is reassigned to a depositee, such as a museum or other archive, that copyright is in fact owned by the depositor. Failure to properly manage copyright can lead to difficulties making the deposit. In practice, archaeological units usually only require the photographer to initial the photograph register entry: also in practice, there are more images on the camera than there are register entries: archivists have to presume the identity of the photographer when building photographic indexes. Cullen 7 states quite clearly “Electronic files left behind by someone who has not taken action to establish authorship are subject to suspicion if authorship is asserted by anyone else at the time of cataloging”. He goes on to say: “This leaves us where we have been all along at the mercy of cataloguers. But, in the case of a digital object, we are actually worse off than we would be with an analog object. This is because we lack the physical evidence provided by analog objects evidence that offers the means to test the cataloger” 7 .

The Object Name/Title field should not be confused with the Exif Image Title field. The former was used in an IPTC context to provide a file name while the latter is more in line with the IPTC Headline. The IPTC Title field can be used to link the image to the original file or a database reference 9 , though the field is limited to 64 characters. An alternative place to put this could be the Special instructions which are at least 256 characters long. This is preferable to using the Exif Unique Id which is only 16 characters long. This field is considered to be a rights management field and to be used for copyright control and as such should not be altered 12 .

C OPYRIGHT AND A RTIST

Changing best practice is always difficult, but there is an argument for archaeological units introducing an initials register whereby individual’s initials are registered and no two individuals can use the same initials for the duration of an excavation. Both ADS and The Museum of London include the name of the photographer in their metadata fields (ADS 2008, deposit create2; 23 : ADS confirms that where initials are used they should be listed in full elsewhere in the archive (Hardman 2009, email dated 15 Sept). There is also an argument for registering the times of presence of an individual on site and including this register in the archive: it would certainly improve research into provenance as long as camera dates and times are correct. This register should include ALL visitors. This is supported by a requirement that a record is complete and requires a signature 11 . It can be construed that a digital photograph is not complete without a ‘signature’: the name of the photographer.

Discussion of copyright in an Internet era can only be very generalized: every country has its own legal framework; which is based on differing philosophies; and is enforced with different levels of enthusiasm. None the less there is a common framework for copyright to which most nations have agreed: this is referred to as the Berne Convention; the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Copyright Treaty of 1996 16 is a recent revision. One of the provisions is to protect rights information to prevent change or removal. In the context of a digital image that is essentially the Artist and Copyright. Under the Berne Convention copyright is automatic 24 , and in the case of digital images, defaults to 25 years from creation. In some jurisdictions, which until recently included the United States, copyright has to be registered and renewed. Automatic copyright does, however, create a huge problem for archivists and others researching ownership of copyright: there is a now a huge body of “orphan works” for which copyright is difficult or impossible to establish 24 . Under US laws, for example, these works are ’effectively impossible’ 24 to publish. There is move afoot in the US to make these “orphan works” effectively

It is implicit in the minds of archivists that Copyright is asserted in an image and that the author/creator/artist is recorded and acknowledged. Today this can achieved by use of the Exif Artist and Copyright fields; while copyright orphanhood, which potentially blocks publication or creates an open season for unacknowledged use, is best avoided by using the IPTC 13

Metadata for the mundane fields to fully document the ownership: though not listed above, the 2005 and 2009 standards provide extensive new fields for recording contact information 17 .

Irfanview This is the most popular free utility for image editing and supports (via plugin) Exif and IPTC data. Users can clearly see what Exif fields are in use and which fields are updated by IPTC changes: for example the Exif Copyright field is maintained when the ITPC field is changed. This would be the free tool of choice for updating images for archival purposes. Irfanview can be downloaded from http://www.irfanview.com/.

S OFTWARE The scope of this paper is oriented to readers with modest budgets such as small commercial units or community projects; this includes archaeological students and individual archaeologists. The software referenced in this section is usually ‘free’ and is distributed with the OS or easily downloaded. It is NOT an exhaustive survey of free utilities but illustrates what can be readily used by a relatively inexperienced user of computers. More sophisticated utilities can be found by use of Internet search engines or by payment of licensing fees. In this authors experience most of the ‘Open source’ utilities come with ‘Open Questions’ about their treatment of metadata or were difficult or dangerous to use by the inexperienced. For example, the default jpeg Save option on more than one was to strip off metadata (e.g. GIMP): these issues may no longer be apposite, but readers are invited to research this on their own.

Windows Photo Gallery/Windows Live Photo Gallery Windows Photo Gallery is distributed with the Vista OS. Windows Live Photo Gallery, which has the same, but slightly improved, user interface, is distributed with Windows Live Instant Messenger and appears to be inextricably linked to it (September 6, 2009). Both tools allow some changes to metadata. The bonus with the Windows Live manifestation is that it can be installed on Windows XP. Both of these tools allow for ‘tagging’ which then allow the user to group images by date, folder and tag.

Similarly, the easy to use Photo Info tool described below appears to have vanished, to be replaced by the rather awkward Microsoft Pro Photo Tools.

Picasa Picassa is the Google supplied equivalent tool to Windows Photo Galleries. Picassa can be downloaded from Google: http://picasa.google.com/. Picassa tags are saved in the IPTC Keyword field. This may be a problem if the IPTC keywords are to be controlled. Picasa also adds data to the Exif Image Unique Id (42016) field. This can pose problems if the field is preferred for a link to an archival record.

Windows Explorer In general, file properties can be accessed in Windows by simply ‘Right clicking’ the object and selecting Properties. Some Exif properties can be changed in the dialog box that open as a result of this action, including, bizarrely the camera make and model. The Windows’ Title, Authors, Subject, and Tags fields, though they may initially be populated by Exif fields, are saved in the XPTitle, XPAuthor, XPComment, XPKeyword Tags.

Adobe Photoshop Elements Unlike the previously mentioned software, Elements is not free. However as Adobe has been closely involved in the process of photographic metadata definition and is the ‘sponsor’ of XMP, extensive support for metadata is integrated into Adobe products. Elements is very popular and a license is within the budget of most archaeologists. Users should be aware that it ‘pollutes’ the Exif Software tag (305) even if a file is saved with no changes. The presence of this tag is a smoking gun for the possibility of other edits and in the absence of any ‘change log’ may leave the provenance of the image in doubt.

Microsoft Photo Info This tool is officially no longer available or supported but is well worth getting hold of. This utility added a Photo Info verb to the Right click menu, which displays a Form that shows IPTC information and allows for update. The form is in line with the forms described by the IPTC forms description 14 . A download of this appears to be available from http://www. brothersoft.com/microsoft-photo-info-65140.html (September 6, 2009).

D ISCUSSION Microsoft Pro Photo Tools Unfortunately, there is no foolproof technology that indelibly marks or fixes an image with its metadata 7 . If there were, one can be assured that the worldwide hacker community would be busy looking for ways to subvert it. That is not to say owners of digital objects should give up. The issue here is not so much limiting access to the material than knowing when it has been changed. Nor is every change a bad thing: adding a codicil

Replaces (actually requires Photo Info be uninstalled, though it can be reinstalled afterwards) and can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site: http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/ downloads/tools.aspx (September 6, 2009). It implements the later 2005 IPTC definition and allows for the addition of GPS information to the image. 14

Alan Gillott or notation might be reasonable modification to a written document as might removing redeye be to a photograph. In an archaeological context such modification needs to be carefully thought through. Where the image is primary data, it should not be changed, and modification should be made to a copy and the original cited, even within metadata.

and small archaeological units, including university departments, as the cost of preparation for deposition increases. Similarly, many of the key utilities such as CAD and GIS do not add provenancing metadata to their exported images 9 : many of those images are themselves derived from other images (e.g. an aerial photograph) whose provenance is also required. This is information that should be recorded in the formal record, and, because output may be dislocated from that record, some form of back reference metadata needs to be included in the image, including who created it. This latter is problematic as many hands may have been involved in the creation of the various layers used and combining a particular subset of layers and exporting the result might not be seen as a very creative act. None the less the copyright and credit should be accorded to some entity, whether project, corporation or, individual.

The ubiquitous nature of image modification makes it difficult to get across to younger academics the possible consequences 9,28 and it was sad to observe an archaeology undergraduate class on photography given by an experienced professor advocating the use of image modification utilities to ’remove’ tree branches and other obstructions from images to make the subject monument stand out. Appropriate perhaps for a tourist guide or art book but not for the primary archaeological record. Such a modification also would cause a specialist to question the provenance of the image: resolving that question would be to locate in a reliable source the original unmodified image.

There is a whole set of image creating applications whose designers need to be thinking a great deal more clearly about provenance: Virtual Reality; LIDAR; RADAR; SONAR; XRay; ct-Scan and more 9 , output from which is routinely used in archaeological reports and should be similarly documented.

These issues have not gone unnoticed and amongst the various metadata projects are mechanisms to capture and record image changes. One such is METS, the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard 4 . The downside of this standard is that it appears to be designed to be used externally and not embedded in the subject document, though there is no reason why it should not be. It is coded as XML and therefore could be embedded amongst the XMP metadata. It does include elements intended to track modifications 4 : a mechanism that could be utilized by image editors to log changes. METS is, though, extraordinarily complex, and would require potentially expensive software support. As such, it is considered out of the scope of this discussion. The Museum of London also expects depositors to document modifications to any deposited image 23 . This requirement by the Museum of London is significant in that, as tools like Photoshop do not record their depredations in the image metadata, it is possible for individuals to innocently make changes without understanding the consequence, or, in some cases, to forget the full scope of the modifications when they proceed to log their activities, particularly as image modification is often a trial and error process 9 .

The final software process that needs consideration is that of reformatting. When an image is posted into a word processing document (or spreadsheet, presentation package etc.) it is usually stored as is with the embedded metadata: if the user requests the image to be compressed, the source image is discarded along with its metadata. Similarly, if the image is converted to a PDF (usually via a print channel) the image is transformed into a PDF acceptable format and the metadata is lost. Finally, the use of screen print also copies the rendered screen into the clipboard without reference to the underlying metadata: these transformations are a problem, and are technically violations of the Berne Convention, in that the rights data is lost. These types of problems can only be resolved by the developers of the appropriate infrastructure software: however, in the mean time, the user should be aware of the implications of using these features. C ONCLUSION

At this time utility and OS software designers do not seem to have grasped the issue of provenance as a central one that requires consideration in all software offerings. Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Database products have no features to permanently track change over the long term: the software designers dilemma being that some of their customers do not want the courts to have access to too much potentially damaging interim data states 9 . One of the work product initiatives, The University of Pittsburgh Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping Project 11 requires all utilities of this type to be used within a change capture and logging object.

The irony for provenance is that the greater the bar to the perfect forgery this is one of the stronger arguments against biometric identity schemes the more likely it is that the forger will make an undetectable counterfeit. This is a dilemma faced by currency designers on an ongoing basis as it is for biomedical drug designers: the perfect cure will give rise to the perfect microbe. The sheer volume (and apparent invisibility 9 of digital images) makes their management requirements different from paper based archival methodologies, and suggests that photographers and project managers take time out to properly document images as soon as practicable after their creation and that the documentation is incorporated as a part of the image, that is as ‘properties’ or ‘metadata’. This documentation should include identifying the photographer, asserting copyright and

The increasing complexity of metadata being requested by curators of cultural material may begin to exclude community

15

Metadata for the mundane adding a description. The item should be saved with the technical camera metadata unchanged. Both Exif and IPTC fields, readily managed by most image management utilities, can be used. It is relatively easy to programmatically harvest Exif data from an image and to use it to populate a database table or spreadsheet; IPTC data is less easy to get at but there are programming tools that will return that information to a programmer.

[13] IPTC, Iptc 7901, Tech. report, International Press Telecommunications Council, 1995. [14] , ”iptc core” schema for xmp version 1.0: Custom panels user guide, Tech. report, International Press Telecommunications Council, 2005. [15] , ”iptc core” schema for xmp version 1.0: Specification document, Tech. report, International Press Telecommunications Council, 2005. [16] , Iptc standards: White paper 2007, Tech. report, International Press Telecommunications Council, 2007. [17] , Iptc standard photo metadata version 1.1, Tech. report, International Press Telecommunications Council, 2009. [18] JEIDA, Jeida (1998) digital still camera image file format standard (exchangeable image file format for digital still cameras: Exif) version 2.1, Tech. report, Japan Electronic Industry Development Association., 1998. [19] JEITA, Jeita cp-3451. exchangeable image file format for digital still cameras: Exif version 2.2, Tech. report, Japan Electronic Industry Development Association, 2002. [20] W. F. Limp, Handbook of archaeological methods, ch. Curation of Data, pp. 1270–1305, AltaMira, 2005. [21] G. R. Lock, Using computers in archaeology: Towards virtual pasts, Routledge, 2003. [22] F. Mintzer, J. Lotspiech, and N. Morimoto, Safeguarding digital library contents and users, D-lib magazine (1997). [23] MOL, General standards for the preparation of archaeological archives deposited with the museum of london, Tech. report, Museum of London, 2009. [24] J. M. Ockerbloom, Copyright and provenance: Some practical problems, Bulletin of the IEEE Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering 30 (2007), no. 4, 51–58. [25] ORI, Journal ’audits’ of image manipulation, Office of Research Integrity Newsletter 17 (2008), no. 1, 2. [26] D. Robinson, Digital data: Preservation and reuse, http: //www.csanet.org/saa/dapper.html, 2000, Page consulted September 16 2009. [27] H. C. Simmons, Archaeological photography, London, 1969. [28] J. R. Young, Journals find fakery in many images submitted to support research, The Chronicle of Higher Education (2008).

If the image has been properly asserted and documented by means of the embedded metadata, it is safe to be emailed to colleagues. There is no harm in asserting in the email that the image contains rights and descriptive metadata that should be retained in every copy. This should become routine procedure for anyone sharing digital images. The issues of digital provenance are not going to be resolved in the short term, but, unless archaeologists, and other scholars, are sensitive to the issues and understand that preservation does not provenance make, the designers of archival schemes are going to continue to ignore them.

R EFERENCES [1] ADS, Guidelines for depositors version 1.3, 2008, Page consulted December 10 2008. [2] P. Backhouse, Drowning in data? digital data in a british contracting unit, Digital Archaeology (L. Evans. T and P. Daly, eds.), Routledge, 2006, pp. 50–58. [3] W C Booth, G G Colomb, and J. M Williams, The craft of research, University of Chicago press, 2003. [4] J. Carlson, Mets metadata encoding and transmission standard: Primer and reference manual, 2007. [5] K. Cheung, J. Hunter, A. Lashtabeg, and J. Drennan, Scope: A scientific compound object publishing and editing system, The International Journal of Digital Curation 3 (2008), no. 2, 4–18. [6] C. W. Cook, Patents, profits & power: How intellectual property rules the global economy, Kogan Page Publishers, 2002. [7] C. T. Cullen, Authentication of digital objects: Lessons from a historian’s research, Authenticity in a Digital Environment (A. Smith, ed.), Council on Library and Information Resources, 2000, pp. 1–7. [8] M. Foucault, L’arch´eologie du savoir, e´ ditions Gallimard, 1969. [9] A. R. Gillott, The exploitation of digital photography in field archaeology and the requirements for embedded metadata as a key element for provenance, University of York, 2007. [10] , Digital image accession: Small sites archive, Oxford Archaeology, 2009. [11] P. B. Hirtle, Archival authenticity in a digital age, Authenticity in a Digital Environment (A. Smith, ed.), Council on Library and Information Resources, 2000, pp. 8–23. [12] IFRA, Persisting technical photo metadata, Tech. report, NCA-FIEJ Research Association, 2008. 16

Audio Podcasting and Archaeology Alan M. Greaves School of Archaeological, Classics and Egyptology University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

However, the experiences of archaeology students almost invariably do involve an auditory dimension, be it in lecture’s, seminars, or practical sessions in laboratories, museums or onsite. In fact, it is hard to imagine an archaeology education in which the oral presentation and discussion of archaeological materials is not a central element of learning and teaching. A typical archaeology lecture, for example, will often consist of a slide show of images of artefacts, landscapes, or data sets on which the lecturer then provides a commentary.

Abstract—The audio dimension to the learner experience in archaeology teaching is important, yet little recognised. There are a number of ways in which audio podcasting can be used to enhance archaeological education in blended- or distancelearning scenarios. Such learning resources do not necessarily engender deep learning, but can do so effectively if thoughtfully deployed.

I NTRODUCTION

This ‘commentary’ element is essential because archaeology is by its very nature interpretative. In effect, archaeology is a two-stage process in which archaeologists first of all locate, record and identify archaeological materials and, secondly, interpret those discoveries (Sept 2004). It is this first function (i.e. the act of discovery) that is most commonly associated with archaeologists by outsiders to the discipline – including the public, the media and even new undergraduate students 14 . Yet, if the true skill of the archaeologist just lay in the discovery and identification of archaeological materials, then many of our professional functions would become automated and the aural component of teaching could easily be replaced with text.

The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly to consider the relationship between audio podcasting and the teaching of archaeology and, secondly, to provide a detailed example of the use of such podcasts on a fieldtrip and an assessment of their effectiveness in enhancing student learning in such scenarios. Podcasts can take many forms and they can be produced by many types of recording devices and programs and can be accessed and listened to via various technologies. Podcasts can take the form of audio-only, enhanced audio (i.e. a soundtrack with still photographic images), or video clips (sometimes referred to as ‘vodcasts’). The availability of ever cheaper recording devices and digital media players makes the use of podcasts more and more attainable to teachers and learners alike. For the purposes of this article, the term ‘podcast’ is used to refer only to audio voice recordings. Although a more limited definition than that adopted by other commentators (e.g. Gill 6 ), this allows the author to focus fully on the contribution of the audio component to the learning experiences of archaeology students.

It is the interpretative element of the ‘commentary’ given during the teaching of archaeology that makes the aural component of learning so essential to the discipline. Not only can a good archaeology lecturer be engaging and entertaining, he or she will also present challenges to the individuals in the audience about how they view and interpret the images that they are being presented with. In this context, the intonation and emphasis that the speaker places on his or her commentary will inevitably colour the way in which the listener understands the nuances of the speakers delivery. In this regard, archaeology has much in common with other arts subjects, such as History or English, in which discussion of the varying interpretations of texts, rather than artefacts, forms the central element of learning and teaching.

PART O NE : AUDIO A RCHAEOLOGY W HY AUDIO ? At first glance it might appear counterintuitive to be addressing the auditory experience and its contribution to students’ learning in archaeology because it is a discipline that is generally concerned with the visual and, to a lesser extent, haptic (i.e. kinesthetic) skills and experiences of its practitioners. That is, when working in the field, the majority of archaeologists’ activities are concerned with the visual recognition and interpretation of artefacts, landscapes, sites and soils in ways that generally do not engage the auditory sense.

Neither is the presentation of such ‘commentary’ a binary relationship between the speaker and the listener (i.e. the lecturer and the student) as often, even in very formal lecturing contexts, there will often be questions from the floor or time for discussion, during which the listener is presented with alternative interpretations of the same archaeological materials by others. This gives students an insight into the validity of their own interpretations, even where these may differ 17

Audio Podcasting and Archaeology from that being presented. This possibility of the multiple interpretations within archaeology is exemplified by the work of Ian Hodder on multi-vocal archaeology 12,13 .

lectures in digital formats. The use of pick-up microphones can also capture question-and-answer exchanges from the floor that may have occurred during the lecture, and thereby capture even more fully the genuine lecture experience for the listener. These digital recordings can then be posted online via closed VLE systems or made widely available via file-sharing services such as iTunes U. When digital recordings of lectures are made available alongside the corresponding PowerPoint presentation, students have the possibility to replay the lecture as delivered in both audio and vision. Some colleagues may feel uncomfortable with making their lectures available in VLE systems in the belief that this may cause attendance in lectures to decline. However, there is anecdotal evidence, which is borne out by the authors own experience, that, in blended learning scenarios, motivated students will both attend lectures in person and follow them online, whereas disengaged students will do neither. The advantages of presenting lectures on-line as audio recordings is that it allows students to not only revisit and revise the lecture, in order to glean accurate factual information, but also to reflect on its content at more length and perhaps in the light of new information or experiences that they have received since the lecture was first given. For example, it would be an interesting experiment to ask students to define what they think archaeology is in the introductory lecture of a first year methods course, and then to ask them replay their own discussion at the end of the module and reflect on the extent to which they have revised their initial conceptions of the discipline (on the pre-entry misconceptions of archaeology students see Kirk, Greaves 14 ).

Again, even complex and conflicting multiple interpretations could be committed to text, but there are some areas of professional practice, particularly relating to ethical and practical decisions made in the field, that many archaeologists feel comfortable with discussing only anecdotally 11 . Therefore, the spoken component of archaeology lectures can often deliver important, often implicit, understandings to the student about the lecturers attitudes towards ethics and standards of good practice within the discipline. By listening to the subtext of the lecturer’s ‘commentary’, intuiting their values and relating them to their own, the learner will construct his or her own values and disciplinary understandings by means of social constructivism 17 . These values and understandings will be important for informing learner’s future professional practice and ethical behaviours, in areas such as attitudes to the art market, engagement with the public and amateurs, professional conduct, standards of proof, public-private sector interaction, and other key areas of modern archaeological practice. Although such subjects are openly addressed and widely written about in the archaeological community, the role that the verbal component of university lectures can play in informing graduates’ professional values is often underestimated or overlooked. Recognising the value of the auditory component of teaching is also important because it has long been recognised that effective teaching will engage all of the learners senses 3 . Therefore, the combination of the intense visual and haptic experiences that distinguish our interaction with archaeological phenomena from other disciplines, combined with the auditory and read/write dimensions experienced during most learning encounters, make archaeology an incredibly rich multi-modal learning experience for students and this may go some way towards accounting for its enduring popularity with learners of all types and ages. What remains to be considered now is how can we capture the auditory component of our teaching and deploy it effectively using modern digital media.

Artefact-Based Teaching: Artefact handling practicals are one of the defining elements of an archaeological education, yet one of the most difficult to replicate digitally or to facilitate student access to via Virtual Learning Environments. The CONTACT project was an FDTL5 funded project designed to increase student engagement with artefacts by means of an open-access VLE (http://contact.group.shef.ac.uk/). One of the 14 CONTACT projects was the author’s ‘Pot-Casting (sic.)’ project 10 . This project has created a series of spoken commentaries on six complete pots in the collection of the Garstang Archaeology Museum at the University of Liverpool (see Fig 1). Students were not able to handle these pots directly because, as complete vessels on display in museum cabinets, many of them are too delicate to be taken out and handled on a regular basis by large numbers of students. The aim of the ‘Pot-Casting (sic.)’ project was therefore to give students a virtual experience of interacting with these important artefacts by creating interactive visual media, made using Quicktime and an accompanying spoken soundtrack. These spoken commentaries give students an expert examination of each pot, as well as general overview of the style as a whole and introductions to key background themes. The six pots chosen for this project are examples of the major painting styles of Greek pottery: Geometric, Black Figure, Red Figure, Corinthian, East Greek and White-Ground Lekythos. When using the VLE, learners are therefore engaging with the vessel visually (via the image), by audio (the podcast), and kinaesthetically (by moving the mouse to rotate/enlarge the image). In this context, the use

E XAMPLES OF THE USE OF AUDIO P ODCASTS IN A RCHAEOLOGY In this section selected examples of the ways in which audio podcasts have been deployed in common archaeology teaching scenarios and their educational benefits are considered. The examples chosen include the use of audio podcasts to create engaging and content-rich learning resources built around lectures, artefact-based teaching, and independent learning. Lectures: The importance of recognising the centrality of the audio component of archaeology lectures and similar teaching sessions has been discussed above. Capturing this audio component can be easily achieved with modern digital voice recorders, or recording attachments for MP3 players, which provide a low-cost and convenient way of recording 18

Alan M. Greaves of audio can make the presentation of images of artefacts a multi-modal, interactive learning experience that is likely to be more engaging than standard mono-modal VLE resources. It also has the advantage of enabling the basics of Greek vasepainting to be communicated to a large number of students by means of artefacts held in the schools own collections, which can then be followed up in small-group sessions, which are taught using fragments, allowing students to apply their knowledge of the styles to fragments of the type commonly found on-site. This saves time in the small-group sessions for problem-based discussion of the assemblages presented, rather than having to repeat the basics of the major styles. Hosting these resources in a VLE allows students to replay the podcasts and interact with the Quicktime images in ways and at times to suit themselves.

attributable to them and are not just a synthesis of the prevailing academic orthodoxy.

PART T WO : A N A SSESSMENT OF AUDIO P ODCASTS ON F IELD - VISITS P EDAGOGIC I SSUES The Subject Benchmark for Archaeology states that “fieldwork constitutes an essential aspect of the engagement with professional practice” and includes in the list of teaching and learning methods of the discipline “field-visits to appropriate monuments, structures and collections for direct experience of material covered by the course” 5 . Within the archaeological community a great deal of interest has been focussed on issues connected with the pedagogy of on-site fieldwork that involve students in primary data recovery, usually by means of excavation or survey (e.g. Croucher et al. 2 ). Fieldwork is undoubtedly an important and, some would argue, an essential element of a good archaeological education but for many students it is fieldvisits that are their first exposure to archaeological sites as part of their archaeological studies, often for practical reasons. For the purposes of this article, field-visits (or fieldtrips) are defined as guided visits to archaeological sites and landscapes that do not involve students in the acquisition of primary archaeological data. As with lectures, there is often an implicit assumption that field-visits are an inherently passive experience for the student but this need not be the case, and students on archaeology field-visits are often actively engaged in discussions with their tutors and peers, as well as actively learning to ‘read’ the landscapes and understand the monuments before them.

Fig. 1: Screen capture of the Pot-Casting project VLE.

Independent Learning: Another way in which audio podcasts have been used in the teaching of archaeology is as part of the Evaluating Multiple Interpretations Generative Learning Object - the eMI GLO (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/hca/themes/e-learning/emi glo). This was developed by the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology in association with the CETL for Reusable Learning Objects. Once created by the eMI GLO the resultant reusable learning objects can be hosted in a VLE and used for independent learning, or for seminar preparation. In the eMI GLO, users are guided through a consideration of a single object or text (e.g. the Pergamon altar) which includes text, images and audio recordings of spoken commentaries on the object given by experts, each with different interpretations. In this way the eMI GLO can capture the multiplicity of voices that the disciplinary discourses of archaeology, Classics, Ancient History and other Arts subjects. Alternatively, rather than presenting the multiple interpretations of different scholars, enhanced audio podcasts can be made by the lecturer in response to specific questions or requests from students, to enhance their independent learning (e.g. Gill 2009 6 on the operation of the Isthmia starting gate). Used in these ways, audio podcasts enhance what would otherwise be static slide shows and, by capturing individuals’ voices, present scholars interpretations in a way that, perhaps more than in written formats, show that their interpretations are personally

On archaeological fieldtrips students have the opportunity to develop essential personal, professional and academic skills in a stimulating environment and they are rightly valued as a cornerstone of student learning in many disciplines, not just archaeology. Yet fieldtrips are under sustained pressure from a number of directions and increased student numbers require us to re-think and defend the role of fieldtrips within the curriculum 7 . Other threats to the fieldtrip include the rising costs of transport and accommodation, increased awareness of the carbon footprint of coach travel and the need for extra teaching assistance required by increased cohort sizes and minimum staff: student ratios required by Health and Safety regulations. Timetabling can be a problem when fieldtrips are scheduled on a weekday during term; but weekend trips can also prove difficult for students with employment or childcare commitments. The pressure to generate research is forcing down teaching contact hours in order to free up staff to engage in research activity. This is particularly pertinent in archaeology because the majority of UK departments are in the research-led sector of Higher Education, in particular the Russell Group. In such a context, even a modest one-day (eight-hour) field-visit can seem like a profligate use of staff time when compared to scheduling another lecture or further independent learning. 19

Audio Podcasting and Archaeology These many pressures on field-visits mean that time spent in the field is at a premium more than ever before and fieldtrip leaders are under pressure to deliver measurable learning outcomes from their trips. As a result of this pressure there is a danger that fieldtrips may become platforms for didactic delivery of core curriculum information to passive groups of students, rather than spaces in which learners can engage in experiential learning and construct their own knowledge and understandings - a process which generally requires more time.

Archaeology’ module, which is compulsory for all first year archaeology students at the University of Liverpool, and takes place within the first few weeks of term every year. In 2007, a group of c.70 students and 8 teaching staff visited three Roman forts in North Wales (Kanovium, Pen-y-Gwryd, and Segontium) as part of this module. Prior to the fieldtrip, three audio podcasts were made available via the University of Liverpool’s Blackboard VLE system. Each podcast provided an archaeological discussion of a different element of the construction and function of a roman fort:

In addition to the various pressures on time in the field, fieldtrips are also viewed as a quaint but costly and anachronistic mode of teaching in the fast-moving world of computermediated learning on wireless-enabled campuses. Fieldtrips largely stand outside of the rapid and widespread adoptions of VLEs as a tool for supporting and delivering learning and teaching and it is not easy to see how the fieldtrip experience can be enhanced or replaced by digital resources. There have been trials that use VR technology to create a ‘Virtual Fieldtrip’ for geography students 4 . However, although such VR learning tools are interactive, virtual fieldtrips do not always promote deep learning and there are particular issues that limit their value to archaeology students, most particularly the interaction between archaeological monuments and real landscapes 9 .

• • •

The design of roman forts Roman military ditches Roman marching camps

Each podcast is 5 minutes long and was made available in .MP3 format and as a text version in .pdf format. The content of the podcasts was designed to be generic in nature so that they could be used to support future trips to other Roman forts, which are a common form of archaeological site across Britain. In addition to being used as part of structured learning around the ALGY 101 module fieldtrip, the podcasts could be accessed by students as part of their non-directed learning. Also, once made available online, it will be possible for them to be accessed by other HEIs, schools, community groups, or members of the public.

In Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1984) 15 , fieldtrips provide the concrete experiences that are essential triggers for active learning. Yet experiential learning is not an inevitable consequence of going on a fieldtrip. The benefits of fieldtrips may seem selfevident to lecturers, but they are not to students and learning outcomes need to be made explicit if student engagement is to be enhanced 8 . Tutors also need to devise resources that encourage students to transform their experiences through action and/or reflection, otherwise the value of the fieldtrip is reduced and deep learning will not be achieved 16 .

It was hoped that these podcasts would help enhance the student experience and learning outcomes of the fieldtrip in a number of ways. Firstly, they would deliver accurate information about Roman sites effectively to a large group. This had been an issue on previous trips because it was not possible to audibly address a single large group on-site, especially in windy or wet conditions, and because the Health and Safety requirement for high staffing levels meant that not all of the staff participating had an advanced knowledge of Roman sites. Secondly, if the students were able to listen to the podcasts on mobile digital equipment during the coach journey to the sites then they could make productive use of what would otherwise be ‘dead time’ on the bus. This was particularly advantageous, as the sites to be visited were a considerable distance from Liverpool. Finally, as students were guided round the sites by different members of teaching staff, the combination of their commentary on the three sites, combined with the audio podcasts would provide students with multiple interpretations (see above).

Fieldtrips are not incompatible with ICT, the use of which can be creatively aligned with the trip into a form of blended learning that can also be inexpensive, as work by the GEES Subject Centre has demonstrated 18,19 . In particular, M-Learning technology (i.e. everyday mobile technology such as iPods, MP3/MP4 enabled mobile phones, etc.) is not only affordable and readily accessible, but also appealing to the current generation of ’digital citizens’ 20 . However, like the fieldtrips themselves, ‘high tech’ ICT gimmicks can often be used passively and do not inherently challenge students to construct their own meanings and engage them in deep learning. In order to do this they need to be structured so as to create cognitive dissonance, forcing students to accommodate or assimilate new information into their mental schema of the site visited 1 .

In order to ensure that the podcasts achieved the aim of engendering deep learning, they used a ‘whole-to-part’ approach to help students break down the visible remains of Roman forts by systematically analysing their characteristic features and understanding each as archaeological features that may (or may not) be visible on the ground. For example, in the Roman marching camps’ podcast, the audio commentary challenged common pre-conceptions (i.e. created cognitive dissonance) about the defensibility and permanence of military structures. Students who had listened to the podcast on-site, on the bus,

C ASE S TUDY: M ETHODS OF A RCHAEOLOGY F IELDTRIP The final part of this article will present a case-study and assessment of the use of audio podcasts as part of an archaeology fieldtrip. This fieldtrip is part of the ‘ALGY 101: Methods of 20

Alan M. Greaves or in advance of the visit could then critically assess to what extent the particular site that they were visiting adhered to the typical features of a Roman fort described in the podcasts, and in what ways it differed, thereby engaging in active learning.

accessing podcasts may appear to be a very low level of ITC skill, the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool attracts students from a wide diversity of backgrounds, including a significant proportion of mature students who have often had less exposure to ITC than their peers who are school entrants. The fact that even four students were encouraged to engage in a new form of ITC for the first time as part of this exercise demonstrates that it has some usefulness as a means of enhancing learners’ knowledge of ITC and in building their confidence in engaging with new media.

In order to assess the success or otherwise of the podcasts in enhancing the student experience and learning on the fieldtrip, a short questionnaire was taken. There were 44 respondents in total, with most writing comments in the open-text sections of the questionnaire form in addition to completing tick-box responses. With regard to whether or not the podcasts enhanced student learning, the responses to Question Four (‘did you find the podcasts useful?’) are of most relevance. The responses show that there was generally a positive response towards them, with only two respondents answering ‘not much’ and none ‘very little’ (Fig 2). Written comments include: ‘(podcasts) made a nice change from reading’, ‘more interesting than having pages and pages to read’, and ‘concise, basic appreciation of the architecture of the camps’. However, at least one respondent expressed a preference for reading the .pdf format versions to listening to the podcast themselves.

(a) Question 1

(b) Question 2

Fig. 3: Comparison of questionnaire results for Questions One and Two Fig. 2: Questionnaire results for Question Four

Whether or not the podcasts enhanced the student experience on the fieldtrip overall is harder to demonstrate. The overall response to the field trip was slightly negative (see Fig 4). The reasons for why the student responses to the fieldtrip were negative are complex and, judging by the written comments on the forms, include factors such as: the weather (a very common comment – the day in question had been wet), the early start time (9am on a Saturday) and students’ interactions with the individual members of teaching staff (some tutors were more popular than others).

On the question of whether or not the podcasts enhanced students’ ITC skills, Fig 3 shows the comparison between responses to Questions One and Two – ‘have you ever downloaded or used podcasts before?’ and ‘were you able to access the podcasts prior to the fieldtrip?’ The responses to these questions indicate that four out of the 44 respondents had never previously accessed podcasts, but had done so for the first time as part of this exercise. Putting podcasts on the VLE for students to access prior to the fieldtrip can therefore be shown to have increased their engagement with digital media, in a significant number of cases for the first time. Although

Overall, the value of the podcasts in this fieldtrip scenario would appear to be threefold: they introduced variety by 21

Audio Podcasting and Archaeology CAA conference and for the opportunity to contribute to these conference proceedings.

R EFERENCES [1] T. Copeland, Constructing pasts: Interpreting the historic environment, Heritage Interpretation (2005), no. Hems and Blockley, M., 83–95. [2] K. Croucher, H. Cobb, and A.. Brennan, Investigating the role of fieldwork in teaching and learning archaeology, Higher Education Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology, 2008. [3] N. Fleming, Vark – a guide to learning styles, http:// www.vark-learn.com, 2009. [4] A. M. Folkard and E. Harris, Incaman: An integrated catchment management gaming system, Lancaster, 2003, Final Report to Lancaster University Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning on a TQEFfunded project. [5] Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), Archaeology, Tech. report, Mansfield, 2007. [6] D. Gill, Podcasting the ancient world, Bulletin of the Council of University Classical Departments 38 (2009), 16–17. [7] J. R. Gold and M. Haigh, Over the hills and far away: retaining field study experience despite larger classes, Teaching Large Classes in Higher Education: How to Maintain Quality with Reduced Resources (1992). [8] A. M. Greaves, Methods of archaeology fieldtrips, www. hca.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/case Studies/, 2003. [9] , Re-creating hadrian’s wall in second life, www. hca.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/case Studies/, 2007. [10] , ”pot-casting”: Using podcasts and vle resources to teach basic skills in the analysis and appreciation of aegean and greek painted pottery, http: //contact.group.shef.ac.uk/greaves.html, 2008. [11] , Teaching ethics in classical archaeology, Research in Archaeological Education Journal (forthcoming). [12] I. Hodder, The archaeological process: Towards a reflexive methodology, Oxford, 1998. [13] , Towards reflexive method in archaeology, Cambridge, 2000. [14] K. Kirk and A. M. Greaves, Absorbing the shock of the early undergraduate experience, Assessment, Learning & Teaching Journal 5 (2009), 5–8. [15] D. A. Kolb, Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development, Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1984. [16] C. Kreber, Learning experientially through case studies? a conceptual analysis, Teaching in Higher Education 6 (2001), no. 2, 217–228. [17] A. Kukla, Social constructivism and the philosophy of science, Routledge New York, 2000. [18] J. Maskal, A. Stokes, J. B. Truscott, A. Bridge, K. Magnier, and V. Calderbank, Supporting fieldwork using information technology, Planet 18 (2007), 18–21.

Fig. 4: Questionnaire results for Question Seven

providing an alternative to reading, they provided concise information not readily available elsewhere, and they encouraged some students to engage with ITC in new ways. C ONCLUSION Despite the fact that the practical skills of archaeology are mostly visual and haptic in nature, auditory experiences are the core of most archaeology teaching. The reason for this is that the practical skills primary archaeological work are only one component of an archaeological education – the second being the development of an understanding of the processes of interpretation and debate within the discipline. It is in this second field of archaeological education that audio podcasts come into their own for capturing and presenting spoken commentary, interpretation and multiple points-of-view. Audio podcasts have the ability to enhance subject knowledge and ITC skills, and also to make for a more rich and engaging student experience. However, if deployed appropriately audio podcasts also have the potential to engender deep learning and to introduce students to the less commonly recognised, but arguably more important, element of an archaeological education the recognition that a multiplicity of interpretations of archaeological materials and data exist. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Andy Folkard, Tim Copeland and Anne Qualter for the lively discussions that contributed to the development of this article and to Helen Murphy for her help in the preparation of the podcasts for the ALGY 101 fieldtrip. I am grateful to Andrew Wilson and the History, Classics and Archaeology Subject Centre for the invitation to speak at the 22

Alan M. Greaves [19] T. Stott, Evaluation of low-cost personal digital assistants for field data collection and fieldwork leadership by students and staff, Planet 18 (2007), 12–17. [20] D. Tapscott, Growing up digital, McGraw-Hill New York, 1998.

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Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes Jason Jorgenson School of Archaeological, Classics and Egyptology University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

being modelled or using a minimalist approach by including only the most essential factors. The methodology developed in this research uses the former; however, as Bevan 1 asserts, “... the risk of hyper-real models ... is that they can become so bewilderingly complex that they lose all explanatory strength.” and this fact has not been lost here. The Landuse Analyst software which has been written to implement the methodology has made much of the added complexity ‘transparent’. While before the development of this software it would have taken hours (or days) to calculate and examine, for example, the effects of dairy potential utilisation on cropland requirements, it is now possible to examine literally hundreds of different scenarios in a few seconds. By simply adjusting sliders in the software, the user can immediately see the effects, in real time, caused by the change of value.

Abstract—This paper presents a modelling methodology which focusses on looking at subsistence strategies to determine landuse and landscape engagement. It has been very specifically developed to be capable of being used anywhere in the world, and during any period. Many different factors are used in this modelling process, and the paper begins by explaining how some of these factors require special consideration. These special factors are important, because they generally relate to what we, as archaeologists, have no clear evidence for. Following this, a general overview of the algorithms used in these components is presented, providing the necessary information for a clear understanding of the final portion of the paper which explains how the modelling process is implemented using software which I have developed specifically for this purpose.

M ODELLING T HE PAST A major goal of my research is to assess potential sustaining areas of settlement and putative zones of landscape use as a means of understanding landscape impact and engagement. With this in mind, I set out to develop a systematic method of determining what land was more likely to or not to have been used by a settlement for acquiring its food, or more succinctly the settlement subsistence catchment area. Previous methodological approaches to the analysis of landscape use have been unable to encompass all the factors known to influence prehistoric land use, and thus the outcomes risk a distorted picture of potential landuse patterns because they are presented by examining only a select few input factors.

Input Variables Many of the influencing factors incorporated into this methodology have been discussed and proposed/implemented in previous studies, but only ever one or two at a time. This methodology takes a more holistic approach by looking at as many factors and as much available data as conceivably possible that relate to influencing how past peoples may have impacted their local environment. Considering as many variables as possible that may have influenced landscape use can only increase the credibility of any inferences drawn from the data. The complexity of this holistic approach is only possible because of the incredible leaps in computing power in recent years.

Incorporating as much archaeological evidence as possible from excavated sites is paramount for creating a robust and credible landuse model. Archaeological evidence, for example, can indicate the crops that were being sown, and the animals that were being raised. From this information, inferences can then be made to estimate the contribution each crop and animal would have had towards the caloric needs of the people of the settlement. Without engaging with this body of data, the outcome of any landuse model could be criticised as being completely speculative, which addresses the problem with the Vita Finzi Higgs approach at inferring site function from landscape 8 .

When choosing input values for use in a model it is important to recognise those factors that have numerous acceptable values. The speed and ease of use of the model makes light the task of examining a whole range of acceptable values. Variations of these values (within the acceptable range) have the potential to change results, and therefore deserve careful consideration. Nearly all of the values used in this discussion of the methodology are for illustration purposes. Each case study where this methodology is applied will be assessed individually to determine the most suitable values for the required input variables. For example, if an average expected yield for a crop is from 40-50 kg per hectare, then by using

There are two extreme approaches to modelling: attempting to incorporate every conceivable aspect of the phenomenon 25

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes low, mid and high values (or in this example 40, 45 and 50 kg) rather than simply taking the mean value of 45, it is possible to see the effect of fluctuating yields (or our choices for crop yield values) in the results of the modelling process. One issue with this approach is that if several input variables have acceptable ranges, exploring all of them results in a large number of alternative scenarios but the ability to examine the effects of using the highs and lows allows for a more realistic assessment of likely behaviours in the past. Careful examination of these outcomes allows for one to discriminate more easily those factors that have the most significant role in past landuse and thus differential effects on the landscape. In turn this allows one to focus on determining more precise interpretation for behaviours.

•

•

To summarise, this methodology uses as many acceptable variations of as many influencing factors as possible, rather just providing only a few scenarios based on mean values. This ultimately allows for a more nuanced understanding of landscape use and possible variability on past landscape use.

•

Algorithm Development The process of developing the modelling algorithm began with a single goal: the identification of enough suitable land surrounding a site to produce minimum subsistence requirements. From this basis, I worked backwards to develop the steps required to achieve this goal. The calculation of the amount (or area) of land needed to sustain a settlement is a primary requirement, for only if the area of land required to produce enough food to feed the settlement is known, is it possible for a GIS to locate the suitable land equal to that area surrounding the site.

Critical initial input factors (See Figure 2) are an estimate of the settlement’s population and the average daily energy requirements (in Millions of Calories, or MCals) of an average member of the population. By multiplying these figures, the total number of calories required per day for the settlement is calculated. This figure then needs to be multiplied by 365 to get a yearly calorie target required to feed the populace (see Formula F4 in Figure 10). The value must be per annum because crops and animals are modelled using an annual cycle.

In order to achieve this, it was necessary to calculate the amount of food required to provide the basic subsistence needs of the community. By estimating a range of past population sizes and structures it was possible to estimate a range of total caloric requirements for EB communities. By breaking the community’s diet down into the contribution made by individual crops and animals utilised at a given site and calculating requisite herd size and estimating crop yields, it is possible to arrive at a production target for each individual crop and animal utilised by past communities.

P ROCESS OVERVIEW The final product of the model is a map of the settlement’s calculated ‘footprint’ (subsistence catchment area) on the landscape. The model is created by carefully examining palaeobotanical and faunal remains to reconstruct the makeup of the diet. Diet composition, together with a population estimate, is the starting point of the modelling process. With this information, it is possible to derive calorie targets for each contributor to the population diet. Calorie targets make it possible to calculate production targets, and production targets allow land area targets to be determined. Once the area of land required to produce enough food to sustain the population (the area target) has been calculated, that amount of land most proximate to the settlement, classified as being suitable for each crop or animal, is located and plotted onto a map.

In order to calculate the amount of grain, meat and other vegetable goods that needed to be produced the calories each food item would be responsible for contributing to the diet needed to be determined. There are four primary calculation categories in the process: •

then applied to the yearly calorie requirements, resulting in individual calorie targets for each food item. Calculating Production Targets - Production Target calculations require a CALORIE TARGET and the food energy value of each dietary component (food source) in the model. A production target is the amount of food required to satisfy the calorie target. Once the number of calories each food source must supply is known, the production target can be calculated. Calculating Area Targets - This step requires a PRODUCTION TARGET as well as the expected production levels (yields for crops, herd size for animals) for each food item believed to have been part of the diet. Dividing the production target by the yield (crops) or multiplying by the area of land required (per animal), an area target can be calculated. Locating the land - To locate possible land use areas in a GIS, an AREA TARGET is needed. Once an area of land that the population required to grow its crops and graze its animals is known, a GIS can then be used to search for the suitable land surrounding a site equal to this area target and once identified, highlighted and shown on a map.

Calculating Calorie Targets - It was necessary to calculate targets in two stages. In the first stage an overall calorie target for the entire population is calculated. The overall calorie target is per annum, as it is later used to determine annual food production levels. In a second step the population’s diet is broken down into its individual components, represented in the end as a percentage of the diet (see Figure 1). This percentage of overall diet is

Calorie Targets We do know various things about the behaviour of past communities. We know, through botanical and faunal analyses, what crops they grew and consumed, and which animals were being exploited. Additionally, we can determine the 26

Jason Jorgenson item is domestic, and grown/raised by the inhabitants of the settlement, it is considered domestic. If the food item comes from any other source (for example fishing, gathering, trade) then it is put into the ‘other’ category. This is done because the subsistence catchment area is based on agricultural and grazing requirements only. The domestic portion of each primary group (plants/animals) is made up of all of the domestic plants and animals which have been determined to have been a part of the settlements diet. By using these divisions and groups, it is possible to give each domestic diet contributor a percent value depicting it’s individual contribution to both the diet overall as well as to the corresponding domestic plant/animal sub group. Once this percent of contribution has been calculated, it gets multiplied by the annual MCals required by the settlement. This results in a yearly calorie target for each individual crop and domestic animal. Whenever possible, primary data should be used for these definitions, but often it is impossible to get this. For example, it may not be possible to know what the gestational dietary requirements are for a particular breed of caprine because that breed simply no longer exists. In these cases, there is no choice but to base the values on the closest ‘match’ we can find and may include values from current breeds/crops that closely match those being defined. As with any of the input variables, many of the values used to define the crop or animal species will have acceptable ranges. My suspicions are that those factors which would have the greatest impact on crops would be yield. For animals it would almost certainly be a combination of the number of young born per birthing event, the size of the animal, the speed at which it gains weight, and dairy production capacity. The fact that three levels of dairy utilisation has been modelled does in fact emulate the production capacity. As for the weight gain and size, because it is being modelled on an annual cycle, these factors are less likely to bear any real significance on the final outcome, as a stable herd will be reproducing every year, which means that once the herd is stabilised, it is less important how long it takes for them to attain slaughter weight. This would have implications on feeding requirements, which in turn would have further effects on other parts of the model, but, again, it has simply not been possible to explore these further complicated permutations due to time constraints.

Fig. 1: Breaking down the composition of a settlement’s diet. (conceptual figures). Other’ sources are considered to be either a non-domestic contribution such as fish, wild berries, gazelles, and so on, but can also be used to account for food sources imported from other settlements.

Dietary Division: Diet derives from plant and animal products. The relative contribution of each in the archaeological record is difficult to assess. Teeth will give some indication, and where this analysis has been done should be considered. Animals can provide calories from either meat or secondary products such as dairy or blood. There have been ethnographic examples of the use of blood as a food source in both caprines and bovines 6 , but due to the dearth of archaeological evidence for this type of secondary exploitation and the added complexities involved with the modelling, blood use is currently excluded, and dairy is the only secondary animal product explored in this research. This choice was influenced in part by the fact that dairy has an advantage over blood in that milk can be fermented and processed into foods like butter, yogurt or

Fig. 2: The input variables required for the diet modelling.

respective significance of each within a plant or animal sector of the economy. It is more difficult to understand the relative contribution of plants and meat products with isotope analyses. As illustrated in Figure 1, individual animals and crops contribute to sub groups of the overall diet makeup. The diet composition, divided into plant and animal based groups, is further divided into ‘domestic’ and ‘other’ sources. If the food 27

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes cheese, allowing it to be preserved for a much longer period of time, making it possible to stockpile surplus production for use throughout the year. Additionally, animals also can potentially contribute hides, wool, hair, bones, dung (for both fertiliser and as a fuel source) and traction.

the fact that dairy is a by product of meat production, and if meat production is set at a certain level, the rest of the diet is satisfied by other sources. If dairy is not used, the rest of the diet is satisfied from plant based food. If dairy is utilised, a portion of what plants would have been solely responsible for would therefore be satisfied by the dairy, thus lowering the amount of plant based food required. The next step divides both the plant and meat portions into domestic and non-domestic (wild/other) sources.

Fig. 5: The initial calculations required in the model.

Fig. 3: Breakdown of the meat portion of the diet. (conceptual figures)

Fig. 6: The calculations required to begin modelling the herds.

Production Targets

Fig. 4: Breakdown of the plant portion of the diet. Note that the input figures for percent of diet were: HorseBean 7%, Einkorn 13%, Emmer 34%, Lentils 12%, Peas 15%, Olives 18%. These numbers translate to the ones shown above after processing as in Fig. 1.

Production targets are measures of weight (in kilograms) that each crop and animal must produce to satisfy the Calorie Targets. Weight is used for production targets because crop yield and animal meat production data are usually expressed as units of weight. For example crop yields are often expressed as Kg Ha−1 and animals are portion of their live weight that is usable as food. Using the calorie target and the food value of the crop, the production target (necessary to meet these needs) is calculated. These values are simple to incorporate into the algorithm. For example, if the settlement requires 337,500 MCals of meat from sheep annually, and sheep meat has a food value of 3 MCals Kg−1 , then 337, 500 ÷ 3 = 112, 500

Plant based food sources and animal based food sources get modelled separately, and are split at the second level of analysis. They are modelled separately because, unlike crops that only have land requirements, animals have the additional requirements of feed and the maintenance of a breeding herd. The percent of the diet emanating from domestic crops and animals needs to be determined. At this stage, the input is made for animal contributions only, because dairy use will affect the plant contribution to the diet. This effect is due to 28

Jason Jorgenson

Fig. 7 Fig. 9: The calculations required to breakdown the diet composition of the herd.

Kg year−1 of sheep meat needs to be produced. When animals get slaughtered, only part of their carcasses are usable for food. If, for example, 50% of a goat’s live body weight is usable as food, and the initial production target calculation results in a target for goat meat of 10,000 Kg, the second stage of the production target calculation process  would change this  to 20,000 Kg by dividing 10,000 by 50% 10,000 = 20, 000 . It is 50% important to remember that in this algorithm production targets for animals are consistently expressed in terms of kilograms of live weight.

be calculated in relation to a plant contribution, which can’t be calculated until a dairy contribution is known. After many failed attempts, the method adopted to overcome this problem was for the meat contribution to be static, with all remaining contribution levels spawning from that value. By basing the calculations on meat first, it allows for herd sizes to be calculated, from which dairy production levels can be calculated and incorporated into the equation, which then allows the plant based portion of the diet to be calculated. If the overall animal to plant ratio is wanted to be static, this is still possible using this method. There is a method of combining meat and dairy production levels which simply limits dairy contribution to a percent of diet. If an overall animal contribution of 30% was desired, and the meat contribution (including ‘other’ sources, not just domestic) was 20% then dairy could be limited to 10% which would limit the combined meat and dairy contribution to 30%. Doing this does not guarantee the overall animal contribution will be 30% however, as the dairy production may not be sufficient to supply this (10% in this example) amount. Using the production target (as calculated above), which gives kg of live weight, the number of offspring required per year to fulfil the production target is calculated.This accomplished by simply dividing the required kg of meat by the meat yield of the animal at it’s average slaughter weight. It does become more complicated, however, when other issues come into play. These other issues increase the number of offspring required to both meet the production targets and sustain the breeding herd size.

Fig. 8: The calculations required to breakdown the demographics of the herd.

Production targets for animals are very important for the remaining calculations, as they allow herd sizes to be calculated. Following the herd size calculations, it is possible to determine the potential dietary contribution from dairy products, and only after this has been determined can any targets for plant based contributions be made. Before a possible range of estimated dairy contributions can be calculated, herd sizes must be calculated. It is critical to fully understand how this is done as the logic can appear to be circular. The situation seems to be that herd size is worked out before dairy can be calculated, and herd size is calculated dependent on an animal contribution to the diet which can only

Breeding animals all eventually die. When they die, they become potential sources of food for the settlement. This fact is incorporated into the model by using the (a) number of useful breeding years expected from an animal, (b) the age of sexual maturity, (c) the average weight of offspring at slaughter 29

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes and (d) the average weight of an adult. On this basis one can calculate the number of animals it takes to supply enough meat to meet the production target. For example, if an animal reaches sexual maturity at 1.5 years, and it is expected that each female will viable for 5 years, every 6.5 years that animal will (1) need to be replaced and (2) can be eaten.Thus, it is possible to predict how many adults from the breeding stock will be available every year for food, as well as how many extra offspring must be kept for replenishing these animals.

Area Targets Once production targets have been found, it is possible to calculate area targets for each crop and animal by looking at yield values for crops, and grazing requirements for animals. A simple formula of P roductionT arget ÷ CropY ield = AreaT arget gives an area target for crops. As with production targets, area targets are complicated for animals because their land requirements are based on herd size, and it is not just the number of animals needed for slaughter that is required. A breeding herd large enough to consistently produce enough offspring to satisfy the annual production target has to be added into the equation as well. Adding to the complexity is the possibility that animals grazed fallow crop land, ate fodder or grain from the crops being grown, or grazed other types of land. Crop Rotation: A number of benefits result from the practice of crop rotation. By allowing the land to ‘rest’ for a year, or sowing nitrogen fixing crops like legumes after a cereal crop, soil life is extended, average yields are consistently higher, and overall fertility is increased. Consideration for the practice of crop rotation is critical when determining how much land was required for food production, as it can more than double the necessary land requirements. Crop rotation can be expressed as a ratio of sown land to fallow land. If a ratio of 1:1 is used, this means that the practice was to sow half of their land and leave last year’s sown land fallow. If a parcel of land was sown two years in a row, and left fallow for the third year, the ratio would be 2:1 (or 1:0.5). More complex crop rotation can also be expressed as a simple ratio. Such a situation might be sowing ten hectares of wheat in year one, then the same ten hectares to lentils in year two, and fallowing the same in year three. In order to maintain the production of lentils and wheat using this rotation, the farmer needs ten hectares of cropland for wheat, another ten hectares for lentils, and still have enough fallow to rest the land in the rotation every third year.

Fig. 10: The calculations required to breakdown the diet contribution of the herd.

Crop production targets can be adjusted to accommodate for both wastage (during harvest/storage) and seed stock retained for next years sowing. These estimated values are expressed as a percentage of the harvest. For example, using a value of 20%, which has been proposed as a (possibly somewhat high) value for wastage 7 , if 1000 kg of emmer was harvested, wastage is estimated at 20% and seed stock retention estimated at 15%, 35% of the 1000 kg (or 350 kg) of emmer is not going to be usable as food. This means that when calculating the production target the sum of the wastage and seed stock must be added to the amount required by the settlement (for both themselves and animal feed if applicable). To illustrate this (using conceptual figures), if a settlement required 850 kg of emmer to feed themselves and 150 kg to feed their animals, an additional 35% (350 kg) must be added to the 1000 kg requirement when calculating the production target in order to accommodate the wastage (20% or 250 kg) and seed stock retention (15% or 150 kg). This can be expressed with the formula:

TABLE I: A more complicated example of crop rotation that includes the sowing of lentils directly into the previous year’s wheat crop. Year 1

Land Parcel 1 :

W heat

Land Parcel 2 :

Lentils

Land Parcel 3 :

Fallow

Year 2

Year 3

then

/ Lentils

then

/ Fallow

then

/ Fallow

then

/ W heat

then

/ W heat

then

/ Lentils

As seen in Table I, in any given year between the three parcels of land, there are two parcels of land being sown, and one parcel of land in fallow. This is a ratio of 2 : 1.00. To express this as a 1 : x ratio however, we just multiply both by the reciprocal of the value for crop. In this case, the crop’s value

CropP rodT arget = (HumanN eeds + AnimalN eeds) · (1 + W astage% + SeedStock%) 30

Jason Jorgenson is 2, and the reciprocal of 2 is 12 so we end up with: 22 : 1.00 2 = 1 : 0.5. Note that in the example presented in the table, this ratio is also applicable to lentils.

millennia, or been removed from the archaeological record by any number of other means. There is also the possibility that some of the animals in the herd were not killed or eaten on site 10 . For whatever reason, in comparison to the number of animals that would have been used at the site, the percentage, as represented in the faunal remains, represents only a miniscule portion of these. Perhaps there is another way of approaching this issue.

Crop rotation has the potential to lower animal grazing land requirements. It is possible for animals to graze fallow land, which reduces the amount of grazing land otherwise required to sustain the animals. In order to calculate the contribution of fallow land it is necessary to know its food value to the animals. The ratio of crop land to fallow land together with the food value of the fallow land allows for an accurate adjustment of the grazing land requirements for the animal herds.

It can be inferred, with reasonable certainty (even from sparse faunal assemblages) that the animals (or at least the meat-joints from the animals) represented by those bones were present at the site. Therefore one can further infer that these animals contributed to the diet. It is also possible to use other means (for example, appropriate ethnographic examples or isotope analysis on human remains in the assemblage) to estimate the portion of the diet that came from animal sources. With these factors considered, a method of reconstructing a herd based on the known physiological aspects of the animals, in conjunction with, rather than solely on, the faunal remains is next described.

Animal Herd Size: Herd size estimates are required to calculate the potential amount of grazing land exploited around settlements. A generic herd size algorithm is difficult, in part because different animals have different dietary requirements and even when they are the same, they require different amounts of feed depending on their condition (pregnant versus lactating for example) or even weather conditions (animals require more feed in cold weather than in warm weather for example)a . Further complicating this issue, is not all land that can be grazed has the same food value to the animals. In order to consider as many of these factors as possible, the algorithm (see Figure 7 on page 29) uses many physical characteristics of the animals and the desired amount of meat production (See formula A1 in Fig. 5 on page 28).

There are biological attributes specific to species that affect herd demographics. For example, we know their gestation periods, oestrous cycles, number of young (typically) born, etc. We need only assume that the management strategies employed by the herders was, at the very minimum, one which would allow the size of the herd to remain (at minimum) constant.

There are two basic sets of input variables in the herd size algorithm. The first is the production level required by the settlement (Formula A1 in Figure 5), and the second is the physiological characteristics of the animals. All of the input variables required for this process are outlined in Figure 2 on page 27. The algorithm assumes that females that become pregnant do so after one oestrous cycle beyond the weaning age of their last birthing event.

When examining kill off patterns, authors often pick a weight or age for slaughterb , and use that as an average 5 . Other attempts have been made to more accurately depict herd outputs by 3 , who used 10 points in time to stop and examine output capacity. This study fell short of my needs, however, in that it did not do any agent based analysis at all. By agent based, in this case I mean that animals born on a particular day are treated differently than those born on subsequent days.

One of the most difficult aspects of this process is consideration of the potential dairy products from the herds. Modelling of dairy production potential in conjunction with all of the other dietary factors used in this methodology has not been done in the past. A large part of the model is dedicated to doing just this. It has been argued that dairy products were so important that without them, nomadic pastoralism might not have even been possible 9 .

By giving the animals unique identification, I am able to calculate their individual contributions towards the settlement’s meat needs, fleece production, and also, importantly, dairy contributions from their mothers. Once potential herd size has been calculated, land area requirements can also be calculated with two additional pieces of information: (1) the food value of the land must be known, and (2) the feed requirements of the animals. If the total feed requirements of the entire herd is divided by the food value of the land, the required area results.

There are many factors which make it difficult to reconstruct the dynamics of a herd based on archaeological remains. A faunal assemblage is an essentially static snapshot of a ‘favoured’ assemblage. What is needed is a method of using this data as a basis to generate a dynamic model of animal reproduction and herd maintenance. First and foremost, as all faunal analysts are aware of, this snapshot is only a very small piece of the pie. Animals may have been slaughtered elsewhere, and the joints of meat brought into the settlement for consumption. Bones could have been eaten by dogs, scavenged by wild animals, succumbed to attrition over the

Land Suitability Once area targets have been found for each crop and animal, the land surrounding the site is classified as being either b One of the things that has bothered me from the beginning is the fact that I have not been able to find any examples in the literature of a complete examination of how a herd of animals would have been utilized. By this, I mean what ages would the animals have been eaten at, their weights, and the number of adult females and males required to sustain the level of production.

a Personal experience from 25 years spent on a farm working with cattle and pigs.

31

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes suitable or unsuitable for each. Classification can be based on factors such as soil type, slope, geology, modern day use, rainfall, or proximity to water. Crops and animals must be assigned land either exclusive to their use, or shared with other specified crops or animals. Each crop and animal (or commonly shared land for crops/animals) will need to be found individually. It is therefore imperative that care is taken when classifying the land that there is no overlap, ensuring that land does not get ‘used’ more than once. Land Suitability Masks: Binary rasters must be created for each crop and animal, or for each group of animals/crops using commonly defined land. Binary rasters have values of 0 or 1 only. A value of 1 indicates land suitability and a value of 0 indicates unsuitability. This allows the raster to be multiplied by the cost surface surrounding the settlement, which results in all unsuitable areas having a value of 0, while the other values retain their original value because they are being multiplied by 1.

Fig. 11: Cost Surface generated by GRASS module r.walk (notice the effect rivers have)

Cost Surfaces: People tend to utilise the resources in the immediate vicinity of their occupation site 2 , so when searching for land that satisfies the area targets, the co-ordinates of the settlement are used as a starting point, moving outwards to a point where all suitable land equals the area target. A cost surface needs to be created with its origin at the site. The cost surface makes it possible to look only at the wanted features, determined by using the binary raster masks to see which cells of the cost surface are ‘covered’. For example, it is possible with this method to look only at suitable land, as indicated by the binary raster mask, which falls within a range on the cost surface from the site (which has a value of 0) to a higher value in the cost surface. In this way, it is possible to stipulate the outer extents of a ‘containment area’, or in essence the outer extents of the catchment. The same algorithm is used for every kind of cost surface created. All three methods (Euclidean, path distance and walking time) require a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to generate a cost surface. The higher the resolution of the DEM, the more accurate the cost surface will be.

(there are no breaks in the cells defining the river). The river has a value of 1 at this point, and all other cells a value of 0. Increasing the value of the river to a higher value determines the time added for crossing the river; the higher the value, the more time it adds. This value is dependent on the topography, the width of the buffered area, and the increased value. For example, in order to add an hour to the crossing time of the Jordan river, a 100 m buffer can be used, and a value of 100 added. Next, a slope raster is created from an ASTER DEM of the area surrounding the site. The river raster (with the increased value) is added to the slope raster, and the result used as a friction map when creating the cost surface. This gives results such as those seen in Figure 11 on page 32. a) Path Distance: Path Distance is another anisotropic cost surface creation method that looks at elevation data from a DEM and calculates distance from the site taking into account the extra distances travelled going up or down slopes. The process is identical to walking time, except that time is not a factor.

Walking Time: Walking Time is the primary method used in this research for the creation of cost surfaces used to define a catchment area. The anisotropic cost surface that is generated for this method uses a DEM to calculate how long it would take to walk from a starting point (the site, or ZERO on the cost surface) to all points on the DEM. The cost surface can be given a maximum value in seconds (for example, to limit the area to a five hour walk, a cost surface with values from 0 to 18,000 is used (See Fig. 11).

b) Euclidean: The Euclidean method ignores all topographic features of the landscape when moving outwards from the site, creating an isotropic cost surface; essentially we are drawing concentric circles around the site. On this cost surface, all cells which the circle passes through will have the same value. Put simply, if a circle is drawn on a piece of graph paper, shade in every square that the line goes through. The result is a cost surface with each step away from the site increasing equally by one regardless of topography.

To take into account the extra time required to cross rivers, and make areas such as lakes impassable, an increase in the travel time on the cost surface must be made. Although an approximation, assigning additional cost (in this case time) to rivers and lakes can be useful for indicating preference of land choice. To do this, the river must be digitised, and buffered wide enough to ensure continuity when converted to a raster. It is critical that the river is continuous once in raster form

Land Identification In order to identify a particular area of classified, suitable land, a perimeter value, or maximum extent of a cost surface, must be found, within which the area of suitable land (that is almost certainly going to be comprised of multiple, irregularly shaped 32

Jason Jorgenson could potentially solve the problem c , and then moved steadily outwards until the area target was found. The amount to move outward in each step was an input variable, and might have been a value like 30 (which in the case of walking distance means 30 seconds. On a cost surface ranging from 0 to 20,000 this meant that potentially, there would have to be 20,000 or nearly 7000 iterations in the 30 search.) The steps involved were: 1) Set the initial boundary at which to start the analysis 2) Calculate the area of suitable land found within this boundary 3) If the area of land required has been satisfied, write the results to a new file for that item and exit the loop 4) Increase the value of the analysis boundary 5) Repeat the loop (starting at Step 2) This method proved extremely time consuming; if even 3,500 iterations (about half of the conceptual cost surface map) was required, and each loop took as little as 45 seconds, the computation time would be nearly 44 hours. Multiply this, then, by the number of individual crops and animals in the model and the run time suddenly needed to be expressed in days or weeks.

Fig. 12: Path distance cost surface generated by GRASS module r.walk with λ = 0 (walking features disabled)

Binary method: To increase the efficiency and reduce run times, a modified binary search algorithm is used. This involves a somewhat different approach than the incremental method; instead of using a step value, a percentage value is used. This percentage value is called the Precision. The area of land deemed as equalling the current area target gets changed into a target range ± the precision value multiplied by the target area. If a value of 5% is entered, and the area target is 100 hectares, the modelling software accepts ) (which is 97.5 to 102.5 hectares) as the target 100 ± ( 100·5% 2 area. The loop uses three terms, CurrentM idV alue F irstV alue and LastV alue. At the beginning of the process, F irstV alue = 0 and LastV alue = 18, 000 which coincides with the full extent of the cost surface. CurrentM idV alue is calculated within the loop. The loop works like this: Fig. 13: Euclidean cost surface generated by GRASS module r.cost with an input raster which has every value equal to 1

1) Set the analysis boundary: CurrentM idV alue = F irstV alue+LastV alue . 2 2) Calculate the area of suitable land found within the boundary whose outermost boundary is CurrentM idV alue 3) If the contained area falls within the target range, write the results to a new file and exit the loop 4) If the contained area is more than the maximum value in the target range, set a halfway between F irstV alue and CurrentM idV alue. This is done by making LastV alue = CurrentM idV alue and then returning back to step number one. (Note F irstV alue remains unchanged.)

polygons) satisfies the area target being looked for. Complicating this is the fact that the irregularly shaped polygons from the land classification may be bisected by the outer limit of the catchment area defined by this outer perimeter value. Incremental method: To find the suitable land equal to the area target that is in closest proximity to the site, a conditional loop is used which defines the outer extent of the catchment area, and then calculates the area of suitable land contained within it. This process is identical for all analysis methods. Early attempts started at the closest point to the site that

c The closest point, or minimum radius, is a perfect circle equal in area to the target.

33

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes licensed under the GPL licensei It is released under this license because it incorporates code from other applications which are also licensed this way (GRASS, Open Modeler, etc)j .

5) If the contained area is less than the minimum value in the target range, set a halfway between LastV alue and CurrentM idV alue. This is done by making F irstV alue = CurrentM idV alue and then returning back to step number one. (Note LastV alue remains unchanged.)

LA fully implements all aspects of the methodology described in Section and is presented in detail in the remainder of this paper. Each distinct part of the software has it’s own section, complete with screenshots.

By using this method, the maximum number of iterations in the loop for the same conceptual cost surface is only 17. This method of searching for the area targets makes a huge difference efficiency and run times. A typical run is now ≈ 2 to 3 minutes, compared to days and weeks using the incremental method. This allows for a fast systematic examination of the many different permutations of an entire model on even average computer systems.

In addition to archaeological data, diet variables and physiological characteristics, LA requires geographical input. The software does not deal directly with the creation of this information, which must be done using GRASS, but when run from within a GRASS shell, it can directly work with data that has been previously prepared. Of primary importance are the DEM and the land suitability (classification) masks. Land suitability raster masks: The land suitability masks required for the modelling process must be binary rasters, meaning that the cells of the raster file only contain 0 or 1 (NULL values are currently not supported). The land that is deemed suitable for use should be set to a value of 1, and the rest of the land is set to 0. This binary raster can then be multiplied by a selection layer (as created by either Walking Distance, Path Distance, or Euclidean methods). This selection layer (also a binary raster) grows in size until enough area is found within it’s bounds - identifying the land to be analysed.

L ANDUSE A NALYST Early attempts at consolidation of the modelling process involved a compilation of scripts written in BASHd , but after the incorporation of the many factors (such as different crops and animals, fallow, fallow grazing, etc), it was evident that a script was not going to be ideal; the complexity of the animal and crop modelling in particular made using the scripts both slow and awkward. While the scripting approach worked well for a proof of concept, a full implementation of all desired factors would include a large number of hard coded variables and complicated, difficult to modify code requiring changes for each scenario. This did not provide a flexible environment for experimentation.

LA gives the option of using three different methods for landuse classification: 1) Use only the user supplied classification map (a binary mask) which can be based on any number of factors, including but not limited to rainfall, soil type, geology, elevation, ground cover and modern landuse. 2) Use minimum and maximum slope values to create a classification map which will be used exclusively. This can also be done for common crop land and common grazing land independently. For example, it is possible to stipulate 0◦ ≤ m ≤ 9◦ for crops and 9◦ < m ≤ 15◦ for grazing land, where m = slope. 3) Use a combination of the two classification maps above. Slope can be chosen to either add to or subtract from the user supplied map, or alternatively, the user supplied map can either add to or subtract from the slope map. This combination of the two can be very useful if, for example, a user wishes to use a soil classification map as the primary indication of landuse suitability, but refine that map by taking out the land they consider too steep for use. In this case the program generated slope masks would be subtracted from the user supplied (soil) classification map.

Consultation with developers of other modelling software led to the decision to create an application in the programming language C++. Alongside the C++, it was possible to implement TrollTech’s Qt librariese to create a user friendly GUIf . This was accomplished by allowing all of the influencing factors examined to be entered as input variables. Each crop grown, each type of animal raised, along with the settlement characteristics needed to be defined with a common set of variables. The result of this approach is a software application that works in any part of the world, and for any postagriculture periodg . What began as a small script grew into a very flexible, user friendly application that can be used by any archaeologist, studying any time period, for any type of crop or animal, in any area of the world. I have called this software Landuse Analyst (Figure 14). Landuse Analyst© (LA) has been written to be a crossplatformh FOSS (Free Open Source Software) application d BASH

Land Re-designation: Another notable feature of LA is land re-designation. Land that is suitable for the production of crops

is a UNIX scripting language

e http://www.trolltech.com

i This license guarantees that Landuse Analyst will remain free, with the source code available to anyone wishing to make enhancements and/or modifications. j The source code is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/landuseanalyst and is freely available for download.

f Graphical

User Interface g The input variables can even be adjusted in such a way that it could be used for pre-agriculture periods as well. h Runs on Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows Computers

34

Jason Jorgenson is almost certainly suitable for grazing as well. For this reason, LA finds all of the cropland first. Once the area targets for all crops have been satisfied, land classified for use by crops that was not needed is re-designated as being suitable for common grazing land and added to the land already designated as being suitable for grazing.

are Euclidean, Walking Time, and Path Distance. These methods are discussed in detail in section on page 32. For any of the three choices, the precision value must be set in order to give LA a range for which the area can fall into while searching. The smaller the value, the more precise the results will be, however values under 5 are not recommended because it could make finding the area target impossible. This is due to limitations imposed by DEM resolution which can make the minimum step outwards more than the range deemed acceptable with the precision setting. For example, using a 30m resolution DEM, the area difference between 1000m and 1030m from the origin (using Euclidean method) is π · 10302 − π · 10002 = 3332915.646 − 3141592.654 = 191322.9922m2 which is a large area, and it gets bigger the further out on the cost surface you go.

One challenging aspect of the methodology to incorporate into the model was the animal modelling. Animals are difficult to calculate area targets for because their land requirements are largely based on their numbers, and a herd of adult females large enough to sustain a steady supply of offspring with numbers enough to keep the production targets met has to be added into the equation as well. In addition, animals can graze fallow crop land, eat fodder from the crops being grown, and graze other types of land. LA takes these interactions into account in its computations. Herd Size determination is one of the most complicated algorithms (See Section , page 31) that LA uses. Further complicating the issue, not all land that can be grazed has the same food value to the animals. LA address these issues as well. Landuse Analyst requires a complete definition of all of the crops and animals that a settlement used including (for animals) information relating to their dietary requirements, their reproduction cycle, and their grazing preferences. Interesting work was done on herd modelling by 3,4 and he is now considered by many to have been much ahead of his time.

GRASS Data: When LA is launched from a GRASS shell, a list of available mapsets appears in a drop down menu on the opening screen. This allows the software to do three things. First, it allows LA to use any of the GIS layers which were prepared for use as land classification masks. Second, the DEM required for the creation of the cost surface used in the land search routines must be contained in the selected mapset. Thirdly, all of the results from the land search process will be saved to the selected mapset.

LA’s Diet Screen LA’s Opening Screen

Fig. 14: The main screen in Landuse Analyst© where the user enters the basic site details, modelling method, and GIS information

Fig. 15: The Diet screen sets the dietary divisions and other basic diet input factors, and displays a detailed breakdown of the diet.

Basic Input: The opening screen in LA allows basic details for the site being modelled to be entered. Input boxes for the name, period, population and geographical co-ordinates of the site are located on this screen in the ‘Settlement Information’ section.

LA’s Crops Screen Each crop that gets defined in the Crop Manager is listed in a table at the top of this screen. If an individual crop is to be included in the analysis, a checkmark is placed in the checkbox to the left. Each crop also has a drop down menu where parameters which have been associated to the crop in the Crop Parameter Manager can be selected.

Catchment creation methods: Also selected from this screen is the Modelling Method. LA can use three different methods of creating catchments by varying the type of cost surface generated. The three choices available on the opening screen 35

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes

Fig. 16: The main Crops screen where the crops to be included in the model are selected, their attributes displayed, and information for common land classification set. The Crop Manager and Crop Parameter Manager are launched from this screen.

If more than one crop is to use the same type of land, a common landuse classification mask raster can be selected from the drop down list once the Use Custom Suitability Mask for Common Cropland checkbox has been checked. If slope is desired for use as a land classification factor, it can be generated and incorporated into the analysis from this screen. Checking the associated checkbox allows a maximum usable slope to be defined. If both suitability masks are selected, the slope mask is applied to the custom mask.

Fig. 17: The characteristics of each crop is entered in the Crop Manager, which is launched from the main Crops screen.

2) Notes - This field is used to differentiate between crops that have the same, or similar, names. For example, if we were to continue using the wheat example from above, you might use ‘Marginal Land’, ‘Average Land’, and ‘Ideal Land’ to reflect the respective yield expectancies. 3) Yield - Here you must enter what you think the average yield for the crop would have been. This is a measure of Kg produced per the given area of sown land. Currently, you can choose between dunums and hectares as area units. 4) Food Value - The number of calories in 1 Kg of that part of the crop which is eaten (ie. the grain or fruit). 5) Fodder - Fodder is the straw and chaff left after processing the crop or grain. This means that you must take into account the use of straw and chaff in other applications or activities such as textile or pottery production, etc. The Fodder Yield is a measure of weight how many Kg of Straw and Chaff (per area unit) that is made available to animals for feed. Enter the number of Kilograms expected to be produced from this crop per area unitk .

LA Crop Manager Every crop has unique characteristics, and LA splits these defining qualities into two main areas: details of the plant and parameter settings. c) Defining the Plants: LA uses several input fields to define a plant (Fig.17). 1) Name - This is, quite simply, the name you wish to give the crop. This can be the same as another crop, as LA uses a GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier) when saving the data. An example of when this could be useful is perhaps when the same crop is grown on different land, which gives lower or higher yields. It is therefore possible, for example, to have three crops called ‘Wheat’, each with different average yields corresponding to the land classified as suitable for it. In order to tell the difference between these like-named crops, there is the Notes field (#2 in this list).

k This has to be the same as the setting for Yield area units, which is currently either Dunums or Hectares

36

Jason Jorgenson Note that this fodder amount is solely for consumption by animals. If straw or chaff is being used for other purposes, it must be taken out of the total expected fodder level. 6) TDN - The TDN (Total Digestive Nutrients) of the fodder is, like grazing land, a measure of the food value of the fodder. 7) Area Units - Although Landuse Analyst’s output is always expressed in Hectares, you can choose between Hectares and Dunums when defining your crops. This is particularly useful if the source of your data is in Dunums, and not Hectares.l

this screen). The two critical entries here, however, are crop rotation and the selection of suitability masks. d) Crop Rotation: As stated previously (Section on page 30), specifying the use of the common farming technique of crop rotation (Table I) is critical when determining how much land is required for food production, as it has the potential to more than double the area target for a crop. Complicated crop rotation scenarios are possible in LA, and the process of setting this up are explained in detail in section on page 30. Another important aspect of defining crop rotation concerns animals. It is possible for animals to graze the fallow land, which will reduce the amount of grazing land otherwise required to sustain the animals. If fallow land is to be grazed, this box must be checked.

LA’s Crop Parameters

Using the ratio of crop land to fallow land along with the food value of the fallow land allows LA to accurately adjust the grazing land requirements for the animal herds. In order to know the contribution fallow land makes to the animal’s feed requirements, it is necessary to know the food value of the available fallow land. This is given in the Fallow’s Food Value settings. The settings are in units of energy per area of land. Again, a choice between TDN/MCals and Dunums/Hectares is offered for convenience. e) Required Surplus Production: In addition to the production levels required for supplying the settlement with food, allowances for next year’s sowing and spoilage must be made. This is expressed as the percentage of the production level (calculated for the settlement’s food needs) which has to be added to that level. Using the values shown in Figure 18, an additional 20% + 30% = 50% of the settlement’s production target must be added to account for the two.

LA’s Animal Screen Each species that gets defined in the Animal Manager is listed in a table at the top of this screen. If an individual species is to be included in the analysis, a checkmark is placed in the checkbox to the left. Each species also has a drop down menu where parameters which have been associated to the animal in the Animal Parameter Manager can be selected.

Fig. 18: From the Crop Parameter Manager details for land suitability classification maps, diet contribution and other settings relating to agricultural techniques are made.

If more than one animal is to use the same grazing land, a common grazing land classification mask raster can be selected from the drop down list once the Use Custom Suitability Mask for Common Grazing Land checkbox has been checked. If common grazing land is being used, the food value of this land must be entered on this screen. If slope is desired for use as a land classification factor, it can be generated and incorporated into the analysis from this screen. Checking the associated checkbox allows a maximum usable slope to be defined. The lower setting should be the same as the upper setting for slope mask of common cropland (if common cropland is using a slope mask). If both suitability masks are selected, the slope mask is applied to the custom mask.

Once the plants that are being grown as crops have been defined, LA needs the specifics of how each crop is being grown, as well as what portion of the settlement’s diet it provides (Fig. 18). It also needs to know what land is capable of growing each crop. This is done by selecting Common or Specific Land Suitability masks (if Specific Land is selected, the Raster Mask must be selected from the drop down list on l It is relatively simple to add other area units by changing the source code, and at some point, the ability to do so will actually be integrated into the software as an advanced feature.

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Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes

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Fig. 19: The main Animals screen where the animals to be included in the model are selected, their attributes displayed, and information for common grazing land classification set. The Animal Manager and Animal Parameter Manager are launched from this screen.

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LA’s Animal Manager

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Fig. 20: The characteristics of each animal are entered in the Animal Manager, which is launched from the main Crops screen.

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LA uses several input variables to define an animal (Fig. 20). Animal Description:

13) 1) Name - Enter the name of the species you are defining in 38

the name field. As with crops, you do not need a unique name. You can have, for example, two animals defined, both named ‘Sheep’. LandUse Analyst uses a special method of saving the animals to eliminate the issue of duplicate filenames. The Notes field allows a convenient way to differentiate between like-named animals. Notes - Because LandUse Analyst allows more than one type of animal to be defined, the Notes: field allows you to give a brief description of the the animal. For example, you may have two ‘Sheep’ defined, and the Notes fields could contain ‘For Slaughter’ and ‘Wool Producers’ to distinguish between them. Food Value - Quite simply, this is the number of calories in one kilogram of meat from the animal. A common value for this variable is around 3000. Usable Meat - The production targets for animals are in Kg of meat, so to be compatible with animal numbers, you must know the percentage of the animal’s live weight that is usable for food. You can also take into account here the efficiency of the butchering technique that the population used. In other words, if you believe they were wasteful, this is where you would make an adjustment to integrate that. Kill Weight - The average live weight of the animals at the time of slaughter. Animals may have been slaughtered for butchering at any weight, but LandUse Analyst needs to know the average weight of the animals when they are slaughtered. Weaning Weight - This is the average live weight of the individual offspring at the time when they are no longer allowed to suckle from their mother (weaning age). Grow Time - The length of time from birth to slaughter weight. This is quite important for estimating the herd size. The longer it takes an animal to reach slaughter weight from birth, the higher the number of animals alive at any given time. This will have a direct affect on the amount of feed required to sustain the herd. Death Rate - LandUse Analyst accommodates for birthing deaths only. If an animal survives to weaning age but dies before slaughter, it is not modeled at this time. However, you can adjust the death rate setting to indicate the average survival rate of births. This is important for determining herd size, as it affects the number of mothers needed to sustain the production levels required by the settlement. Sexual Maturity - The age in months at which the females become sexually mature. Adult Weight - The average weight of an adult animal. This value is used when calculating the dietary contribution that animals culled from the breeding herd make. Females:Males - This ratio indicates the number of females in the breeding herd that one sexually mature male can service. Breeding Life - Once sexual maturity is reached, the expected additional number of years the animals will be viable for breeding. Conception % - The percent of adult females that become pregnant after breeding has been attempted.

Jason Jorgenson 14) Young/Birth - Average number of young born per birthing event. 15) Weaning Age - The average age at which the offspring are weaned from their mother. 16) Gestation Time - The number of days of gestation for the animal. 17) Estrous Cycle - The number of days in the animals’ estrous cycle. 18) Lactation Time - The total number of days after birth that the female is capable of producing milk.

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other animals one at a time from using the common grazing land. It may turn out, however, that there is no ‘ideal’ solution, and that the animals simply have to travel the extra distance. Specific Land - Sometimes it is desirable to specify that land is suitable for grazing by only one type of animal. LA allows a unique land suitability mask to be designated for an individual animal. Animals can use both common land and specific land at the same time, as mentioned above.

Daily Feed Requirements: LA’s Animal Parameters

1) Select Units - The software supports units of MCalories or TDN (Total Digestible Nutrients) for measuring the animals daily feed requirements. This choice is available to make it easier to incorporate data from different sources. The software automatically converts TDN values to MCals for consistency. 2) Pregnant Female - Average daily feed requirements during gestation. 3) Lactating Female - Average daily feed requirements while lactating. 4) Maintenance (Adult) - Average daily feed requirements while neither gestating nor lactating. This value also applies to adult males in the herd. 5) Juvenile - This value is the daily feed requirement per kilogram of the offspring. As the animals increase in size, their daily feed requirements grow. Animals can experience very rapid growth that slows with age. Using this method allows for a non-linear tabulation of their total annual requirement if desired. By-Products: 1) Milk Checkbox - If the animal is capable of producing dairy products, this box must be checked. 2) Milk - The mean grams of milk day−1 the animal is capable of producing. 3) Food Value - The food energy in the animal’s milk. 4) Fleece Checkbox - If this animal produces a fleece, this box must be checked. 5) Fleece - The mean weight a fleece produced animal−1 year−1 . •

Fig. 21: The Animal Parameter Manager sets grazing land suitability classification maps, animals’ diet supplements from fodder or other crop products and fallow cropland grazing priorities.

Modelling animals using generic input fields presents several challenges that plants do not. For starters, a certain number of females must be kept solely as breeding stock, and this number must be calculated based upon production requirements. Secondly, the possibility exists that part of the animals’ diet was from either straw/chaff left over from harvesting crops, or directly from harvested grain. In the case of grain being used as feed, the amount used must be considered when determining the production targets for the crops. Thirdly, if crop rotation was happening and fallow land was present, there is the possibility that this was used as grazing land, and would therefore reduce the amount of natural grazing land required. This also adds complexity to the crop models because grazing fallow land adds fertiliser, potentially increasing yields. This phenomenon can be factored in to Landuse Analyst by manually adjusting the expected yield of the affected crops.

Common Land - Sometimes land is suitable for grazing by more than one type of animal. LA can designate a single suitability mask for grazing land that is suitable for several types of animals. It is also possible to have an animal use both common land and specific land at the same time. When this is the desire, equal preference is given to all animals grazing the common land. It may also have been the case that some animals were given preference to the common land if the other suitable land was further away than the other animals using it. A workaround for this problem is that LA produces classified maps of the land being used, so if one animal is being forced to travel much further than others, the settings can be changed to balance this by removing the 39

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes can be easily changed but currently requires minor adjustments to the source codem .

Details: 1) Name - Enter a description of the parameter settings being defined in the name field. As with crops and animals, you do not need a unique name. You can have, for example, two parameters defined, both named ‘EEBI’. LA uses a special method of saving the animals to eliminate the issue of duplicate filenames. The Notes field allows a convenient way to differentiate between like-named parameters. 2) Notes - Because LA allows more than one type of parameter to be defined, the Notes field allows for a brief description of the the parameter. For example, you may have two parameter settings named ‘EEBI’ defined, and the Notes fields could contain ‘Animals Fed Supplements’ and ‘Animals Not Fed Supplements’ to distinguish between them. This makes it easy to set up multiple scenarios, beneficial when wanting to duplicate the same parameter settings for more than one analysis. 3) Animal - All defined animals appear in this drop down list. This must be set to indicate which animals these parameter settings apply to. 4) Raster Mask - If a specific land classification mask is to be used in addition to or instead of Common Grazing Land, the raster mask is selected from the drop down list, which lists all available rasters in the currently selected mapset (set on the Main Screen). 5) Fallow Priority - If the animals are allowed to graze fallow cropland, their access priority is set from this drop down menu. Likewise, if the animal is not to be allowed access to the fallow land, that option is also available in the list.

The model distinguishes between fodder (straw/chaff) and straight grain, providing separate input fields for each. When setting up the model, the user supplies fodder production levels for the crops, as well as caloric levels for the fodder. The software calculates the total available fodder from all crops, and if the entered amount from the crops selected for supplying fodder ends up being too much, fodder from the rest of the crops is used. If the total amount of fodder available from all crops is still insufficient, the amount of fodder being fed to the animal is reduced to the amount available from the crops being grown in the model. When more than one type of animal is being fed fodder, and this occurs, the amount is divided proportionately.

LA’s Assemblage Conversion Utility

Land Suitability Selection: 1) Common Land - When checked, the common land classification mask is to be used when searching for suitable land. 2) Specific Land - When checked, the specific land classification mask set from the drop down menu above is to be used when searching for suitable land.

Fig. 22: Launched from the Animal Parameter Manager, the Assemblage Conversion Utility provides a quick and easy method for compensating for the different meat yields per animal when calculating each animal’s percent contribution to the inhabitants of the settlement’s diet.

When the Assemblage Conversion Utility is first opened, there are no entries in the table. Animals can be entered from a list, or manually. If more than one scenario is to be explored, there is no need to exit the utility; simply pushing the Clear Table button takes the user back to a blank table. If desired, the table, with or without the results, can be saved to a file with a name of their choice by clicking on the Save button. The resultant file can then be imported into a spreadsheet or database program.

Portion of Domestic Meat Diet: 1) Entry Box - The animals portion (expressed as a percent) of the domestic meat portion of the diet is entered here. 2) More - To determine the correct setting for the entry box above, pressing the More button brings up the Assemblage Conversion Utility which assists in the process of allowing for differences in body weight of the different animals when calculating diet contribution input values.

Automatic Entry: The most convenient way is to simply select the animals included in the analysis from the drop down list, select the count type, the amount, and click Insert. The choices of count type are NISP, MNI and total weight (in kg). If a mistake is made after the Insert button has been pushed,

LA allows animals to use fodder as food. The fodder contribution is expressed as grams per day for both the crop produce and/or the crop’s straw/chaff (fodder). The number of days animals are fed is also entered. In this model, the only animals eligible to receive supplemental feed are those gestating. This

m The ability to give select animals different supplementary feed will be a future enhancement to the software.

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Jason Jorgenson all values in the table can be edited, as in a spreadsheet, by simply double clicking on the relevant cell in the table. Once all desired entries have been put into the table, a push of the Calculate button completes the % of Diet column of the table with entries for the adjusted diet portions. Manual Entry: The manual entry method is offered in case the model has not been completely set up yet, in which case not all animals are necessarily available from the drop down list. This method involves manually entering the name of the animal, the kilograms of usable meat obtainable per animal, and the number. Beyond this, all other aspects are identical to those of the automatic entry method. LA’s Calculations Screen

Fig. 24: The Results screen, showing all model input variables used.

LA’s Log Screen

Fig. 23: The Calculations screen showing all crops and animals in the model and their associated calculations.

Once all of the input factors have been entered, the Calculation screen becomes available. This screen is split into two halves, with a list of all crops and their calculation results on the left, and a list of all animals and their calculations on the right. By clicking on a crop or animal, the adjacent column is automatically populated with the results. Several report screens are available from this screen, from which the text can be copied and pasted into software of the user’s choice. If the results are wanted for placement on a website, pushing the HTML button will generate a complete report that is ready for publishing onto a website.

Fig. 25: The Log screen shows details of the GIS process once the analysis has been run.

The log screen shows the various steps of the algorithms used for calculating results. A high level of output can be enabled here by selecting the Debugging feature from the Help screen. This allows a user to scrutinise the way in which the data is handled. For example, in debugging mode, each step of the fallow allocation process can be seen, and while not in debugging mode, only the results of the fallow land distribution is available.

LA’s Results Screen The Results screen lists the input variables in their entirety as well as the results of all calculations. This is a rough and ready kind of report that the user can scroll through to check on whatever it is they want to see. The results are not displayed until after the GIS analysis has been completed. 41

Modelling Early Bronze Age I-III South Levantine ‘Urban’ Landscapes will look to neighboring sites to see if they can make up the difference. If there is a potential for trade or supplementation, the most efficient walking routes can then be found using r.drain on a cost surface generated with r.walk. This could potentially show the likely pathways between sites, as well as how intensively used they might have been. Taking this further, one might look for places where these routes merge, or cross, which might be an indicator for a potential archaeological site which has yet to be discovered. This can be used for resources besides agricultural ones, so exploring the potentials of this will be very exciting. The current version of LA requires that every scenario be modelled manually and separately. For example, one might wish to look at how adjusting the yield of crops would affect the land requirements to simulate drought years. One might also want to compare the results of different dietary proportions of meat content to plant content. With the experiment module, it will be possible to have the software automatically cycle through all of these different scenarios automatically.

Fig. 26: The Help screen contains LA’s Application Handbook, a comprehensive Help Manual for using the software.

Drawing on features developed in openModeller, I plan to have LA compile better quality reports, complete with spreadsheets and graphs. This will be a great time saving feature. In addition, this will provide consistent results presentation that will make it easier to systematically compare results with other users.

LA’s Help Screen The Application Handbook is a comprehensive guide to using LA. Each input variable is listed with a full explanation of it’s purpose. Each control (e.g. slider, steppers, checkboxes) is fully explained. In addition, the overall process is outlined and explained as well.

One big feature will be the ability to present and share data online. The infrastructure of the software has been designed from the very beginning with this in mind. The ability to access the entire program, GIS and all, from a web browser is also completely feasible because of this. In my mind, this would potentially be one of the greatest enhancements of all.

In addition to the Application Manual, if a user hovers their cursor over any input field, a brief description (called a Tool Tip) is displayed. On top of this, it is possible to right click on any input field or control and a detailed explanation of it’s purpose or instructions of its use will be given. F UTURE DEVELOPMENT

R EFERENCES

LA is still in the early stages of its development and many improvements to usability and application capabilities are planned. That said, the application is already capable of producing useful results (though more testing is still needed) in a more flexible, user friendly and efficient manner than the original BASH prototype.

[1] A. Bevan, Computational models for understanding movement and territory, http://www.homepages.ucl. ac.uk/∼tcrnahb/downloads/Bevan08 manuscript.pdf accessed 08/25/2009 (2008). [2] D. Browman, Demographic correlations of the wari conquest of junin, American Antiquity 41 (1976), no. 4, 465–477. [3] R Cribb, Computer simulation of herding systems as an interpretive and heuristic device in the study of kill-off strategies, Animals and Archaeology: 3 Early Herders and Their Flocks (J. Clutton-Brock and C. Grigson, eds.), B.A.R. International Series, 1984, pp. 161–171. [4] R. Cribb, The logic of the herd: a computer simulation of archaeological herd structure, Journal Of Anthropological Archaeology 6 (1987), 376–415. [5] M. D. Danti, Early bronze age settlement and land use in the tell es-sweyhat region, syria, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2000. [6] W. Dimbleby, G, P. J. Ucko, and D. Zohary, The domestication and exploitation of plants and animals, Duckworth, London, 1969.

There are many routes that LA can take from this point with respect to it’s future development; it can continue on as a standalone application, or turn into a plugin for another application like openModeler or QGis. Before these decisions are made, however, the features in the current version must be finalised and implemented. Some features which are currently in the planning phase are network analysis for inter-site relationships, experiment settings, where the model can be set to run a given number of times using different input variables, and report generation complete with graphs and maps. The incorporated network analysis feature will be able to automatically look at all contemporaneous sites in a given area, and examine production potential. If a site can potentially produce excess of one resource, but falls short in another, it 42

Jason Jorgenson [7] R. Ellison, Some thoughts on the diet of mesopotamia from c. 3000-600 b.c., Iraq 45 (1983), no. 1, 146–150 (eng). [8] M. Jarman, C. Vita-Finzi, and E. Higgs, Site catchment analysis in archaeology, Man, Settlement and Urbanism (1972), 61–66. [9] I. Kohler-Rollefson, A model for the development of nomadic pastoralism on the transjordan plateau, Pastoralism in the Levant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives (Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov, eds.), Monographs in World Archaeology, no. 10, Prehistory Press, 1992, pp. 11–19. [10] S. Payne, Kill-off patterns in sheep and goats: the mandibles from asvan kale, Anatolian Studies 23 (1973), 281–303.

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Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces in the Near Eastern Neolithic Alexis McBride School of Archaeological, Classics and Egyptology University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK

would have had an enormous impact on the function and use of architecture 85,86,87,14,32 . An embodied approach to architecture argues that people move through and experience space in a multi-sensual way and that these aspects need to be studied in order to understand architecture 35,74,23,43,56,56,94,59,50,55,11,63,12 . While some archaeologists have examined the multi-sensual aesthetics of architecture, the interpretation of the affective nature of space makes assumptions that the emotional response of people in the past was similar to people in the modern West 28,36 . This means that only purely physical aspects of architecture can be considered in order to accurately understand the multi-sensual nature of architecture. This study uses computer modelling to explore various ways that the physical body would have mediated the understanding of Near Eastern Neolithic communal architecture, including visibility, movement, capacity, and distance.

Abstract—The Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East is characterised by increasing sedentism and the emergence of cultivation and herding. Alongside these lifestyle changes are indications for the reorganisation of society, including a series of communal structures from a number of sites across the region. The experience and use of these structures can be explored through a multi-sensual examination of the communal spaces and the way they might have been inhabited. Modelling scenarios of use at Beidha, Jordan; G¨obekli Tepe, Turkey; Nevali C ¸ ori, Turkey; and others using simple, intuitive methods has begun to suggest the nature of the groups that were using the structures, providing insight into the organisation of Near Eastern Neolithic society.

I NTRODUCTION The Near Eastern Neolithic was a period that saw many changes in the way that people lived. This is apparent in changes in mortuary practices, architecture, subsistence practices, and craft production 5,3,13 . All of these lines of evidence indicate changing social structure that archaeologists have tried to access using many different approaches 49,34,93 . This study re-examines this question through a series of nondomestic communal structures found at a number of Neolithic sites across the Near East. These structures are the earliest built communal spaces in the world, and indicate changing communal interactions. Understanding of these new types of interactions will allow us to better understand the nature of the new social organisation emerging in the Neolithic. In order to accomplish this, the function and use of these communal structures needs to be explored in an embodied way using simple modelling methodologies.

N EAR E ASTERN N EOLITHIC The Near Eastern Neolithic has generally been characterized as the period that saw the emergence of agriculture and sedentism. Much research has focused on the cause and course of both of these developments, but with little agreement 39,95,6,96 . Despite the uncertainty over the course and cause of the developments during the Neolithic, it is fairly clear that people began aggregating in larger groups over the course of the Epipalaeolithic and into the Neolithic period 25,45,9,13 . This can be seen at a variety of Neolithic sites, such as Ain Ghazal, Beidha, Jericho, C¸atal H¨oy¨uk, and C¸ay¨on¨u 47,68,60,17,41 . These sites show evidence for increasingly densely packed domestic architecture and have prompted suggestions of increasingly larger populations.

Common theoretical approaches to architecture argue that the built environment and society are mutually constituted with architecture constructed by societies but the same architecture constrains and directs social interaction 64,21 . This relationship has allowed archaeologists to study societies through the architecture they build and permits interpretations of the intended use and function of structures through the study of the affordances of spaces 57,4,15,83,16,49,82,91 . Traditionally, studies of architecture have focussed on the floor plan, examining the function of space from an outsiders perspective. While this has provided many insights into the nature of spaces, there has been some suggestion that this top-down approach to architecture ignores some of the more embodied aspects of space that

The emergence of sedentary villages would have fundamentally changed the way that people lived, with larger groups of people living together for longer periods of time. These groups would have required new social mechanisms to deal with tensions of sedentary life 88,31,67,89 . Many of the Neolithic sites show evidence for changing requirements, with increasingly densely packed domestic architecture, and increasing internal compartmentalisation 18,3,16 . This has been interpreted as evidence for a wider range of domestic activities taking place inside houses indicating an increasing desire for privacy. 45

Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces in the Near Eastern Neolithic ‘communal’ spaces 48,66,42,69 . I intend to intensively study these spaces to examine potential activities and interactions that could have taken place within them.

This has also lead to the suggestion that households might have been becoming more autonomous during this period. There is evidence for changing relationships and new social mechanisms emerging in the wealth of symbolic material that has been found at Neolithic sites. The Neolithic period saw an enormous explosion of symbolic material 91,31,89,92 . These demonstrate an increased desire to materialize and display new aspects of identity and new types of relationships. There has been much debate concerning the meaning of these symbolic displays, with many researchers attempting to identify a Neolithic mythology or competing shamanic tribes 19,10,88,41 . This has distracted people from the fact that regardless of the meaning, the prolific creation of representative art is a dramatic departure from earlier periods in the Near East and signals changes in the way that people were interacting with the world.

A NALYSIS The archaeological analysis of architecture in the past has focussed largely on description and identification of activities taking place within them, or the use of detailed computer models to reconstruct the visual experience of inhabiting the spaces 29,27,54,20,22,21,50,87 . These detailed models do not necessarily provide enough new information to justify the enormous effort required to create them, which I would like to demonstrate through the use of simple AutoCAD models to explore the Neolithic communal spaces. In order to examine the ways in which people were interacting and experiencing the communal spaces, I digitized plans of the spaces in AutoCAD and depicted the way people might have been using them with representative polygons. This allowed me to conceptualize the structures in a simple and intuitive way without the enormous labour required of more complex computer models. This methodology has allowed me to explore many potential scenarios of use in an embodied way without relying on previous assumptions.

Evidence in domestic architecture and symbolic representations therefore signal that interpersonal relationships were changing over the course of the Neolithic, which can also be seen in changing mortuary practices and the emergence of new subsistence practices 5,33,24,65,17,34 . These changing relationships suggest that new mechanisms were required in order to maintain social cohesion during this time. I am testing the hypothesis that corporate groups were one of these mechanisms that emerged in order to deal with new relationships and new tensions that occurred during this period.

I NTERNAL F EATURES

Corporate groups are not well defined archaeologically, and are most often discussed in an anthropological setting (see Hayden and Cannon 38 ). There are many different definitions for corporate groups 30,73,8,44 , but for this study, I am interested in institutionalised integrative groups that function beyond the scale of domestic groups. These groups would have had defined membership that cross-cut kinship and domestic groups and they are expected to have had unified external relationships and defined operating procedures.

Internal features and artefacts are most often used to determine the function of architecture. The communal spaces in the Neolithic were kept very clean before abandonment, meaning that there were few artefacts found inside them 84 . This means that the structures were carefully cleaned and maintained before abandonment. There were however some features that might suggest the way that they were used. Interestingly, there is repetition of features from site to site, but no exact pattern that was followed. This can be seen in the fact that many of the structures had standing stones in them, as shown in Fig 1, but they were never used in the same way. Some of the sites had standing stones lining the perimeter, as at Nevali Cori and G¨obekli Tepe 81 , but they were decorated in different ways. At Beidha, there was only a single standing stone 17 , while at C¸ay¨on¨u there were three standing stones in one building 75 . At Jerf el-Ahmar, pillars surrounded the structure referencing the use of stone at other sites 72 . Benches were also found in many of the structures, as shown in Fig 2, with buildings at Nevali Cori, Jerf el-Ahmar, and G¨obekli Tepe lined with benches, while at C¸ay¨on¨u benches were only found along one side 75,72,81 .

Corporate groups are suggested in the Neolithic due to a series of communal structures at many different sites across the Near East, indicating that groups of people beyond the household were interacting in a controlled way.

N EOLITHIC C OMMUNAL S PACES Extensive excavation at Near Eastern Neolithic sites has lead to the discovery of a series of built communal spaces. These are found at many different sites, such as Beidha, ’Ain Ghazal, Jericho, Jerf el-Ahmar, Nevali Cori, C¸ay¨on¨u, As¸ıklı H¨oy¨uk, Hallan C ¸ emi, and G¨obekli Tepe. There are also a number of sites with outdoor communal spaces; such as C ¸ ay¨on¨u, As¸ıklı H¨oy¨uk, Hallan C ¸ emi, and Sabi Abyad II 46,61,75,62,66,71,26,37,69,70,84,90,77,78,81,79,17,80 .

These patterns suggest that people were gathering in these spaces and were taking part in activities where at least some people were seated for some of the time and the use of standing stones were likely used to created places that were the focus of people’s attention. This does not give a very detailed understanding of the structures though, so models of potential use scenarios were created.

The previous studies of these communal spaces have tended to focus on description, generally focussing on comparing them to contemporary domestic architecture and concluding with vague suggestions of their having been ‘ritual’ and 46

Alexis McBride

Fig. 1: Standing stones at Beidha 17 , Nevalı C ¸ ori 37 , and G¨obekli Tepe 80 .

Fig. 3: Examples of potential movement paths in the Flagstone building, C ¸ ay¨on¨u H¨oy¨uk; building II, Nevalı C ¸ ori; Skull building 2a, C ¸ ay¨on¨u; and building 8, Beidha.

the general visibility of the structures using GIS software (see Fig 4). Once again, the simple methodology shows that the buildings were undifferentiated, with individuals able to see things taking place anywhere else in the structure. The existence of standing stones intuitively suggests that spaces were visually controlled, but the stones did not affect the visibility within the structures a great deal.

Fig. 2: Benches at Jerf el-Ahmar 72 , Nevalı C ¸ ori 37 , and G¨obekli Tepe 76 .

M OVEMENT The way the structures were organized would have constrained the way that people could have moved through them. The way people access, enter, move through, and exit a space affects the way they can encounter features and other people, meaning that movement is important to understand 40,29,58,83,1,21 . Examining potential movement paths in the various structures shows that the buildings were for the most part quite undifferentiated and people would have been able to move freely and easily through them, as shown in Fig 3. In some cases, such as with the Skull building at C ¸ ay¨on¨u, more complex movement paths would have been required to access the Northern parts of the structure. These more complex paths might suggest differential controlled access, but definitely demonstrate that the experience of this structure would not have been as undifferentiated.

Fig. 4: Viewsheds in building II, Nevalı C ¸ ori; enclosure D, G¨obekli Tepe; Skull building 2a, C ¸ ay¨on¨u; and building 8 Beidha if the viewer is 1.5m tall.

There are some examples with more complex visual fields, with some areas more differentiated, such as in building 8 at Beidha, and Skull building 2a at C¸ay¨on¨u as shown in Fig 4. This suggests that some of the buildings were experienced differently than the more open and integrated structure.

V ISIBILITY Similarly, the internal organization of the structures would have affected the lines of sight, as has been explored archaeologically elsewhere 97,52,50,53 . It is therefore possible to examine 47

Modelling the Experience of Communal Spaces in the Near Eastern Neolithic It is of course possible that the structures were divided with organic materials, which would have affected the visibility and movement of these structures but are now invisible archaeologically. It is also possible that lack of light or time of day would also have affected the visibility of the structures. While these details would have greatly affected the visibility in the structures, but this does not invalidate the results found using the archaeological visible parts.

an unrealistically low number, while the maximum capacity gives an unrealistically high number. The 50% and contextual capacity are very similar though, which suggests that they provide a realistic estimate for the number of people who might have participated in events in the communal spaces. TABLE I: Comparison of the various capacity calculations of Near Eastern Neolithic non-domestic structures. Building

C APACITY One of the most interesting questions concerning the communal buildings during the Neolithic is how many people would have been using them. The calculation of capacity is difficult though since concepts of personal space are culturally constructed and difficult to apply archaeologically 7,2 . Previous attempts to calculate capacity have focussed on domestic architecture using anthropological cross-cultural estimates of personal space of 10.2m2 /person 57,51,98 . These studies are problematic in and of themselves, but they are also completely inapplicable to communal spaces. In order to calculate realistic estimates of the capacity of the structures, I began by modelling the absolute maximum capacity of the structures using representative polygons. This resulted in an unrealistically high estimate, as there was no allowance for personal space, movement, or activities. This provided an absolute upper limit for the capacity of the structures, though a more realistic estimate is probably closer to 50% of this calculation. Secondly, I modelled the way that people might have occupied the space, taking into account the features, movement and visibility results that were discussed earlier, giving a more contextual capacity. Examples of these two methodologies are shown in Fig 5.

Capacity 10.2m2/person

Maximum Capacity

50% Capacity

Contextual Capacity

Flagstone

5.9

99

49.5

39

Skull 1

5.8

99

49.5

44

Skull 2c bench

10.2

157

78.5

66

Skull 2c stones

10.2

165

82.5

56

Skull 2b

10.2

159

79.5

57

Skull 2a

10.2

148

74

51

Terrazzo

7.7

128

64

64

Building 9

5.6

89

44.5

44

Building 8

10

183

91.5

63

Building 78

0.64

11

5.5

5

Building 77

1.56

23

11.5

11

In some cases, the contextual capacity is significantly lower than the 50% capacity, as in the case of the Skull building 2a, C¸ay¨on¨u and building 8, Beidha. These buildings have more complex requirements for movement and visibility though, so they would have required more space for people to move around and experience the structures. The estimates for the number of participants allows us to begin to understand how the communal structures functioned in the context of the wider settlement. The numbers suggested by the estimates show that a large proportion of the population believed to have lived at the sites could have participated. Despite this, there would have been some selection process involved since not all inhabitants could have participated. The selection process is not clear from the organisation of the structure, it could have been all adults, all women of childbearing age, all unmarried men, or any other selection criteria. This means that the calculation of the capacity of the structures can give us an idea of whether or not the entire population could have participated in events, but we will need to look elsewhere to see if there is any evidence for the criteria used to determine participants.

I NTERPERSONAL D ISTANCE The size of the structures also determines the way in which participants could have experienced events taking place within them. The human body has physical limitations on perception, which would have affected the way interactions could have taken place, as shown in Table II 35 . When people are over 7.6m apart, facial expressions become obscured and voices need to be amplified 35 . This means that holding conversations would have been difficult in larger spaces. Measuring the size of the communal structures can therefore help determine what type of interactions would have been possible.

Fig. 5: Maximum and contextual capacity of building 8, Beidha and Terrazzo building, C¸ay¨on¨u.

All of these estimates can then be compared in order to get an estimate of the range of numbers of people that might have occupied the structures, as shown in Table I. Clearly, the anthropological estimate of 10.2m2 /person gives

Looking at the communal structures on Neolithic sites, as shown in Fig 6, it appears that many of them were larger than 7.6m, meaning that it would have been difficult to carry on a conversation or see activities taking place across them. 48

Alexis McBride TABLE II: Interaction distances (adapted from Hall 1969 35 ).

Distance

Personal 0.45 – 1.2m

Social 1.2 – 3.6m

Close Public 3.6 – 7.6m

The use of CAD and GIS software has allowed for the examination of many different scenarios quickly and easily. The models created were simple and intuitive and allow for an embodied exploration of architecture, rather than simply recreating the structures using the most advanced software. Instead, focus is placed on the question of how individuals would have experienced the spaces and on ways of modelling and understanding the physical sensual aspects of the architecture. This focus on answering research questions simply and intuitively instead of simply with the most complex software available means that there is little opportunity for technology simply for technologys sake.

Far Public 7.6m+

R EFERENCES [1] S. Bafna, Space syntax: A brief introduction to its logic and analytical techniques, Environment and Behavior 35 (2003), no. 1, 17–29. [2] M. Baldassare and S. Feller, Cultural variations in personal space: Theory, methods, and evidence, Ethos 35 (1975), 481–503. [3] E. B. Banning, The neolithic period: triumphs of architecture, agriculture, and art, Near Eastern Archaeology 61 (1998), no. 4, 188–237. [4] E. B. Banning and B. F. Byrd, Alternative approaches for exploring levantine neolithic architecture, Pal´eorient 15 (1989), no. 1, 154–160. [5] O. Bar-Yosef, Prehistory of the levant, Annual Review of Anthropology 9 (1980), no. 1, 101–133. [6] O. Bar-Yosef and A. Belfer-Cohen, Facing environmental crisis. societal and cultural changes at the transition from the younger dryas to the holocene in the levant, The Dawn of Farming in the Near East, edited by: Cappers, RTJ and Bottema, S., Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence, and Environment 6 (1999), 55– 66. [7] J. P. Batchelor and G. R. Goethals, Spatial arrangements in freely formed groups, Sociometry 35 (1972), no. 2, 270–279. [8] H. Befu and L. Plotnicov, Types of corporate unilineal descent groups, American Anthropologist 64 (1962), 313–327. [9] A. Belfer-Cohen and O. Bar-Yosef, Early sedentism in the near east: A bumpy ride to village life, Life in Neolithic farming communities: Social organization, identity, and differentiation (New York) (I. Kuijt, ed.), Kluwer Academic, 2000, pp. 19–37. [10] D. Bischoff, Symbolic worlds of central and southeast anatolia in the neolithic, The Neolithic of central Anatolia (F. Gerard and L. Thiessen, eds.), Istanbul, EGE Yayinlari, 2002, pp. 237–251. [11] N. Boivin, Rock art and rock music: Petroglyphs of the south indian neolithic, Antiquity 78 (2004), 38–53. [12] N. Boivin, A. Brumm, H. Lewis, D. Robinson, and R. Korisettar, Sensual, material, and technological understanding: eexploring prehistoric soundscapes in south india, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 13 (2007), 267–294.

Fig. 6: Interpersonal distances in building 8, Beidha; Flagstone building, C¸ay¨on¨u; Enclosure D, G¨obekli Tepe; and building II, Nevalı Cori.

Interestingly, the centre of these structures fall within the close public distance. This means that activities taking place in the centre would have been highly visible and easily heard. This might suggest that the centre of the structures was the focus of attention, where speakers might have stood or where performances would have taken place.

C ONCLUSIONS These analyses allow us to determine what type of group was using the communal structures as well as make some inferences concerning the types of activities that were taking place. Based on the internal features and interpersonal distances, it is clear that the focus of activities was the centre of the structures. The way that people could have moved around the spaces, as well as the visibility within the structures, shows that all participants would have had a roughly similar experience, meaning that the structures would have provided an excellent location for integrative activities. This lack of differentiation supports the hypothesis that these structures were used for corporate group events. Finally, the capacity of the structures demonstrates that while the structures would have held a large proportion of the population of the individual sites, it is unlikely that the entire population was attending any single event, and it is also unlikely that people were travelling from surrounding settlements to participate. All of this shows that the non-domestic communal structures built at Near Eastern Neolithic sites were venues for integrative community activities based around a central performance with participants spectating from the perimeter. 49

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52

Exploring the use of space using relativity Ehren Milner Centre for Archaeology, Anthropology & Heritage Bournemouth University Bournemouth, UK

examples provide a middle range theory to social relativism. A framework of modern understanding used to engage with an ethnographic example that can be used to align axioms in three-stage process to understand material depositions as they may be expected in the present, observed in the less distant past and compared to the remote past. It is in this context that Milek 28 was very successful at examining areas within archaeological cases against those within ethnographic examples. .

Abstract—The spatial distributions of anthropogenic materials were compared within seven longhouse floors, ranging in date from the Neolithic through to the post-medieval, using an application of relativity in GIS. The sites included the previously excavated sites of Claish, Jarlshof, Bornais and Kilpheder. In addition, two longhouses were excavated on the Kinloch estate near Tongue, Sutherland. These models were then compared to a Cognitive Model to test conformity to an idealised use of space. The Cognitive Model was a combination of an expert model data capture of preceptive space and combined within GIS. Two composite models for the use of space within Scottish longhouses were created from the groups of houses on the basis of correlations and discriminant analysis linked to spatial distributions reflectively against the Cognitive Model. Future work was identified to include building an aggregate of relativistically transformed work and 3-D relativistic transformations.

Despite similar methods of collection, and similar adaptations of middle range theory using ethnographic examples, the sites themselves are not comparable by means other than old analogous method of ‘that looks like this’ to test for similarities. It would be useful if all observed spatial characteristics, the space between samples, and known discrete features, were examined. The difficulty is in how best to compare the sites. It is possible to determine architecturally that two areas, at two different sites, may hold similarities in form but their uses may be entirely different 38 .

I NTRODUCTION Archaeological investigations are often translated into numerical forms to facilitate the understanding of the use of space. Karl Gauss discussed (in his letter to Bessel in 1830) how it is nearly impossible to describe spatial aspects completely 20 . Ethereal concepts can be, but are rarely, distilled to the greatest of artificial understandings- mathematics. Spatial relationships can be described, or estimated, through the use of mathematics, but never understood in totality other than through artificial means of understanding. The aim of this study was to test ideas about the social use of space within longhouses in Scotland using mathematical transformations. This has been attempted through examining seven case studies and the use of a cognitive model relativistically.

The examination of samples within these areas would require the exact scale and size, and positioning of samples, to truly look at the distribution of materials within a set of buildings to determine if they hold similar, testable, patternization. If, however, it was possible to take a building of a similar, but slightly different shape and compare it in the same shape, with all archaeological distributions juxtaposed into the same shape, it would be safe to describe the distributions mathematically or analogically as the same or not. The application of relativistic frames can make this step possible.

Current views are that an examination of microassemblages offer the best hope of achieving an understanding of the use of space by finite quantification of material deposition 25,43,26,28 . Further to this, an examination of geochemical composition and geomorphology are thought to offer linkages to the use of space 27,28,23 . With the aid of ethnographic approaches, these uses of space can be more apparent through comparative sampling (e.g. Milek 28 ; Kent 14 ; Smith 42 ; Viklund 47 ).

R ELATIVITY- TRANSFORMING SPACE There is no archaeological literature on the use of relativity. The application of general relativity, special relativity, and not just social relativity, can be an aid to spatial interpretations. For both special (Einsteinian and Lorentzian) and general (Galilean and Newtonian) relativity, the world is composed of space-time points that can be represented by a quadruple (x, y, z, t) of real numbers in each reference frame and different reference frames can be connected “by rules of transformation of the appropriate theory” 13 . For both forms of relativity, space-time can be converged and treated as flat at a point 29 .

Different samples sizes and their different alignments, make direct comparisons between buildings by spatial axioms difficult. Indeed, much of the prevailing view within archaeology is that artefact deposition within buildings represent abandonment rather than the use of space during the occupation of the structure (e.g. Brooks 4 ). The application of ethnographic 53

Exploring the use of space using relativity embodies the quintessential longhouse in Europe, however, has been the subject of much debate. Whether the longhouse is a domus longa, the long-house or ‘Long-house form’ as described by Meirion-Jones 24 or the tˆy hur of Peate 32 , one commonality is a domestic structure with width to length ratio of least 2:1 46 . A requirement of the inclusion of a byre, or animal stall under the same roof structure, has been identified by many 41,10,7,39 . Recently, the future of this terminology has been called in to question. To avoid confusion with inappropriate typologies and obviate seeking a new definition, recent studies have chosen to abandon the term longhouse altogether (e.g. Milek 28 ). Fig. 1: Relative Spaces and relative perspectives in relativistic systems.

In Scotland, rather than seeking a more appropriate definition or nomenclature, building typologies have recently come to be based upon known qualities of past use that may only be evident after archaeological excavation. That is, what would have been called a longhouse, should a drain and hearth be evident, will now be called a ‘byre dwelling’. If there was no evidence of a hearth it would be called a ‘farm building’ etc. This leaves the vast majority of what were once called ‘longhouses’ as ‘buildings’ as there is insufficient evidence of their past use.

For the special theory of relativity, Lorentz transformations make provision of different frames of perspective. This allows for the ‘slowing’ of clocks and the ‘contraction/expansion’ of metrics such as a yardstick so that “there is no such thing as unique spatial separation of the point-events” 13 . Special relativity of space-time allows for congruence of points to be viewed with the same metric unit, much as Euclidian transformations of two-dimensional points can create spatial convergences from one metric (e.g. map projection) to another. Special relativity can create a universal frame that all vectors from a case can be ‘boosted’ into another frame to be understood on the same terms (Fig 1). Reichenbach 36 maintains that a universal force keeps the length and breadth of bodies preserved in their position by the same factor and to preserve all congruence relations. The addition of special relativistic theory, to archaeology would provide a universal metric whereby differences and commonalities could be viewed under the same spatial congruence. Similar useful methods that have been used with GIS or other programs capable of plotting items to show displays in ring, sector, trace line, or density analysis. These examine whether items are distributed in a similar fashion or a a similar area by ratio. This method is useful for showing occupational patterns within buildings because it is possible to distinguish between areas of a floor visually. Boekschoten and Stapert 2 explored this technique thoroughly and determined that it is usefully for a qualitative assessment. An application of relativity eliminates the need to measured ratios and instead provides a mean for direct comparison.

As Table I demonstrates, before the withdrawal of longhouse from the archaeological lexicon in Scotland, there were at least 164 undated structures called longhouses in Scotland. A further 84 longhouses were assigned to a period of use. The majority are thought to be post-medieval in date and likely to have related to agricultural use. Others demonstrated a form typology that was thought to be consistent with early medieval and medieval structures. TABLE I: Number of longhouses within the study area, by period, (from the NMRS database) Period Date

Number of sites

Neolithic

3

Early Medieval

7

Medieval Post-medieval

9 65

Undated

164

Total

248

C OMPARISONS TO A KNOWN QUANTITY- THE C OGNITIVE M ODEL

C ASE STUDIES The archaeological monuments chosen for this examination were longhouses in Scotland. Longhouses are one of the most long-lived and widespread form of residential structure in the world. They are know from the Neolithic through to modern times, from ancient Danubian ‘long houses’ in the North 6 through to the modern longhouses of Borneo in the South 30 . They are generally seen as embodying daily social activities within more broadly constructed cosmographical frameworks of societal understanding that would have boundaries and zone of activities acceptable to those who lived within them. What

In order to form an interpretative overlay, an over-arching model, that other sites can be tested against. To do this, a perception, or previous notion, expert model was produced through a spatial survey. To test these interpretations, it is necessary to extract the thoughts and perceptions of others in a format that can be tested against a body of data. Conversely, bodies of data must also be tested against established perceptions to see if the processes chosen to aid redintegration are capable of achieving similar measurable results. 54

Ehren Milner Had a model been formed by the author, subconscious manipulation would be likely to lead to a model that would provide the desirable results to match the status quo and provide an easy analysis to only answer established questions. That is, the ideal model created may be too ideal and have no parallels to excavated sites. This means that despite much effort to develop methodologies that will make intersite analysis of intrasite patterns feasible, none of the techniques may work when applied to actual cases.

(at the millionths level) is the most intimate view of the world possible - a single household.

P ROCESSING THE SPATIAL SURVEY The spatial survey shall be processed by digitising all of the results from each survey. Essentially, each result formed an individual model. To overcome this, all of the results were spatially averaged. It was necessary to divide the spatial area by the total number of samples. The centroids of each area in a set group will be spatially averaged to position the area. To determine the area extent, the position of the lines in the drawings were also averaged.

The survey that was sent out resulted in a collection of the perceptions of areas of space within a Norse structure in the hinterlands of the Norse world (Fig 2). This form of mapping has often been called a cognitive map 45,15 , cognitive images 18 , and mental images 34 . The respondent rate for returning surveys was less than ten percent. This figure was easily explained because the mental demands in creating a spatial model is the highest order spatial task that the mind can perform 15 . Cognitive maps take a lifetime to be formed 33 so individuals who thought that their own knowledge may not lead to a accurate ratio scale often sent their apologies instead of a completed survey.

The steps for creating this microscale model were as below: 1) Georectify and digitize all of the surveys 2) Space - centroids and areas averaged as vector files. Axial rotations determined using Jennrich-Turner axis diagrams. 3) Arte/ecofact distributions- Using Principal Component Analysis in GIS 90-95% principal components were represented in a single grid output

Each participant was sent a blank outlines of a rectilinear tripartite structure and asked to fill in their idealised/expected use of space within such a structure. If the experience of the individuals, their “soma significance” 3 interaction with the physical world and its descriptions, has varied from this template, participants were asked to express their own preceptions. Once each participant had created a use of space from their own machinations, they were asked to fill out corresponding archaeological material distributions that would be expected for the use of space that they have created. This was done by demarcating quartile ranges of contour lines onto participants expected quartile ranges of the density levels as: 1) 2) 3) 4)

This final output is presented in Fig 2 and shall form the distributions that the archaeological case studies area compared against, once combined with the observed data described below. Of the surveys that were returned fully completed, none were identical. Even with the leading suggestion of a tri-partate structure, there was no agreement between the archaeologists surveyed. The combination of concepts of several individuals should offer fewer biases. By averaging out the spatial areas, and the expectant values, it is possible to understand more about the archaeological literature and test what archaeologists have learned from past excavations. If there was no relationship shown between any preconceived distributions and reality, the value of what we are learning through excavation must be put into question.

Negligible Low Medium High

Although we have no universal model to explain the relationship between material culture and social phenomena (Fletcher, comments in Kolb 16 ), participants were asked to make these links and create a relationship between area, activity and archaeological evidence. The potential of this exercise was to bring probabilistic certainty to the association of data with theories about the use of space

T HE C ASE STUDIES Five sites with seven potential longhouses, were chosen for the study (see Fig 3). The criteria for selection went beyond just the level of intact archaeology and known taphonomic factors that may have affected the site. The greater focus was on knowing the excavation methods used, as this is the only taphonomic factor can be known and not just speculated upon.

The results show the spaces formed within the common psyche of the academic community. Although this does not represent a real site, it shall not only be used as a comparative tool but also as a model that of a single house (microscale) which represents the megascale world of longhoused. By definition, the megascale view includes the totality of all houses that may have existed, numbering in the unknown millions. The Macroscale view includes houses grouped together with their immediate geographic peers, numbering in the thousands, and therefore all of those within Scotland. The microscale view

In 1977, a possible ‘Dark Age’ hall was observed from the air on Claish Farm, near Stirling. In 2001, as part of the First Farmers Project, a combined team from The Universities of Glasgow and Stirling stripped the visible extent of the structure and recorded and part excavated the apparent features 1 . Following the machine stripping of the site, it became apparent that there was a rather large structure, roughly 24m by 8.5m, with curved terminals with potential entrances and straight 55

Exploring the use of space using relativity

Fig. 2: The centroid based Cognitive model with centroids from each survey and parsimonious distributions.

56

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Fig. 3: Case Studies and transformed distributions (artefacts/ecofacts to the right for all with Kilpheder House 500 to the left).

57

Exploring the use of space using relativity TABLE II: Case 1: Claish Location:

Stirling

NGR:

NN 0650

Solid geology:

Lower Old Red Sandstone, including Downtonian

Drift geology:

Alluvium (Sand and clay)

River Valley Farmland

Prevailing Wind:

Land Use:

closely resembles those elsewhere within the Norse sphere of contact, there is one problem with using it as a case study for this examination of longhouse- the provenance of the finds recovered was not assured. That is, where they were found in the house was not recorded.

6350

House 2 was excavated in 1938 and the locations of the finds were recorded meticulously. This is most likely because the architectural features were not nearly as intact so the finds were needed for interpretation. It was hypothesised the house ceased to in use as a domestic dwelling such after a short period of time, compared to House 1, and that the finds likely reflect and extended period of time from when House 2 was in use as a cattle compound. The shallow deposits (only 45-60cm until the natural soil) would indicated that the structure could not have been in use as a cattle compound for too long or else the deposits would have been far deeper. It seems probable that the clearing of much of the architectural features may have saved the distribution of finds from later disturbance. Hand recovered finds included loom weights, steatite fragments, a hone, pot lids, spindle whorls, scratched slate, a tally, pot hooks, iron objects, stone implements, bronze objects and bone pins.

South-west

sites. What became immediately clear was that the site resembled a Neolithic site excavated not too long before in Balbridie, Aberdeenshire. There was strong evidence recovered for a timber-post roofed structure as evidence by the placement of pits throughout the site. Sampling recovered environmental remains including hazel, barley, emmer wheat, bread wheat, crab apple, burnt and heavily fragmented bone (possibly pig, cattle and red deer), charcoal identified as having come from oak, birch willow and alder, pottery and pieces of struck flint. The pottery likely constituted over 60 pots. The taphonomy of the site was considered to have been relatively intact as ploughing and erosion was thought to have had little affect upon the building and perhaps only as much as 20-30cm of archaeological material was likely to have been disturbed, within the range of the modern topsoil 1 .

TABLE IV: Case 3: Kilpheder House 500 & Case 4: Kilpheder Floor 200 (House 312)

Barclay argued that, despite Claish and Babridie having no similar structures within the north of Britain that would likely have constituted a domus, the evidence of the internal posts makes it highly likely that the structures were indeed roofed buildings. The amount of domestic refuses within the structure, recovered from the sampling of the pit features concur with this assessment. The evidence of burning within some of the pits also suggested a use as hearths, should their use not have been for firing pottery. The spread of burn material suggested a possible sweeping of material from the pits with burnt deposits to elsewhere on the site. Of the thirteen samples that were radiocarbon dated, most returned a Neolithic date.

South Uist

NGR:

NF 1979

Solid geology:

Undifferentiated gneiss

Drift geology:

Blown Sand

Land Use:

Crofting

Prevailing Wind:

South

7292

The site of Kilpheder (a.k.a. Cille Pheadair) on South Uist was subject to a rescue excavation before its eventual destruction by the eroding sea between 1996 and 2000. The structures to be included in this study are House 500 and Floor 200 which date roughly from the 10th to 13th centuries and had possible Norse influence in their construction. Bulk sampling was conducted at every 0.5m and geochemical samples were taken in the corner of every 0.5m grid. Also, at the intersection of 0.25m lines, further samples were taken for later use.

TABLE III: Case 2: Jarlshof

TABLE V: Case 5: Bornais (Floor 2, House 3)

Location:

Shetland

NGR:

HU 397 095

Solid geology:

Middle Old Red Sandstone

Drift geology:

Blown Sand

Farmed Settled Lowland and Coast

Prevailing Wind:

Land Use:

Location:

South-southeast

Location:

South Uist

NGR:

NF 3020

Solid geology:

Undifferentiated gneiss

Drift geology:

Blown Sand

Land Use:

Crofting

Prevailing Wind:

South

7290

Another case study from South Uist was Floor 2 of House 3 excavated in 1997 in Trench D 40 . This floor had a wider distribution of samples taken than Floor 1 and more finds examined than Floor 3. Samples were taken every 0.25m, a total of 74 samples, and sieved through 10mm mesh. Finds greater than 10mm included pottery, bone, fish bones, limpets, and winkles. Levels of magnetic susceptibility, Total Nitrogen and Total Phosphorus were recorded. Residue for materials

House 1 was first excavated at Jarlshof by A.O. Curle in 1934 8 . This excavation recovered Norse materials relating to the Viking period and later medieval settlement. The structure was interpreted as having undergone at least three phases of occupation 12 . House 1 is the proto-typical building associated with Viking period contact between modern Scotland and Scandinavia. Although this slightly bow-sided longhouse 58

Ehren Milner below 10mm mesh included pottery, fish bones, unburnt bone, charcoal, seeds, burnt bone burnt organic material and slag. The structure, roughly 6m by 3m, is also of probable Norse origin and constitutes the most rectangular of the structures. A portion of the building did not have samples taken as this material was removed by a sample trench (Trench D) in the 1995 excavation.

examination of the location of doorways in Anglo-Saxon houses. If focusing upon axial rotations based upon relative position of the rising sun was not likely to be the focus of the time when the building would be at its greatest use, in the evenings, what could any orientation focus upon? For this study, the local direction of the prevailing wind is hypothesized to play a major role in selecting how to place a building within the landscape. This was following alignments suggested by Marshall 21 for Neolithic longhouses (see Fig 4). The section below will outline how the transformation of the X, Y, and Z values.

TABLE VI: Case 6: Kinloch Structure 1 and Case 7: Kinloch Structure 3 Location:

Sutherland

NGR:

NC5770 5310

Solid geology:

Epidiorite, hornblendeschist and allied types (Case 6) Undifferentiated gneiss (Case 7)

Drift geology:

Alluvium (Case 6) Glacial Till (Case 7)

Land Use:

Moorland Slopes and Hills

Prevailing Wind:

South-west

Cases 1 to 5 did not provide enough information to examine chemical signatures in the soil which reflect activities. Toward this end, two structures on the Kinloch estate, on the verge of the Kyle of Tongue, Sutherland, were excavated in 2006 as part of this study. The structures were excavated to provide a comparable case studies to Bornais and Kilpheder, using the same methodologies, but with a geology type that was appropriate for wide-ranging geochemical analysis. The localised acidic soil would act well to fix many geochemical elements to anthrosols (anthropogenic soils). Structure 1 was undated and Structure 2 dated to the post-medieval period or earlier. All of the case studies, contain a similar alluvial sand or clay. The inclusion of two structures from Kinloch also finds commonalities between the bedrock geology. Cases 1, 2 and 6 all have sedimentary bedrock formations that may contributed to the natural geochemical of those sites. If the resulting fricative qualities of the resulting superficial geologies impact on object placement and taphonomy, a link would be expected on this level. For Cases 3, 4, 5 and 7, the shared metamorphic bedrock will have provided a slower rate of mineral rich topsoil and this may affected the chemical signatures. These case studies were then transformed for comparison.

Fig. 4: Prevailing winds within Scotland with locations of longhouses as circles and case studies as triangles.

A NALYSIS T HE METHODS USED TO TRANSFORM X, Y AND Z VALUES The presumed spatial syntax was ignored in favour of the distribution of finds and other attributes for comparisons. As features will not be included as pivotal basis for comparison, it will not be possible to orientate the longhouses upon an axis based upon internal features. When buildings are investigated, much credence is given to the location/orientation of the doorway and its preferred orientation. Discussions often focus upon the rising sun and the light that can be provided within a structure early in the morning such as Fieller and O’Neill’s 11 analysis of Bronze Age houses and Marshal and Marshal’s 22

This problem can be solved through the application of an algebraic equation, depicted in Fig 5, to bring respective datasets into spatial co-incidence. This, in addition to vector positioning, provided a technique which was conducted as a philosophical extension of Einsteins theory of relativity on Space-Time. With Einsteins quantum physics, space and time are relative to the observer and any vector on which they may be moving 37 . An example Bertrand Russells gives is of how a swarm of bees is in flux so that it is not possible 59

Exploring the use of space using relativity TABLE VII: Expected group membership as part from initial classification

to distinguish a large swarm far away from a small swarm nearby. Space is relative to the observer as visual cues still point to a swarm. Although this was largely used to explain Earths position within the expanding universe, it introduces the concept that a change in perspective can be use to compare similarities.

Neolithic Expected Membership

Claish

Early Medieval Jarlshof Cognitive Model

Medieval Bornais Kilpheder

Postmedieval Kinloch Structure 3 Kinloch Structure 1

provided by the respondents to form two models. These grids were compared in totality within GIS by PCA against each other and their correlation to the Cognitive Model. An overlay of points was used within GIS to extract density data that could be linked to spatial areas. This was processed within SPSS to obtain a correlation matrix for specific areas along with a MDS graph to provide a visual illustration of the relative relationships between the cases and discriminant analysis to help characterize groups. On the basis of the discriminant analysis and correlation matrices, the two models were formed from the finds distribution. Fig. 5: The simplified formula use and the transformed vertices of the cognitive model.

R ESULTS The Cognitive Model formed the basis for all of the analytical comparisons to the case studies. As such, the reflective analysis was dependant upon the contributors to the study to most accurately reflect what they know about longhouses. Those that formed the two models can be found in Table VIII.

How the equation operates is to transform all points along a given vector to a new place with an exact relative position within a circle of the same size for all sites. This relies on the relative position of an item from the edge extent, the outer border of a polygon in GIS, the envelope centre of space within the building to a new scaled edge extent. Small nuances of the positions of items within relative space can be discerned. Within GIS, this equation can be extrapolated to gain the initial location through the triangulation of the envelope centroid and its azimuth north and the horizon perpendicular to this vector, of a given point relative to a boundary polygon file. The azimuth of the circle was aligned with an external factor. In this study, that external element, also relative to each locality, will be the current prevailing wind. This has been chosen on the basis that buildings were first and foremost shelters. The treatment the data commenced as follows:

TABLE VIII: The sites grouped into each model Model 1

Model 2

Claish

Bornais

Jarlshof

Kilpheder 500

Kinloch Structure 1

Kilpheder 200 Kinloch Structure 3 (longhouse)

One complication is the rate of matriculation that occurs with perceptions that go on to form perceptions and models of spatiality. This study can only be as accurate as the original knowledge. One non-archaeological factor that may have resulted in Claish and Jarlshof showing a higher degree of correlation was the fact that they were both published prior to the issuing of the survey. As such, they may have subconsciously contributed to the eventual shaping of the Cognitive Model.

This method, does, however, only give an indication of how the total spatial contexts vary between the sites and the known quantities. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to view the data constituents within areas of relative space. The zone statistics were extracted using a ring sector overlay, a point coverage and a pie sector coverage scheme (see Fig 6). Once the case studies were transformed, values were extracted to perform discriminant analysis to test to see which had the closest group membership to the Cognitive Model, which was also transformed (Fig 7). What was expected was that items would share commonalities only between similar time periods, as in Table VII.

As for Kinloch Structure 1, it was morphologically similar to Claish and Jarlshof. This is a form associated with the early medieval period, as Claish was initially identified as belonging to prior to excavation. Further similar sites can be found within Britain of this date at Mawgan Porth 5 , Thetford 9 , Buckden 44 , Catholme 19 , Cheddar 35 etc.. This form was less similar to Kinloch Structure 3, Bornais, Kilpheder Floor 200 and Kilpheder House 500. If the proportions indeed determined the eventual use of space, they may be similar to each other in distribution due to architectural factors.

All of the resultant grids were then compared to each by PCA to produce correlation matrices for classes of artefact/ecofacts types. Those with the overall relationships closest to the Cognitive Model were then interpreted using the spatial overly 60

Ehren Milner

Fig. 6: The Ring sectors and points used to extract values from the grids.

61

Exploring the use of space using relativity

Fig. 7: The transformed grids of the cognitive model.

62

Ehren Milner Another factor that the cases that form Model 1 have in similar is the sedimentary bedrock at all sites. If environmental determinism indeed is a factor, the fricative quality of the resultant drift geology could have an impact on how things are distributed as well as the direction of the wind. All of the sites that formed Model 2 had Gneiss bedrock beneath alluvial or Aeolian drift geology.

Statistical tests were linked to spatial distributions to provide correlations of distributions within a relative area. How these distributions compared against a Cognitive Model provided the means to measure a range of distributions, of different material types, at once, to give an overall impression of comparative spatiality. The application of relativity, spatially by the transformation of X and Y values and by the redistribution of Z values, made it possible to compare sites where different methodologies had been applied. This application of relativity revealed how the different recovery methods employed contributed to the models, greatly altered how the spatiality of sites may be perceived.

Perhaps the greatest factor that may have affected the information available to this investigation is the methods of excavation employed for the case studies. For Jarlshof and Claish, the primary method was hand recovery. Payne’s 31 study demonstrated that the use of hand recovery resulted in erratic rates of recovery that could be attributed to the knowledge and experience of the individual. Levitan 17 and Clarke’s observations also agreed with this finding. Much of the sampled data that came from Claish came from spotsampling. The sites that contributed to Model 1 were not wet sieved and three of the four were subject to wet sieving in Model 2.

Demonstrating the opposite if this model, three of the structures from South Uist exhibited a tradition that was likely a product of local influences. For Bornais, the apparent doorway, and possible alcove, at 90° to the direction of the prevailing wind. For most of the year, the prevailing wind direction is at 180° to 90° from this doorway. The resultant artefact distribution appear to reflect this and exhibited distributions often in negative correlations from those of the Cognitive Model and the sites of Claish, Jarlshof and Kinloch Structure 1. The extreme weather, that regularly affects the Hebrides, led to a different placement of doorways. This will have affected artefact deposition. As such, the supposition that the orientation of all longhouses hold commonalities in wind direction can be rejected.

It can be safely assumed that wide distributions of seed data, such as that collected at Bornais, Kilpheder Floor 200 and Kilpheder House 500, would have influenced the results of this study. Taken in totality, the high resolution of data gathered at the Hebredean sites would have created discrete pockets of materials that would have displayed commonalities with each other, if only because of the methods chosen. The length and multi-cellular construction of Kinloch Structure 3 could also have led to the encapsulation of data within discrete areas. By the nature of this distribution, the less broken distributions of the Cognitive Model, Claish and Jarlshof would show less relationship in patternization.

These other factors are implied from the close correlations exhibited between the Kilpheder houses despite juxtaposed orientations. The distributions were likely to have related to an external factor otherwise there should have been little correlation between them if internal orientations had been the primary factor. This was also a possible by-product of the methodology chosen to recover data from the site. The collection of small materials could have been heavily influenced by other unknown taphonomic factors, more so than large objects. Similar placements could simply be the product of shared site terrain characteristics, even the range of artefact/ecofacts, and not just the orientation of the building to an advantageous position to provide the best form of shelter. Further applications of this relativistic technique could help withdraw differences in spatial variation to test other external orientations.

On the basis of the evidence, it appears that those longhouses that contributed to the model of spatial distribution for Model 1 had wind as a factor in their orientation, an extensively, their use. The theory of a tripartite structure can be rejected from the displays of the distributions in Model 1. Model 2, in particular, the pottery, appears to support this model, on another orientation. For Model 2, the orientation to the wind can be rejected. What is clear is that there are a number of factors that likely would have contributed to the differential distributions within the structures. What this study found was that commonalities of distributions were evidenced through over 4000 years of use of longhouses in Scotland. The longhouse model helped to provide proof that the perceptions which archaeologists may have about this typology could be shaped into a model that fits real world examples.

T HE PRECISION AND POTENTIAL OF RELATIVISTIC METHODS TO PROVIDE COMPARISONS BETWEEN SITES The methods chosen to examine the longhouses made provision for the different forms of data collections. The actual location of the deposited finds, and not just the contexts in which they were found was examined. Much of this was to avoid biases that may have entered the archaeological record from the excavator or later commentators who impose their interpretations of functionality upon a site.

The characterization of models into grouped models demonstrated that not only was there likely to be just one tradition, a tradition that could have just been explained by the spatial syntax of a linear building, but that localized model could have been shaped to local identities. Although building use was not just localized, the houses from one area showed a stronger link between one another than they did for longhouses from other regions.

In this way, it was possible read each floor included in the sample as a different page in the book telling the story 63

Exploring the use of space using relativity of the longhouse within Scotland. This new method serves as a translator of this book, all that is needed is further volumes of work to form a true lexicon of spatiality. What this examination made clear was that a stochastic form of sampling bore little relation to the full model. As the inverse of this, regular sampling was found to provide areas of discrete anomalies that did not connect well to form useful patination to match the Cognitive Model. The patterns formed by the recovery methods from 0.5m sampling created localized patterns and not the smooth distributions of the Cognitive Model. Those sites that used hand-collection as the primary method of recovery bore a greater resemblance to the hypothetical model that matched the conception of evidence expected by the archaeologists who completed the surveys.

to then cluster and test for differences based upon factors that may have shaped the distribution (such as rural sites versus urban sites etc.).

3-D SPHERES AND THE 4 TH - DIMENSION Moving beyond X, Y, Z, it would be possible to model space as a 3-D sphere. This is where a spheroid model could be introduced. The flat circles of this study could be turned into spheres. The method used for relativistic transformations placed a third-dimension point upon a two-dimensional disc. Although this method proves highly useful where items are being considered in plan, it does not consider more than one axial shifts or contributing factor. If items are placed within a relativistic sphere, rotational tilt could provide an infinite amount of outside factors that a site could be orientate upon.

F UTURE APPLICATIONS OF THIS METHOD There are great benefits to using spatial techniques combined with spatial transformations. This section will discuss how these methods do not have to be used in isolation and can go beyond just the study of longhouses. Future agendas for the applications of relativity include four-dimensional studies and the creation of aggregate models. The interpretation of sites could benefit greatly from an electronic repository of case studies transformed to relativistic terms. One of the great hindrances of to the publication of excavations is the task of final interpretation, through analogous cross-comparisons, can prove too taxing for the time pressured resources of researchers. If those who have completed this feat could go one step further from publication and provide transformed evidence and interpretive overlays for other researchers, it could benefit archaeology as a whole.

F INAL THOUGHTS Until now, relativity is an advancement that has somehow avoided an application within archaeology. As the use of GIS grows, it will be possible to take further theoretical advances from other areas of the sciences and test their applications within archaeology. This type of research will help us to look beyond the static taxonomies that have formed from the past two hundred years of excavation. One hypothetical test would be to transform data from all Neolithic British longhouses and compare them again Neolithic Danish longhouses so compare how people lived within and used space. External variables could be tested and internal arrangements measured under relative conditions. Relativity as a tool deserves our fullest attention in future research.

For those who have not found dating evidence, or whose archaeological findings do not conform to the published literature, or do not have abundant features, such as with Kinloch Structure 1, it could be possible to compare results heuristically. Greater reliance could be placed upon results where a distribution of artefacts was tested against thousands of excavations. In turn, the compiling of thousands of excavations could also provide greater clarity to the interpretation of space. If a spatial interpretation overlay was included with the distributions, these could be averaged out much in the same manor as with cognitive surveys, based upon a series of external factors.

R EFERENCES [1] G.j. Barclay, K. Brophy, and G. Macgregor, A neolithic building at claish farm, near callander, stirling council, scotland, uk= un bˆatiment n´eolithique a` claish farm, pr`es de callander, stirling council, ecosse, royaume-uni, Antiquity 76 (2002), no. 291, 23–24. [2] G Boekshoten and D. Stapert, A new tool for spatial analysis: Ring & sectors 3.1 plus density analysis and tracelines, Proceedings of the 23rd CAA conference held at Leiden University, Leiden (Leiden) (H. Kamermans and K. Fennema, eds.), Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia no. 28, 1996. [3] D. Bohm and L. Nichol, The essential david bohm, Routledge, 2003. [4] R. Brooks, Abandonment of settlements and regions: Ethnoarchaeological and archaeological approaches, ch. Household abandonment among sedentary plains societies: behavioral sequences and consequences in the interpretation of the archaeological record, pp. 178–187, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993. [5] R.L.S. Bruce-Mitford, P. Ashbee, and R.J. Taylor, Mawgan porth: a settlement of the late saxon period on

As such, after all of the statistical comparisons, the final results had to be subjected to the scrutiny of analogy based on similarities evident or absent from the Cognitive Model. With a greater amount of interpretive overlays that could result from the deposition of relativistic case studies, it would eventually be possibly to create profiles of patterns that could be searched for within a set of data that corresponded to a use of space through pattern recognition techniques employed with satellite technology. For example, Fourier analysis could be used to find the data forms that were most characteristic of an area used for animal husbandry. By comparing those cases that hold artefact/ecofact commonalities, it will then be possible 64

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[6] [7] [8] [9]

[10] [11]

[12] [13] [14]

[15] [16]

[17]

[18] [19]

[20] [21]

[22]

[23]

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Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context Konstantinos Papadopoulos Archaeological Computing Research Group Department of Archaeology University of Southampton Southampton, UK

social implications of death. The aim of this research was to give another aspect to the traditional ways of thinking, trying to overcome some of the limitations of the archaeological records.

Abstract—Illumination within ancient environments was dependant on daylight and flame, offering a great number of advantages, helping people in their everyday lives. Due to the fact that the light can be related to the uses of a particular area, visualising the illumination can participate in the study of its functional use. In addition, of particular interest in archaeology is the use of light in connection with religious phenomena or afterlife perceptions especially in mortuary contexts. For these reasons, lighting is one of the characteristics that give to each construction its own personality and deeply affects the way we perceive them. This paper will discuss the results of the illumination study for the Minoan cemetery at Phourni, Crete, while mentioning any constraints. It will also address problems and innovative components, suggesting potential solutions and recommending additional work for the future.

C ONTEXT Phourni is a low ridge to the north-west of the town of Archanes, whose name derives from the Greek word phournos (oven). The archaeological research in the Minoan cemetery of Phourni started in 1964 and lasted until 1989, bringing to light 26 funerary, secular and religious buildings resulting in a necropolis of great significance, as many scholars have admitted, having an almost uninterrupted use from Early Minoan (EM) IIA [2700 BC] to Late Minoan (LM) IIIB-C [1200 BC].

I NTRODUCTION

Tholos Tomb C 12 and Burial Building 19 11 are two of the published structures of the cemetery, which were studied for the purpose of this project. Tholos C, which is one of the most well preserved Pre-palace tholos tombs in Crete [3000-2000 BC], was erected as a freestanding building during the Early Minoan IIA and was used as a typical collective tomb for a large number of successive burials over a prolonged period. It was built of large and small stones laid in irregular rings, having a low east side entrance and a window immediately to the south of it. The first burials (1st phase) were made directly on the floor and were accompanied by a large number of offerings. The Burials were distributed by extensive cleaning operations in a rather random, non selective way and some of the cleared material was transported and dumped in the deep fissures of the so-called Area of the Rocks. In Early Minoan III [2300 BC], the first burial containers were introduced (2nd phase), but there is no evidence to suggest whether the larnakes were placed in the tomb all at once or over a considerable amount of time. The vaulted roof seems to have collapsed in Middle Minoan (MM) IIB - IIIA period [1900– 1800 BC] during an earthquake, which destroyed large part of the cemetery as well as neighbouring areas.

Virtual reconstructions are valuable tools for archaeologists providing alternative readings and interpretations of the ancient structures, which are usually restricted to arid translations of the architectural drawings and the archaeological photography. Through three dimensional approaches, various elements of the ancient structures can be examined, such as their visual impact, the ergonomics and capacity, as well as the contribution of light to their interior, offering an enhanced perception of their functional use. Since illumination is fundamental for the perception of past societies and its symbolism pervades the geography of sacred landscapes, a lighting study offers additional information which can not be obtained by other means, contributing to the examination of the role that natural and artificial light would have inevitably played during specific funerary rites, either for practical or other purposes. Burials and funerary rituals in the Aegean Bronze Age are subjects which have been extensively discussed over the years, thanks to the archaeological finds which provide a fertile field regarding theories and facts for the perception of death and afterlife. However, both the short of information as well as the poor documentation of excavations, make the analysis of burial practices hazardous, having as a result a general unwillingness to consider the social dimension of burial customs and often limiting the publications to comprehensive lists of artefacts without any contribution to a further understanding of the

Burial Building 19 is the only apsidal burial building in Crete and was used for burials and depositions from the EM II to the MM II period [1900 BC]. The apsidal building which is 67

Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context roughly inscribed in a square has straight sides on the west and east and an apse on the north, with the entrance on the southwest side. The study of the deposits revealed two successive burial strata, containing some two hundred burials, some of them possibly of children. All of them were accompanied by a large number of grave offerings, particularly vases reducing the already limited space. Although is the smallest tomb in Phourni, it contains by far the largest number of skulls.

The software 3ds Max 2009 was used to create threedimensional models according to the digitised drawings, by using geometric primitives, adding materials and textures. All of the structures with the exception of tholoi tombs were created by using relatively simple geometry, which was then optimised in order to lessen the polygon count. The two burial buildings were reconstructed with a high-level of detail, which resulted in valuable complexities during processing and rendering. These modelling issues directly stimulated experimentation with alternative structural models, which might have been used as several comparator sites suggest. As a result, not only were the software and hardware limitations overcome, but a thorough archaeological study was produced, creating a series of different visual perceptions of the structures, and resulting lighting models. One of the many issues regarding the illumination study was the appropriate selection of lighting devices and fuels. Sophisticated lighting equipment, made from terracotta or stone, is evident from the Early Bronze Age on the Greek mainland as well as on the islands. Other lighting devices made of wood, such as torches, and consequently not preserved in the archaeological record should not be rejected as several finds suggest. However, the excavation at Phourni revealed only one bowl, which may have been used as a lamp. Olive oil was produced in sufficient abundance during the Minoan period representing a surplus agricultural commodity, and therefore available for its additional and extensive use as an illuminant. However, other oils and animal fats could well have been used for illuminant fuels. Lastly, a few years ago the analysis of a ceramic assemblage made up of conical cups and lamps from the settlement of Mochlos in Crete, showed that beeswax was used as an illuminant during the Minoan period 5 .All the above evidence was used during the decision making process concerning the fuel types and devices which were used for the reconstruction.

Fig. 1: Tholos C interior from the South showing the entrance and the window.

For our analysis, global illumination was used adding more realistic lighting to the scenes, taking into account not only the direct illumination, which is the light coming directly from a light source, but also subsequent cases in which light rays from the same source are reflected by other surfaces in the scene (indirect illumination). Mental Ray was used as the rendering engine which efficiently computes the physical properties of light, producing a photorealistic outcome employing Final Gather for the final rendering pipeline. Roughly speaking, the FG technique shoots rays into the scene which however do not originate from the light source or the camera, but from the geometry itself. It shoots rays into the surrounding environment and then takes all the information from these rays and computes how much light gets to the point at which the final gather started, also taking into account the information from neighbouring points and using the same process and averaging them 16 .

Fig. 2: Burial Building 19 in its current state of preservation from North West.

M ETHODOLOGICAL I SSUES A faithful three-dimensional model, based on well-studied and comprehensively reviewed archaeological evidence, is considered as one of the most important factors in order to successfully address controversial issues, consider various hypotheses and discuss the results of a complicated research, which otherwise would have been impossible by using traditional archaeological means, such as drawing and photography.

Many of the virtual archaeological projects completed to date do not incorporate physically accurate natural or artificial lighting. This is usually because it is not considered necessary since photorealistic results can be achieved without knowing 68

Konstantinos Papadopoulos the physical properties of light. In addition research in this field, and especially regarding combustible materials, is still in its preliminary stages and remains quite complicated for researchers. Finally, the software commonly available does not always provide the tools to accurately handle natural and artificial illumination, beyond some common lighting solutions which are used in engineering and architecture. Outstanding exceptions should be considered most of the projects undertaken by Chalmers 2 , Devlin 3,4 , Roussos 15,14 , Sundstedt 17 and Z´anyi 18 , which are focussed on the perceptual differences of an archaeological site lit by different types of lighting instead of producing a lighting analysis in terms of calculating the amount of light in an ancient environment.

Fig. 4: Hypothetical reconstruction of Burial Building 19, which presents the only way of construction of a vaulted roof in order to be stable. View from South West. The exterior is rectangular, the interior forms a semi-vault and the gap between the two is filled up with a great amount of earth and stones.

Fig. 3: Top - Reconstruction of Tholos Tomb C. View from North East. Earth and stones act as a counterweight for the forces exerted by the vaulted roof. Bottom left - Close up view of the reconstructed east side of tholos Tomb C. The door is made up with the trilithon principle (three stones). Bottom right - The interior of Tholos Tomb C from the South West side.

NATURAL I LLUMINATION & C ONSTRAINTS

Fig. 5: First phase of Burial Building 19. From top to bottom, left to right: Final Gather and Global Illumination enabled, Global Illumination disabled, Global Illumination enabled & Final Gather disabled.

Although it is believed that the east-facing tombs are closely related to the rising sun, which could have entered in the interior only at particular days of the year, many factors have changed which may alter the day, month and time when the sun may have created any special effects or symbolic aspects, if any, in the burial buildings. To be more specific, the solstice positions have changed 0.5°, which however do not make a substantial difference to the readings 6 , whereas the tectonic movements in Crete, the slow drift of Africa towards the latter and the lowering of the mountain horizon by a few feet due to erosion and the loss of woodland, which may have covered it in prehistory 13 may totally modify the results. In addition, the sun rises over a range of directions over six months of the year from approximately 60° (depending on location) in midsummer to approximately 120° in midwinter, returning over the

following six months 6 . As a consequence, this research did not provide a definitive day and time when the sun was entering in each building. Something like that would have needed a year of fieldwork, carefully recording and comparing the movement of the sun and a closely collaborating with an archaeoastronomer. On the contrary, the purpose of this project was to examine the impact of natural and artificial light in the interior of the burial structures, regardless of a specific date, and discuss its functionality when for example, corpses were admitted into the tombs or a post-funerary ceremony or other rituals were taking place. 69

Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context the Moon accounts for most of the available light at night. Besides, sunlight which scatters around the edge of the Earth makes a visible contribution at night, whereas on moonless nights the light received from the planets and stars is equally important. Lastly, there is the Zodiacal light and the airglow, while a minor contribution comes from diffuse galactic light and cosmic light 9,10 . As the above factors make such a project rather complicated and most of the times there is no need for such visual accuracy, a physically-based simulation of the night time sky taking into account all the above factors has been attempted only once by Jensen and his team 9,10 . For the requirements of the current research the typical values for sources of natural illumination at night were needed, whereas the appearance of the sky was approximately modelled by creating the Moon and stars. Although Jensen had done an extensive research on this issue, our work was not able to benefit from a similar breadth of illuminance data and as a result this part of the project was bounded on information mainly found in online resources 1,8 . According to the latter, the full Moon in a clear night illuminates the earth with a maximum of 0.267 lux depending on its altitude, while the earths surface is illuminated during the twighlight by only 10 lux. A minor contribution comes from starlight which provides 0.0011 lux. According to the above values, it can be very roughly estimated that the light during a clear night is less than 10.3 lux. However, it should be taken into account that the resulted image, created with the use of photographic exposure control, is a depiction of how a camera perceives this and every scene, without considering the human eyes adaptability in different lighting conditions, which is known under the terms photopic, mesopic and scotopic vision.

Fig. 6: Lighting Analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of April 2007 at 7 AM. It is the time of that day that a ray of light gets directly into the interior of the tomb. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

Mental Ray renderer in 3ds Max can efficiently handle the real daylight of a scene at a specific place and time. By incorporating a daylight system that follows the geographically correct angle and movement of the sun over the earth at a given location, physically plausible daylight simulations are achieved. In order to produce accurate renderings of daylight scenarios two special photometric lights and an environment shader were used. The mr Sun photometric light is responsible for the direct light from the sun, whereas the mr Sky simulates the phenomenon of indirect light created by the scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere. Besides, the mr Physical Sky was used as an environment shader, whereas the Haze Driven was chosen as a sky model, which defines the typical brightness distribution of the skylight. The built-in daylight system cannot calculate the Sun’s positions before AD 1583, and thus the software Alcyone Ephemeris was used, which is an accurate astronomical ephemeris calculator covering the period 3000 BC to AD 3000. However, 3ds Max does not give the chance for manual input of the appropriate values and as a consequence, the daylight systems for the simulated dates were aligned on a line positioned according to the azimuth and altitude values obtained by the software. In order to test various hypotheses and simulate a wide range of dates, a random selection of years was made for the four most important astronomical events which take place only once per year; the summer and winter solstices, as well as the autumnal and spring equinoxes. In addition, several dates and times of a calendar month derived from past and present were tested as well, in order to observe any significant changes in the outcome.

Fig. 7: Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of April 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

Most computer graphics images represent scenes with illumination at daylight levels. Hardly any images have been created with physically accurate twilight or nightlight, and this is because night illumination is far more complicated than daylight as more factors contribute to the final result. There is not an automated process either in 3ds Max, or in other related software to produce an accurate scene lit by nightlight. This is because there are five night time illumination sources, which contribute as sources of light and with their direct appearance as well. Firstly, the light received directly from

A RTIFICIAL I LLUMINATION & C ONSTRAINTS One of the most crucial questions in computer graphic methodologies is how to reproduce the real colour of light sources in a rendered environment. Prior to any attempt to mimic the colour and the intensity of a flame some issues were addressed, mainly regarding the physical properties of a flame. Each fuel used for a fire creates a distinctive colour, which tells us about the temperature of the flame. The fuel burns as it is brought into contact with the air and on a small scale 70

Konstantinos Papadopoulos In order to obtain an estimation of the original lighting in an archaeological representation, two factors must be addressed. First, the spectral composition of the light, in other words, the colour of the light given off by the burning fuel and second, the distribution of this light, namely the path it takes around a scene and the reflections and inter-reflections that occur 4 . The illumination study of this project was based on the primary data obtained by Roussos during his research, examining the perception of beeswax lamp, olive oil lamp (organic), lamp burning fat, sesame oil lamp (organic) and torch, in comparison to modern lighting bulbs. The distribution of all such flames with the exception of torches was considered to be isometric. The luminous intensity value was given by the spectroradiometer and was cross checked by psychophysical experiments by Roussos to 199 candelas.

Fig. 8: Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tomb C on the 30th of January 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

Specifically, detailed data for each one of the fuels used was gathered by using a spectoradiometer, a device that measures the absolute value of the spectral characteristics without making any physical contact with the flame. For better results, an average of eight readings was calculated for each fuel type, after removing the largest and the smallest values (total of 10 readings). However, Roussos mentioned that the final RGB values were more a matter of experimentation and personal observation than merely based on the data gathered, as the software used (Radiance) could not depict artificial lighting in a physically accurate way. As a result, it was decided to use the luminaire data provided by Roussos and convert it from scratch to RGB values according to the standards of the Commission International de l’ Eclairage (CIE). Conversion of the spectral profile of the illuminants to RGB values for use in a computer simulation does lead to an approximation of the colours present, which is at the moment the most effective method in terms of computational time and efficiency.

Fig. 9: Tholos Tomb C without a capstone at night.

fire the combustion processes are mainly determined by the rate of inter-diffusion of air and fuel 15 . However, in terms of modelling, there was no need to accurately represent a wick and/or the flame of lamp as it is out of the scope of this project. Therefore, the vessels mentioned previously were used, while a photometric light was employed to simulate the intensity and colour of fire. As far as wood is concerned it is one of the most complicated combustible materials, as the colour and intensity variation highly depends on its substances, since they vary in density and composition based on the natural resources at each year. This means that one log creates different substances for each year and as a result each part of it burns in a different way, thus resulting in a different colour and intensity for the flames, determined by how much of each element is being burned at any given point at a given time. As a consequence, although the primary intention was to simulate a physically accurate illumination coming from a burning wood, since the available archaeological evidence indicates the use of wooden torches in the tombs, the absence of the appropriate data constrained this part of the work to a rough approximation of the intensity of such a fire according to the light emitted from a fireplace which can reach 5000 candelas. As a consequence, one burning timber/torch was estimated that can produce an average of 1500 candelas. However, this remains a somewhat arbitrary assumption.

Fig. 10: Artificial Lighting in Tholos Tomb C (1st Phase) - Olive Oil. According to the luminance values the lamps provide illumination locally, which means that can be used for a specific task, rather than to globally illuminate the tomb. (Left - Rendered Image, Right Luminance Values in LUX)

R ESULTS The illumination study produced, provided valuable information regarding the impact of natural light in the interior of the structures at different times of the day, and the importance of additional artificial illumination when sunlight was inadequate to help people in practicing rituals or other activities related 71

Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context According to the lighting values obtained, the interior luminance changes only after the use of several lamps (>45), which however provide local illumination, as the light is distributed only up to a small distance around the source. This means that for a ritual concentrated on a specific part of the tomb a significant number of lamps should have been used in this area, suggesting either a great number of people holding them, or enough available free space. However, as the interior of a tomb could not accommodate a large number of people and the free space was gradually reducing due to constant interments, it seems more possible that people entering in the grave were using more effective solutions, such as torches.

Fig. 11: Artificial Lighting in Tholos Tomb C (1st Phase). Torch with intensity of 1500 candelas providing illumination of approximately 100–130 lux. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

The initial aim was to use the geometric model of the cemetery at its various phases in order to observe if the software employed could efficiently handle the complicated phenomenon of indirect illumination. However, it should be pointed out that any alterations at the lighting levels could not have any interpretable impact according to the archaeological data, since the slight differences in the real world are not easily distinguishable, unless the added components have a direct relation with the subject matter by either being angled towards any opening or blocking it. After several attempts by using the actual geometry or test scenes and changing parameters, it was realised that this kind of illumination study needs further research by experimentally comparing the various results to some reference data and can not be solely based on the software used. The outcome of the research was variable especially regarding the lighting values obtained for the interiors of the two structures, when more buildings were added. Changing the parameters (e.g. decay value) may have provided a realistic and more appealing but not physically accurate result, which was not the purpose of this project. As a consequence, it was preferred to constrain the lighting study to only an approximation of the lighting levels, without reaching any specific conclusions relating particular lighting values to metaphysical beliefs or rituals.

to the dead. For instance in Tholos C, at 7AM in a summer month, the minimum luminance value, which indicates how much luminous power will be perceived by an eye looking at the surface from a particular angle of view, is less than 50 lux while the maximum is around 250, mainly concentrated in the small passageway, linearly decreasing as it reaches the west wall. In addition, when a ray of light directly strikes the interior, the luminance values range from 300-400 at the area which the direct light strikes to about 70 lux for the rest of it. However, during winter months the minimum and maximum luminance values are much lower, usually less than 50 lux during most of the day. If it is going to be assumed that the tomb was constructed without a capstone or that it was removed when specific practices were taking place in the interior, the luminance values of the tomb dramatically change. The interior seems no more to be under lit and the maximum value concentrated at the centre of the tomb exceeds at specific parts the 600 lux. Regardless of any astronomical phenomena and assuming that the landscape was similar to the contemporary, it can be said that the rising sun enters directly into the interior of the tomb at the morning hours (7AM) during spring and summer months. These days might have been ‘the times of the dead’ as Lucy Goodison calls them. The results may be pointing to the times of rituals at the tomb sites, when the first light was entering to the tomb and the tomb users were entering for activities relating to primary or secondary burial. The dates of the alignments may have served as chronological or economic markers, or may reflect ideas about what happening to the dead. In addition, they add to our reading of the tomb buildings a sense of the visual impact of light entering at the dark tomb interior which may have been linked to beliefs about the dead 7 .

Although, there is not any reliable way to test if the values obtained are correct, comparator datasets suggest that the results are quite reasonable for such structures. As far as the artificial illumination is concerned, we cannot be sure if the intensity and the colour emitted by the various fuel types are entirely accurate, since the related research was not undertaken by the author and the primary research had a lot of constraints. However, the slight differences in colour values resulted from the study of artificial illumination are unlikely to have defined diversity in the perception of the structures, and we have no evidence that people were choosing specific fuels based only on the colour emitted since the slight variations identified may not have been distinguishable by human vision.

The amount of light that was reaching the interior of the burial structure, suggests a complimentary way of lighting by using some kind of lighting devices, most of which can not be traced during an excavation and without complicated scientific research. According to the lighting scenarios different fuel types were used which most of them have almost the same intensity, but different colour values, thus enabling a different perception of the structure in comparison to sunlight or modern lighting bulbs.

C ONCLUSION As far as the virtual reconstruction of the Minoan cemetery is concerned, it was tried to represent the archaeology of this site as truthful as possible, based on published materials and wellstudied parallels, attempting to authentically represent how it 72

Konstantinos Papadopoulos

Fig. 12: Lighting analysis of the second phase of Tomb C on the 30th of July 2007 at 7 AM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

Fig. 14: Lighting analysis of the first phase of Tholos Tomb C without a capstone on the 30th of July 2007 at 3 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

Fig. 15: Lighting analysis of the first phase of Burial Building 19 on the 30th of July 2007 at 6 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right Luminance Values in LUX)

Fig. 13: Lighting analysis of the second phase of Tomb C on the 30th of January 2007 at 12 PM. (Left - Rendered Image, Right Luminance Values in LUX)

may have been perceived in the past. Both Tholos Tomb C and Burial Building 19 present an excellent opportunity for the designer to unfold an archaeological record which is of vital importance in Minoan archaeology, not only due to their complicated structure, but thanks to the lengthy discussions that they have raised, regarding the burial cult which is revealed through their architecture, skeletal remains and various finds. The three dimensional model produced is used as a fertile basis for discussion regarding the architecture and use of the two burial buildings, while their perception was enhanced by creating a real simulation of the past lighting by natural and artificial means, thus providing a better understanding not only for the geometry of the building, but for its intended content.

Fig. 16: Artificial Lighting in Burial Building 19 (1st Phase) Beeswax. (Left - Rendered Image, Right - Luminance Values in LUX)

way to advance the understanding of non existing attitudes and structures by providing a perception of what something, someone and somewhere looked like in the past, with the maximum effective impact and the minimum of misleading content.

Virtual reality is not only user dependant, and thus, it should not be assumed that it is a panacea for approaching convoluted research questions or intriguing theories. When it is deployed by archaeologists, it should be considered a means to end and not an end in itself since the outcome of the research, even if it was created through a comprehensive process, is highly subjective just providing another way of manipulating and visualising the available data and not an innovative way to answer complex phenomena.

R EFERENCES [1] R.H. Austin, B.F. Phillips, and D.J. Webb, A method for calculating moonlight illuminance at the earth’s surface, Journal of Applied Ecology 13 (1976), no. 3, 741–748. [2] A. Chalmers, Very realistic graphics for visualising archaeological site reconstructions, Proceedings of the 18th spring conference on Computer graphics, ACM, 2002, p. 12. [3] K. Devlin and A. Chalmers, Realistic visualisation of the pompeii frescoes, Proceedings of the 1st international

However, virtual reconstructions offer a unique opportunity for researchers to put one more piece in the puzzle of the archaeology of a specific site, by travelling back in time and discussing diverse theories, concepts and shaping arguments. Even though the whole truth about the distant past can not any longer be revealed, it can be considered as the most promising 73

Illuminating the Burials in the Aegean Bronze Age: Natural & Artificial Light in a Mortuary Context

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Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras el Bassit, Syria Ulla Rajala University of Cambridge Cambridge UK

Nicolas Beaudry Universit´e du Qu´ebec a` Rimouski Qu´ebec Canada

Ras elBassit is a fishing village and busy beach resort on the Mediterranean coast of Syria (Fig 1). It is the site of the antique town of Posideion/Posidium 12,9 , located about halfway between two of the main Hellenistic and Roman ports of North Syria, Laodikeia ad mare (modern Lattakia, located approx. 40km to the South) and Seleucia Pieria (C¸evlik, Turkey). The modern name of Bassit is a derivative of the ancient one.

Abstract—This paper presents a topographic survey carried out at the standing remains of a sixth-centuryCE church and neighbouring buildings at Ras el Bassit. It outlines a digital survey strategy that led to the creation of a two-dimensional site plan and of a three-dimensional model of the ruins. This work was carried out as part of the Canadian Archaeological Project Ras el Bassit, Syria, and presents a further development of the original research strategy. First, the aims of the project are introduced, then the digital survey programme and virtual modelling using AutoCad and 3D Studio Max are presented. The discussion sets this work into the general context of topographic surveys and virtual modelling.

The remains of the ancient town are spread over a low hill and a plateau (Meidan) at the southern edge of the modern town and are mostly covered by forest or bush. The site was first planned and partly excavated between 1971 and 1983 by a French expedition directed by Paul Courbin. In 1972 the team’s topographer, P.LeRoy extended over the whole site a grid indicated by a network of permanent concrete markers and planned the accessible remains.

I NTRODUCTION This paper introduces a digital recording strategy applied to an existing excavation project in Syria and presents its first results. It discusses the importance of complementing the original project strategy by introducing a simple digital survey that provides the required topographic outputs and enhances the data. The survey work discussed was carried in the context of the Canadian Archaeological Project at Ras el Bassit (MAQREB) in Syria. Excavations have been carried in Bassit since 2000 in and around the remains of a late antique church among the ruins of an ancient town site (Fig 1). A season of survey using a total station was carried out recently in order to create a plan of the standing remains East of the church.

Trial trenches were opened on the plateau, on the acropolis and at a late antique monument located at the foot of the acropolis. Although major activities were recorded for the period between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, the emphasis of the project was on the Iron Age occupation and on the Greek contacts with the Levantine coast during this period. Excavation thus concentrated on the plateau after the Iron Age tell and necropolis were located in 1973 9,10,11 . Late antique Bassit remained a neglected body of evidence, although it was known as the site of an important pottery industry 14,26 and despite its remarkable archaeological potential. The Canadian Archaeological Project at Ras elBassit was initiated in 2000 to investigate late antique Bassit and to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of a period that remains little known in this part of North Syria and of the Levantine coast 5,6 . The digital planning and modelling programme presented in this paper was carried as part as of the Canadian Project.

The work described here provides the topographic record and architectural planning on site with further development in virtual modelling. Large projects, such as the Sagalassos Archaeological Project led by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuwen and the British survey of Portus as part of the Roman Towns in the Tiber Valley Project (cf. e.g. Martens 20,21 ; Keay 17 ), have incorporated wider topographic, photogrammetric and/or geophysical surveys in order to plan large urban sites. These projects, however, have larger scopes, more extensive resources and larger teams than the expedition at Ras elBassit. A survey strategy for a small project has to take into account its needs, the available resources (including time, personnel and equipment) and local conditions in order to optimise the outcomes.

T HE C ANADIAN A RCHAEOLOGICAL P ROJECT AT R AS EL BASSIT The Canadian Project’s field research, directed by Nicolas Beaudry (now at the Universit´e du Qu´ebec a` Rimouski), began in 2000 by the investigation of the remains of a built complex located at the foot of the acropolis and reconstructed on the 75

Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras el Bassit, Syria disturbed since the site was abandoned, probably as early as the 7th century CE. From 2000 to 2004 the objectives of the project were to allow the reconstruction of the main lines of the plan (Fig 3), original elevations and chronology of the church, as well as an assessment of the archaeological potential of the site. A local grid based on the axes of the main walls was extended over the complex and related to the 1972 site grid. Selective excavation, funded by the Universit´e de Montr´eal, included trenches in the naves and concentrated on the chevet, including the sanctuary and two side-rooms. Finds included an unrobbed marble table and reliquary, unique in Syria, in the North sideroom, as well as a small chapel built in the ruins of the apse after a period of abandon and associated with Frankish finds. The detailed planning and analysis of the architectural elements and of their stratigraphy allowed the reconstruction of much of the original elevations (Fig 3); it also provided data on the abandon and collapse of the church and on later disturbances of its remains 3,4 . However, the layer of collapsed masonry reaches three meters in some places and the level of detail required in this record considerably slows down the excavation process.

Fig. 2: A view of the church complex and its standing western wall after clearing in 2002, facing NE (photo by N. Beaudry).

A second phase of the project was initiated in 2007, funded by the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences Research Council and a contribution from Dumbarton Oaks. The objectives of this second phase include the study and publication of the church complex and the finds associated with it, and the extension of the investigation into the settlement itself in order to characterize its economy and material culture in late antiquity. Investigation methods include excavation in the church complex; full record of in situ and collapsed architecture (Elio Hobdari, Instituti Arkologjik Tirana, Albania); survey and selective excavation outside the complex; quantitative finds studies (Philip J.E.Mills, University of Leicester); environmental sampling and evaluation (Manon Savard, Universit´e du Qu´ebec a` Rimouski).

Fig. 1: Location of the site (drawing by N. Beaudry).

LeRoy plan as a large, three-nave basilica built on a NorthSouth axis. The monument was found to be a sixth-century oriented church and the whole complex, on the site of an earlier synagogue, was built in the large, dry ashlar masonry typical of fifth- and sixth-century North Syrian limestone architecture. The West fac¸ade of the church is still standing up to the cornice of the first floor and other walls are preserved to a significant height, but much of the structure collapsed in situ (Fig 2) and the destruction layers have only been moderately

A preliminary reconnaissance was carried in 2007 to the East of the church where a dense network of walls was visible despite a dense cover of wood and bush. A sketch plan of the area was done by E.Hobdari at the end of the season but a 76

Ulla Rajala and Nicolas Beaudry & Schoenbrun 24 ; Romano & Stapp 25 ; project web site http: //corinth.sas.upenn.edu/introduction.html). However, each survey has to be tailored for specific requirements and take into consideration local conditions and available resources. The topographic survey at Ras elBassit was built on earlier work at the site. Its main objectives were to extend and mark the excavation grid, to provide digital topographic planning for the project, and to enable the introduction of new modelling elements. The enhancement of the data and the creation of a virtual model were by-products of the topographic survey of standing remains. The first task was to recover the church complex grid from the existing, mostly temporary points on site and to measure and set permanent control points inside and outside the church complex for future excavation and planning. Temporary grid points were also set inside the church and replaced as excavation proceeded to facilitate the detailed planning of the collapsed architectural elements. The excavation grid was then extended to the standing building remains to the East, to allow the area to be surveyed and a trial trench to be tied to the local grid. Unfortunately, the few Courbin’s concrete markers that were found in situ did not allow the local grid to be more accurately tied to the original site grid than it had been in 2000. Finally, the structures to the East of the church were planned to start an updated and wider site map of the late antique settlement. When the current field project began in 2000, an arbitrary starting point was selected for the excavation grid to the SouthWest of the church at one of the highest points of the complex at the edge of the bush. This point was given the grid reference E100.00 N100.00. A second base point was set to the East at E120.00 N100.00 following an East-West axis parallel to that of the church. A base line was run through the church at N122.00 from an outer gate in the West to the outer wall of the apse to the East with the axis of the church running at N122.40. This baseline was marked with pegs in the West, some of which were robbed, and with nails in the Eastern part of the church after the collapsed masonry had been cleared 3 .

Fig. 3: The reconstructed plan and section of the church (drawing by N. Beaudry).

total station was needed to allow survey and excavation to be extended to this wooded area and to allow it to be related to the church complex and site grids. The study of the settlement context thus required a topographic survey that was carried out in 2008 by Ulla Rajala and is discussed in this paper. This survey also supported the excavation of a first trial trench in one of the buildings to the East of the church. The rich assemblage of pottery and other finds it yielded suggests a domestic occupation and already provides a first set of primary data on the late antique occupation of Bassit.

This local grid is based on the architecture of the church complex and is independent from the original site grid. However, one of the cement markers (FG53/54) was found to the South of the church during clearing and together with planned architectural remains, it allowed the grids to be tied. Its top was used as a bench mark (Z=8.82m), its altitude being tied to the original zero at sea level. Secondary benchmarks were also defined inside the church perimeter and to the East 3 . The most stable control point was a nail set in a tree stump against the outer wall of the apse; this point (E134.15 N122.00 Z8.32) was chosen to be the target point when the grid was laid out with the help of a total station. A second point in the excavated part of the nave (E120.00 N122.00 Z6.89) was the most convenient to set the station. The permanent control points of the grid were created with the instrument set on the station point and the orientation taken from the station to the target.

S URVEYING THE CHURCH AND ITS SURROUNDINGS The work presented here is a standard piece of topographic survey (for general principles see e.g. Lock 19 ). The digital topographic planning at Corinth offers an early, established and long-going example of this type of work (cf. Romano 77

Surveying and modelling the settlement context of a late antique church at Ras el Bassit, Syria The survey was carried out using a Leica TCR 407 total station, provided by the Institut franc¸ais du Proche-Orient in Damascus, with the help of a team of workmen who cleared the trees and bush and with an assistant who held the target. The instrument was equipped with basic internal software to measure and record three-dimensional grid points. The Leica Survey Office software, which comes as standard with the instrument, was used to transfer data onto a Hewlett-Packard laptop with Microsoft XP operating system. Subjective decisions were made regarding the number of points required to allow planning and modelling within the available time frame and with an acceptable level of detail. The major part of the initial processing was carried out using AutoCad 2002. Lines were created by joining points into polylines. Since the standing remains in the church and in its surroundings are substantial, a decision was made to create a true digital three-dimensional rendered model in addition to the two-dimensional site plan. Walls were modelled as basic, quadrangular polygons, and their uppermost surfaces were modelled as simple sub-rectangles as well. These basic elements allowed the creation of a schematic three-dimensional model of parts of the site, but these details enhanced the quality of the site plan as well.

Fig. 4: The site plan after the 2008 season (drawing by U. Rajala).

available instruments, software and workforce and states the main aims and expected outcomes of the survey. A successful strategy is explicitly integrated within project strategy and framework and optimises the use of the resources.

The survey process was recorded by keeping a written record of points and the structural elements they belong to. Sketches were drawn of the structural elements (single walls, buildings or rooms) surveyed on single working days, and the groups of points were marked onto them. A series of digital photographs were taken of the structures and of permanent control points in order to allow the data to be checked off-site. The measurements of the upper levels of the walls and the continuous notes keeping slowed the survey process but the results were thought to be worth the effort. Unfortunately, the survey could not be completed during the 2008 season but a preliminary plan suggests what a final site plan could look like.

C REATING A 3D MODEL OF THE CHURCH IN ITS CONTEXT The surveyor’s experience in using field data to create virtual models (e.g. Rajala 23 ) allowed a further dimension to be added to the survey project. Its aim was to create a simple threedimensional model of the existing standing structures, to enhance the visualization of the relationship between the church and its settlement context. Although a wide body of work discusses different methods of site recording (e.g. Bradley 7 ; Howard 15 ; Lambers & Remontino 18 ; Aufschnaiter 1 ), most virtual modelling concentrates on creating reconstructions (cf. e.g. Earl 13 ; Murgatroyd 22 ). The modelling of existing remains is not as common, although excavation projects routinely produce data for such models (cf. e.g. Avern 2 ; Bradley 7 ; Junnilainen 16 ). Laser scanning producing point clouds or rendered surfaces of standing remains are often carried out for recording and preservation purposes (e.g. Brizzi 8 ; Zimmermann & Eßer 27 ; Junnilainen 16 ). Although the objectives of the modelling project at Ras el Bassit are modest, it is a useful tool to visualize and present the existing evidence, to help understand its spatial context and to assist in heritage management.

Further data editing was carried out after the field season using AutoCAD Map 6. After a final check of the three-dimensional data, GIS mapping was carried out with ArchGIS 9.2 and a two-dimensional site plan was realised with CorelDraw 11 at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. This resulting site plan (Fig 4) presents the chevet of the church, as excavated, together with the standing remains cleared East of the church complex. It also includes other features, mainly stone piles resulting from of the clearing of a large area to the East of the church, collapsed walls, and the eroded edges of two trial trenches dating from Courbin’s excavations. The survey also allowed a detailed observation of the visible remains and features to the East of the church and allowed some renewed interpretations of this part of the site. These observations include the orientation of the structures, the relative chronology of some of their walls, and later interventions such as a probable tractor path running through the wall lines.

The aim of the modelling project was not to create a blockby-block model since this would have required far too many points. A simplified geometric construction made the best use of the time and equipment available to enable the visualisation of volumes and relative heights of the standing remains. The model was built in 3D Studio Max 8. Since the program uses polylines (curves) as the basic units defining surfaces, the

The experience of this project demonstrates the importance of an appropriate digital survey strategy that takes into account 78

Ulla Rajala and Nicolas Beaudry three-dimensional polylines prepared for the plans could be use as the base data. The files were further edited in AutoCAD to incorporate a series of height points on stone piles and to check the bases and uppermost surfaces of the standing walls. Although both data collection and model building were based on the creation of simple geometric forms, it allowed the visualization of the anomalies and voids in the structures.

C ONCLUSION This paper presented the introduction of a digital recording strategy into the existing field research of the Canadian Archaeological Project at Ras el Bassit. The survey programme responded to the aims of the archaeological project and its objectives included the enhancement of the understanding of the settlement context of the late antique church and the visualization of the archaeological remains. Fieldwork consisted of an extension of an existing grid and the creation of permanent control points together with a topographic survey of standing architectural remains. Subjective decisions were made regarding the geometric simplification of the remains to be recorded and on the number of points needed in the available time frame. The three-dimensional field data was used first for the creation of a two-dimensional plan, then for the building of a three-dimensional model. The twodimensional plan had to fulfil the specified requirements of the existing site record, whereas the three-dimensional model had to be detailed enough to show the volumes and relative heights of the standing structures.

To make the model building easier and to allow a better management of the details, the data was split into four modules: 1) the church, 2) the standing buildings to the East of the church complex, 3) secondary walls between major structures, and 4) the major stone piles and concentrations of collapsed masonry. Most structures were created as combinations of ruled and blended surfaces. The program allows both the pre-existing polylines and the created surfaces to be broken. This helps the creation of more accurate and more fully surfaces and allows making up for the limited number of points available for each wall structure. 3D Studio Max allows original digital photographs to be used to create texture bitmaps. Thus, the digital photographs taken in the field could be used as raw material for the selection of suitable textures. Unfortunately, the dramatic contrast between intense lights and deep shadows in the forest made the selection of textures problematic. Further work could include a more detailed photographic survey, with proper shadow casting and calibration to optimise the results, and a selection in the field of suitable textures. So far, the available data has allowed the selection of a different texture for each of the different modules, allowing the model to visually reflect the separation of the data into different units.

The aims of the digital recording strategy were hierarchical. The requirements of planning were primary, whereas the virtual model was taken as a by-product enhancement of the data. The major aim of the virtual component of the project was to record and visualise the relationships between the church and its built environment. The creation of the virtual model required more point data and prolonged the survey but resulted with an enhanced plan. The survey strategy sought to optimise the use of the Project’s limited resources to reveal as much information as possible on the settlement context. This work shows the advantages of the incorporation of such a strategy into an existing research strategy. The three-dimensional model discussed here aimed at visualising the preserved standing structures, not at building a reconstruction based on the results of the Project. Reconstructing past buildings is a primary goal of virtual archaeology, while three-dimensional models based on field data are often discussed in the context of data recording and data capture. It can be argued that the visualisation and presentation of existing remains is an element of virtual modelling, which has been relatively neglected, although the visualisation of existing evidence can be of primary importance in the interpretative analysis of field data and for heritage management. As the experience of this project shows, such a model can be successfully achieved even on a modest scale.

Fig. 5: The rendered 3D model of the standing structures (illustration by U. Rajala).

The resulting model (Fig 5) lacks the finesse of those draped with orthophotographs or of photomontages created through digital photogrammetry (cf. Junnilainen 16 ). However, it allows the visualization of the volumes of the remains, and of the relationships between the standing structures of the church and the other buildings and features to the East. Naturally, more work will be required to record the whole church and further buildings in the settlement, both to complete the site plan and to build a virtual model of their remains. Time allowing, a more elaborate programme of photographic survey for modelling and texturing purposes could be considered.

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Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology Palitha Edirisingha Beyond Distance Research Alliance University of Leicester Leicester UK

Mark Pluciennik and Ruth Young School of Archaeology and Ancient History University of Leicester Leicester UK

In particular we were interested in the ways in which a 3D MUVE might facilitate social presence and socialisation amongst geographically and perhaps culturally dispersed students taking part in collaborative learning activities. A 3D MUVE such as SL has the potential to generate a sense of social presence among distance learning students through the use of avatars and ‘real time’ or synchronous group engagement, and in turn, this is likely to impact on students relationship building, focus and motivation. While socialisation has been recognised as a key element or stage in online learning environments 8,11 , the nature and properties of social presence created through avatars in a 3D MUVE have not been studied in great depth using empirical methods. In this paper we present the project itself, and also consider the impact the use of a 3D MUVE has had on student learning and in particular socialisation. We also examine various issues which we have encountered in different aspects of the project.

Abstract—This paper outlines the reasons for undertaking a pilot study into the use of three-dimensional multi-user virtual environments to teach spatial theory in archaeology to a group of level 2 distance learning students. Socialisation has been identified as an important element of learning, and one that is hard to replicate in distance learning. Staff and students in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester were trained in Second Life, a synchronous virtual environment, and four sessions exploring spatial theory were prepared and carried out on the Universitys Media Zoo island in SL. Feedback and interviews with the students showed that they found this a very positive experience, and that their sense of socialisation was greatly enhanced. Some of the issues and difficulties that were encountered at the different stages of the project are also discussed.

I NTRODUCTION This paper presents a pilot study undertaken jointly by the Beyond Distance Research Alliance and the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester in the use of a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment (3D MUVE. The researchers used Second Life (SL) as a medium for teaching spatial theory within archaeology, and examined the student response to this mode of teaching. The low cost or free access to 3D MUVEs such as SL and the relatively low technical barriers has led to an increase in their use for entertainment and leisure 6 . The academic community has also indicated interest in the use of 3D MUVEs for teaching purposes. The Horizon Report for 2007 suggests that 3D learning environments will have “strong potential for teaching and learning” and that developments in open sources and standards will bring them “closer to the mainstream education year by year” 4 . However, little sustained research has been carried out in terms of the educational uses of 3D MUVES, and many educational institutions have used them primarily for marketing purposes, or for replicating in 3D traditional teaching sessions such as tutorials and large group lectures. Empirical studies of the role and value of 3D MUVEs are still relatively new (e.g. Good and Thackray 5 ; White 14 ), and so this project was intended to explore and expand our understanding of the ways in which teaching via a 3D MUVE might enhance different elements of the student learning experience.

T HOSE I NVOLVED The Beyond Distance Research Alliance at the University of Leicester is an alliance of academics interested in innovation and the development and use of new technologies in learning, particularly non-campus based learning. This current study formed part of a one year research and development project entitled ‘Modelling of Second Life Environments’ (MOOSE) which was funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The aim of MOOSE was to investigate the tools and processes needed to enable groups of students from higher education environments to develop socialisation and engagement, and thus to enhance learning through the medium of online 3D MUVEs using Second Life. The School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester has had a distance learning unit for over a decade, and today offers a range of courses in archaeology and ancient history at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The School is committed to offering flexible learning strategies to our students, and is particularly concerned with the removal of barriers to higher education 10 . As part of this commitment the unit recently launched a distance learning archaeology course for blind and visually impaired students 10 . 81

Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology the nature of the new learning environment 11 ; thus it is much more than individuals simply getting to ‘know’ one another.

The Distance Learning (DL) unit within the School is also interested in exploring the ways in which e-learning and new technologies can be used to enhance and expand teaching and learning within our programmes. Currently, the majority of course materials at both undergraduate and postgraduate level are produced in ‘traditional’ printed form, in the form of a module reader and supporting textbooks. There is one digital module with all the materials produced in a web browser format on a CD, and some preparatory materials for practical courses is provided in BlackBoard, a Virtual Learning Environment. The Unit also hosts a series of email discussion lists for students according to course. However, all students have full access to, and are encouraged to use, digitally provided library materials, from databases and videos to journals and e-books, and the University’s student learning and support resources. These are generally aimed at distance learning and well as campus students, as the University of Leicester has long been a major provider in this field. This decision to remain with ‘hybrid’ delivery rather than moving over to complete e-learning or on-line delivery has been largely in response to student feedback. This consistently indicates that many students like access to, and the physicality and perhaps familiarity of printed materials, while noting certain advantages to digital materials, such as ease of access to web resources 10 . Many DL students are professionals who may work all day in front of a screen, and do not necessarily wish to replicate the experience in their non-working time.

Research into socialisation and social presence in synchronous 3D Virtual Environments is still very new, but the work that has been carried out indicates positive benefits. For example, Bronack 1 study of a 3-D virtual campus suggested that“virtual worlds offer participants a sense of presence, immediacy, movement, artefacts, and communication unavailable within traditional internet based learning environments”. Mayreth 9 reported that students enjoyed discussions in SL because they could see their own and others avatars, and other research indicated that 3-D learning environments were good places for collaborative learning 2 . While these observations on socialisation within synchronous 3D VLEs are useful and important, the nature and attributes of social presence and socialisation in these environments have not been studied. Therefore it was the aim of this pilot study to examine the nature of social presence in a 3D MUVE, how socialisation occurs there, and how it can help distance learners.

S ECOND L IFE SL (http://secondlife.com/) is 3D virtual world which has been occupied and expanded since 2003. It is free, although there are areas requiring payment, and opportunities to partake in SL commerce. In terms of equipment, users need to have a standard broadband connection, a relatively new machine with a good graphics card and processor, and a microphone and speaker if they plan to use audio (although this is not essential). The software is downloaded from the SL web site. Everyone entering SL has to create an avatar, or digital persona, and this avatar requires a new SL name and new SL appearance, so it is possible to create any age, gender or external appearance desired.

The collaboration between the MOOSE project and the Archaeology and Ancient History DL Unit took the form of a trial project to investigate the use of SL in teaching archaeological exercises at a distance, and whether these exercises would help the students in terms of their social contact and socialisation, and in turn, whether such enhanced social engagement would help their learning process.

Within SL the Beyond Distance Research Alliance has established and runs the University of Leicester’s Media Zoo Island. This island, which is largely open to the public, is an area where information about the university can be found, and where specific university events and activities within SL can be carried out. This project was entirely carried out on the UoL Media Zoo Island.

S OCIALISATION AND E NGAGEMENT IN D ISTANCE L EARNING Distance learning does bring with it a whole raft of issues linked to the ‘distance’ element that are not part of face to face campus based teaching. One that has received some attention is the feeling of isolation that many students report; isolation both from their peer group and from lecturers and other direct sources of information. Research has been carried out on the impact of using various technological media in distance education in order to reduce these feelings of isolation, and to provide opportunities for collaborative learning activities. For example, Smith and Stacey 12 showed that asynchronous online learning has the potential to help learners develop and share their knowledge as a social group within a collaborative learning atmosphere. Incorporating online discussion groups can play a central role in a learners’ effective construction of new conceptual understandings (e.g. Jaques and Salmon 7 ; Stacey 13 . Online socialisation requires individuals to establish their own online identities and to develop trust in and respect for other members of the online group and also to understand

M ETHODOLOGY This pilot study required five distinct but inter-related development, research and analysis stages: 1) designing and developing the learning activities to be used in SL. 2) training lecturers and students to move, communicate and engage in SL. 3) training lecturers in SL moderation. 4) carrying out sessions within SL. 5) monitoring students and staff engagement, researching and analysing their perceptions of learning outcomes. 82

Palitha Edirisingha, Mark Pluciennik and Ruth Young These activities were carried out over an eight month period (February – September 2008). ‘Archaeological Theory’ is one of six level 2 modules taught entirely at a distance within the School of Archaeology and Ancient History’s distance learning unit. There are three intakes per year with 10-20 students per intake. These students are all part-time and located in different parts of the world. In line with the general DL unit approach outlined above, the core learning material and student support include a printed module reader, text books, access to an academic module tutor via email (and telephone if necessary), and a student email discussion list. As is typical within DL, much pastoral care and student support is carried out by the course administrators with whom students often have a closer relationship (e.g through interaction over delivery or payment issues, or by requests for extensions or deferments) than with academic tutors, who may be seen as more formal and distant and less easily approachable. Assessment is a combination of a long essay at the end of the module, and a portfolio of activities related to the themes or sections, each of which are broadly designed to cover one week’s work. An example of a short case study within the ‘Space, place and landscape’ section is that exploring the symbolism, meaning and material manifestation of social structures and spaces in ‘traditional’ cultures, such as that of the Saami people of Northern Europe. Students read brief ethnographic and anthropological descriptions and analyses of the Saami and their dwellings, and schematic diagrams and photographs of Saami tents to understand their material and symbolic structures and spatial rules and norms. For example, they learn that people may be classified according to age, kinship and gender, and only certain groups may have access to particular areas within the tents, with some groups and areas linked to particular functions and activities.

Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of a Saami tent.

S ESSION D ESIGN AND D EVELOPMENT Two learning activities were developed in SL to explore the social structures and spaces in ‘traditional’ cultures. The first was based in a virtual Saami tent, thus expanding the example of structured space already familiar to students on the course, and the second was in a virtual village of the Kalasha people. The Kalasha are the largest group of non-Muslim people in the Hindu Kush, live today within a series of valleys in the Chitral area of North West Frontier Province, Pakistan. The villages and houses of the Kalasha are also ordered according to rules of age and gender, making them a useful comparison to the Saami example. The use of the Kalasha as an example unfamiliar to students provided a means of pursuing general themes and ideas raised through the module reader.

Fig. 2: Kalasha menstrual and birthing hut.

students to experience space from the perspective of different gender, age and social groups for themselves. To this end, a Saami tent and a Kalasha village were created in considerable detail in SL based on plans, descriptive accounts, photographs and personal experience. Fig 1 and 2 show the Saami tent and Kalasha buildings respectively, with the floor plan of the Saami tent and photograph of the Kalasha menstruation and birthing hut included in the traditional paper based DL module materials on the left, and the SL constructions in Fig 3 and 4.

Designing and developing learning activities in SL and related artefacts was carried out by the keeper of the UoL Media Zoo, together with the two lecturers from Archaeology and Ancient History. In order to develop awareness and discussion of the ways in which space might be used in the creation of social order, the opportunity to construct 3D structures and settlements would seem to offer an excellent means of allowing

The tent and village were each the subject of two onehour learning and discussion sessions within SL, and Table I reproduces the summary of sessions that was circulated in advance to the participating students. As SL is of course a 3-D environment, people (or rather their avatars) can move about freely, enter spaces and buildings and explore independently. 83

Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology TABLE I Archaeology activity 1: May 22 (15:00-16:00) Seminar Dome 2-Media Zoo island Archaeology activity 2: June 2 (15:00-16:00) Saami tent-Media Zoo Island

Archaeology activity 3: June 5 (15:00-16:00) Kalasha village-Media Zoo island Archaeology activity 4: June 12 (15:00-16:00) Kalasha village-Media Zoo island

Fig. 3: Saami tent in SL.

This first session is to introduce you to the concept of Social Space’ and will take place in the Seminar Dome 2. The session will be facilitated by Dr Mark Pluciennik (Zbygniew Alter) and will give you an insight into the importance of space. The second session is focused on the Saami tent concept, again facilitated by Dr Mark Pluciennik (Zbygniew Alter). An explanation of the Saami tent and a discussion on the implications of social space will be on offer. You will have your first experience of immersion in a virtual world, as the permission of the Saami tent are applied in practice! The third session will look at the use of social space on a different scale as Dr Ruth Young (Ruth2008 Seid) introduces you to the structuring of Kalasha society and economy, and then takes you on a guided tour of a Kalasha village replicated on the Media Zoo island. The final session is another immersion experience, this time based on gender. As you explore the Kalasha village you will be asked to reflect on your experiences and how these social spaces are related to your ‘real-life’ experiences.

neither lecturer had any prior experience of SL these two sessions were sufficient to establish avatars, and grasp the basics needed to negotiate movement and communication. The keeper and other Beyond Distance staff were also present at all four of the trail sessions, which meant that there was very good practical and technical support at all times. Prior to each session, students were provided with an outline of activities, additional reading sources, web links and themes or questions to think about, so that they would come to the session with some background preparation in place.

S ESSION C ONTENT The first of the four sessions was used as an introductory session, where students and staff all ‘met’ each other and general ideas about social space were discussed, drawing on the material from the DL module reader that all the students had read. Students were taken to the Saami tent and a brief explanation of the ways in which the area would be traditionally divided up according to function, gender and age was given, followed by discussion of this spatial ordering. SL does have the capacity for audio or voice function, for immediate conversation. We decided to use text-chat, whereby all discussion is typed and appears in text-boxes on screen visible to all people present in the specific area within SL (which includes any visitors to a site). While direct voice chat would (probably) increase socialisation and feelings of being part of a group, we wanted to avoid further technical barriers which may have come with the need for specific equipment (microphone and speakers) and the possibility that any single student with poor quality equipment would present comprehension difficulties for the whole group, and individual accents may well also have presented comprehension difficulties. Text chat allows all students to ‘speak’ and not have to create or grasp opportunities to enter conversation, which for shyer students, or those less confident about speaking in English, may well have presented a barrier to participating in discussion. Text chat also provided us with a direct record of all conversation, and this record, along with individual interviews with students after the trial sessions, interviews with the staff after the trial sessions, and direct observation of training and learning sessions, provided the material which

Fig. 4: Kalasha menstrual and birthing hut in SL.

One very interesting feature of SL directly relevant to this module section is the ability of the designer of the UoL island and the virtual tent and village to impose certain restrictions or permissions on the areas to which each avatar can gain access (this does require knowledge of the avatar identifiers). This meant that each of the students had different access to different areas of both the tent and the village according to their age, gender and so forth, but were not told in advance what this access would be. The implications and outcomes of this are discussed further below within student experience. T RAINING S TUDENTS AND L ECTURERS IN SL The students were trained by the keeper of the UoL Media Zoo, and all training took place in-world, i.e. within SL, as a group. This training covered the creation of an avatar, learning how to navigate within SL, learning about time within SL, a range of useful tools and shortcuts, plus an introduction to SL itself and SL protocol. The two lecturers were also trained by the keeper of the Media Zoo, although this training took place in two face to face sessions at the University. Although 84

Palitha Edirisingha, Mark Pluciennik and Ruth Young has been analysed in order to address the project aims and objectives.

more about the nature and pattern of socialisation within SL and the impact this has on learning at a distance 3 . The following excerpt from the chat log of the first learning session is a good example of the speed with which connections are built up between the students, and the ‘you’ in this example, who is one of the lecturers.

The second session focused on the Saami tent and the application of the ideas of social space covered in the module reader and the first SL session, and the ways in which social space can be ordered both within a virtual artefact and in the real world. In this session, the individual permissions for access to different parts of the tent were applied, and student reactions were very interesting. Students had been taken to the tent in the first session and had been able to explore the whole structure. On returning to the tent for the second session and finding that there were areas where they could not enter, while still being able to look at these areas and even see other people (other students) moving around them, was at first a surprise, and then rather frustrating. In turn, those students who could enter the male areas at will were then surprised when they found they could not then cross into female designated areas. The frustration that was felt in this and later sessions was then used in discussion to explore how it would feel to be discouraged or even banned from entering parts of buildings or villages on the basis of such things as age or gender.

Chat-log 3 7:42 7:42 7:42 7:42 7:42 7:42 7:43 7:43 7:43 7:43

The third session moved to the Kalasha village, where organisation of space on a larger scale provided the basis for both of the two final sessions. While students had read about the Saami people and space in the module itself, the Kalasha example was entirely new to them. While some of the students had looked on-line to find out more information, and some had been able to read some of the recommended material, they all said that they had not heard of the Kalasha before this project. The majority of this third session then was devoted to an introduction to the Kalasha people, their beliefs and ordering of space. This introduction took the form of a Powerpoint presentation within SL, in a dedicated presentation space on the Media Zoo island, and brought with it a number of pedagogic issues about disseminating information in SL. We found that not only were the students seeing the slides at slightly different times, and with varying degrees of clarity, that to work through around 10 slides with explanation of background points and issues and the slide itself, and student questions and discussion carried out through text chat was very time consuming.

You: Well, I feel like a prune standing up here Aixia Castaignede: It’s less anonymous Eowyn Atlass: ha ha Aixia Castaignede: Sit down! Dracena McIntyre: :) You: I’m not sure I know how to yet! It might be embarrassing! Eowyn Atlass: We won’t laugh. :) Aixia Castaignede: Right-click on sit You: Thanks - that’s helpful. But I might fly instead ... Aixia Castaignede: That would give you a different impression of space!

What is interesting in this dialogue is the way the students are giving technical advice to the lecturer with some confidence, the students are enjoying situation, and they are also relating the chat about sitting to the wider theme of the session which is the understanding of space. Feedback from the students gained through direct interview also supports the very positive sense of socialisation and engagement with other students, staff and the subject matter. These two quotes from the interviews reflect a very strong sense of ‘meeting’ the other group members: “It was perfect.....I dont know where to start really. First of all it was good to meet others. Often you learn alone, usually at home, reading the text and thinking about things, on your own. It was good to see others who are doing the same. To meet somebody - “meeting” ... was good. Also - “meeting” the lecturer. I feel that they are not distant anymore (Dracaena)”.

In the fourth and final session we returned to the Kalasha village and valley and spent most of the session exploring different areas and working who could go where and which parts of the valley, village and buildings were off limits to others. For example, Fig 4 shows the female-only menstruation and birthing hut with a female avatar inside; while a male avatar is unable to climb the steps so must remain outside. This session also included a lot of discussion about social ordering of space within the modern west, as well as reflecting on issues and material covered during each of these sessions.

“I felt like part of the group more than when I was studying from home. Even though it was virtual, I felt like I was participating in a class (Eowyn)”. Another student reported that the SL experience had added positively to her learning experiences, saying that “It helps when you are not in the university...yes it made me feel more connected to the class. The teachers as well”. With regard to learning about spatial organisation and social structures within traditional societies the students were very ready to ask questions and engage in discussion about many different elements in each session. The following excerpt from the chat-log (where again the ‘you’ is one of the lecturers)

S TUDENT E XPERIENCE AND R ESULTS The information gained through interview, observation and the log of the text-chat has been analysed in order to understand 85

Using a three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment to teach spatial theory in archaeology shows how the students are applying their discussion of social and constructed space to their experiences of space in SL:

7:10

7:10 7:10

7:11 7:11

7:12 7:12

7:13 7:13

7:14 7:14

7:14

otherwise largely absent in the DL course. Students were observed to sign on around 15 minutes before the start of each session, and they stayed in SL for a further 15 minutes after the end of each session, using this time to talk about SL and spatial issues, as well as more personal chat. The students helped each other (as well as the lecturers) during training and the learning sessions with technical advice, sharing things about SL that they had learned independently. The keeper of the Media Zoo island found that students had visited both the Saami tent and the Kalasha village in their own time, and on one occasion, a student had brought a visitor to the island and shown them round. This supports the value of SL as a place for meeting and socialising as well as learning.

Eowyn Atlass: I think it’s socially structured, but maybe all three? It’s neutral as far as gender goes I think. Eowyn Atlass: It’s virtual so it’s a little confusing You: Gender is an interesting one, as it is very easy to be transgender or opposite gender to real life, as we shall see next week You: Can we think about how far SL conforms to these kinds of approaches in turn? You: As far as I can experience it, SL uses Cartesian co-ordinates, so in that sense it tries to mimic the real world rather than do anything more creative Aixia Castaignede: But the same time it’s threedimensional, measurable and quantifiable. You: Do you think it would be possible to build a Third Life which used space in a different way (like Star Trek ...)? Eowyn Atlass: Except everyone here seems to be equal and in the real world that’s not so You: Equal in which way? Some spend money of things, others build and ‘own’ structures and can put permissions in, for example Eowyn Atlass: Men and women are equal in that they can both go everywhere and do everything equally You: But I don’t think that’s the case - as we shall see next week: it depends on what the ‘owner’ does when s/he builds it Eowyn Atlass: Well, that’s true :)

The students also enjoyed being able to ask questions and get immediate answers from both peers and lecturers, and one student commented that “I am being able to ask questions directly, and having response directly” showed that this immediacy was both important and appreciated. Immediacy is of course largely absent in the dl course, and even though students have email access to lecturers, they may feel hesitant about contacting them for many reasons.

I SSUES IN THE USE OF SL AS A T EACHING M EDIUM One of the key difficulties encountered in these trial sessions was finding a time when all the participants could attend. This is of course true for any synchronous learning activity and is exacerbated by the international profile of the student cohort. Several of the students who had first expressed interest in taking part in the project could not participate because they were unable to gain access to SL at times compatible with the University of Leicester opening hours. While it may be possible to set up trial sessions at evenings and weekends to facilitate participation by students in e.g. America or Australasia, this is not really a long term solution and is a possible barrier to extending the use of SL in distance programs.

Student feedback during the interviews also showed that the students themselves believed that the sessions in SL had enhanced and improved their understanding of the academic issues over the traditional paper based learning of the DL module. One of the students said that she had gained “...a better understanding because of the things we did in the village and the tent... both the teaching and the exploration...” and further that “You think you understand when you read about those. But when you go in there (Second Life) it reinforces what you have learned, how they lived, and how you can and cannot go into some of the places. Reinforcing the concepts that are learned” (Eowyn). Because the learning experience in SL is participatory and active, it is very different to the usual DL learning by reading, and the immersive, collaborative and exploratory approach was seen as a very positive thing by the students, both in terms of socialisation and in terms of learning and reinforcing ideas and information gained from the module reader.

In terms of staff investment, a lot of preparation time was needed to identify material, prepare powerpoints, and to build the tent and village. As this is time over and above the time already used to research write the DL module, carry out assessment and provide student support via email, it is unlikely that SL will be used regularly as a supplement to the existing traditional module delivery in the near future. However, both lecturers involved were impressed by the response of the students to each other, to the presence of staff who could be directly interrogated, and to the materials: it was a worthwhile teaching and learning experience. Communication in SL through text-chat and the manipulation of avatars to gesture and so forth was also viewed as a slightly clumsy way of talking. Having both the text and the avatar of selves and others to control and observe was thought to be quite a complex process, and this was commented on by the students in their feedback:

Observation of the training and learning sessions in SL showed that the students were very quick to take advantage of this means of meeting and talking to fellow students, in other words, SL provided a very good medium for socialisation 86

Palitha Edirisingha, Mark Pluciennik and Ruth Young “It was very hard for me in the beginning to watch, type and read what others have typed.all at the same time. Then to try to put my own thoughts quickly into short sentences” (Dracaena). Timing responses to questions or asking questions without breaking up the flow of an existing discussion was also difficult for both students and lecturers, and the chat-logs show that responses are often submitted after the conversation has moved on, or comments or thoughts arriving in the middle of a rather different conversation. One student said that: “The difficult thing I found when you want to say something, and by the time you typed it out, they have changed the subject.It take time to get used to it” (Eowyn). From a teaching perspective, it is also hard to ensure that all student questions are answered fully and quickly when there is a lively discussion taking place, with frequent questions and shifts in topic or approach. It is also important not to ‘overplan’ sessions, and avoid trying to present too much in the way of information, and to keep data heavy presentations to a minimum. Certainly in these SL sessions it was found that the great benefits for the students lay in their freedom to move, interact, discuss and socialise.

[3]

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[6] [7]

[8]

[9] C ONCLUSION While the value of SL as a means of fostering socialisation and collaborative learning is clearly high, and the students how took part in this project found it enjoyable and valuable as a means of enhancing learning, there are of course many issues that in the short term at least, prevent this being more widely adopted as a mode of learning. It should also be remembered that this study had a very small sample of students taking part four students and two academic staff and further studies with a greater number of students would help to expose areas of strength and weakness and suggest different ways of developing the use of what has the potential to be a very powerful learning and teaching tool. It is clear from the student feedback presented above that while there are some issues with e.g. timing of sessions and problems timing conversations using text-chat, the students who took part in this trial were very positive about the experience, and felt that they had benefited in many ways, not only in terms of increasing their academic understanding of spatial theory. The use of SL is clearly one possible way of overcoming some of the issues of socialisation and contact that many dl students and lecturers face, but whether it is the most effective or efficient on a number of levels remains open to debate.

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[13]

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