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Internet Archaeology 24: Dealing with legacy data
Title
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Title:
Internet Archaeology 24: Dealing with legacy data
Series
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Series:
Internet Archaeology
Volume
Volume number and part
Volume:
24
Licence Type
ADS, CC-BY 4.0 or CC-BY 4.0 NC.
Licence Type:
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
International Licence
Publication Type
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Publication Type:
Journal
Editor
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Editor:
Judith Winters
Issue Editor
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Issue Editor:
Penelope M Allison
Year of Publication
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Year of Publication:
2008
Source
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Source:
BIAB (biab_online)
Relations
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Relations:
URI:
http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue24/
Created Date
The date the record of the pubication was first entered
Created Date:
18 Mar 2010
Please click on an Article link to go to the Article Details.
Article Title
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Abstract
Procedures for measuring women's influence: data translation and manipulation and related problems
Pat Faulkner
Andrew S Fairbairn
Penelope M Allison
Steven Ellis
Preparing data from artefact catalogues of previously published German excavation reports, in the project 'Engendering Roman Spaces', required ongoing refinement of data translation and digital manipulation using a variety of software packages. This process included the use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, spreadsheets, database and graphics programs, and the final presentation of the data in ArcGIS as an interpretative tool. With each step, a number of challenges were encountered relating to the quality of the data and original cataloguing processes, and the limitations of the software packages being used.Excavation reports of four Roman military sites - the forts of Vetera I, Ellingen, Oberstimm and Rottweil - are used in this article to highlight the range of problems encountered and solutions arrived to resolve them, a process requiring constant revision and refinement.
Dealing with Legacy Data - an introduction
Penelope M Allison
In the Mediterranean region particularly, but by no means exclusively, there exist large datasets from previous excavations, published and unpublished, whose digitisation, spatial mapping and re-analysis can greatly facilitate investigations of social behaviour and changing environmental conditions. Added to this there are also archives of historical maps and excavation plans, whose digitisation and combination with these other archaeological data for digital analyses give us greater understandings of the past.This volume presents a number of projects that demonstrate the usefulness of digital environments for analysing such non-digital data. These projects use these 'legacy data' within true GIS, pseudo-GIS, or other digital environments to answer specific questions concerning social behaviour and particularly the social use of space. The articles discuss approaches taken to retrieve, format, and synthesise these data; to incorporate them with other recently collected and digitised data; and to analyse these large datasets. They also discuss the significance of spatial mapping to the specific aims of these projects. They include discussions on the various computer techniques used to collate and analyse these data, and on how digital environments facilitate the re-analysis of such data.
Review of SahulTime (website)
Ian Johnson
A review of the website SahulTime, a browser-based Flash application. http://www.sahultime.net
The use and misuse of 'legacy data' in identifying a typology of retail outlets at Pompeii
Steven Ellis
Measuring Women's Influence on Roman Military Life: using GIS on published excavation reports from the German frontier
Penelope M Allison
This article outlines the approaches used in the Australian Research Council funded project, 'Engendering Roman Spaces', and summarises some of the results. The project investigates the distribution of artefacts and artefact assemblages and the presence, activities and status of women and children within Roman military forts. It uses data from published excavation reports of 1st- and 2nd-century AD Roman military sites on the German frontier. It includes excavation reports from throughout the 20th century, which have varying levels of comprehensiveness.The relevant data from these excavation reports are digitised and manipulated, through a series of software packages, and then classified according to gender and function, so that spatial distribution patterns of people's activities can be visualised and analysed using GIS. Interpretations of these data are indicating that women played a greater role in military life in the early Roman Empire than has previously been acknowledged.
Dress and Social Identities: the role of GIS in mapping social structure in the central Italian Iron Age cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa
Lisa Cougle
This article discusses the application of GIS technology to examination of the social significance of mortuary dress and personal ornament. Using published data from Phase II of the Iron Age Italian cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa (Bietti Sestieri 1992a), I aim to show how GIS can illuminate aspects of gender, kinship and status systems that might not emerge from traditional statistical analyses. The methodological challenges of analysing a large body of non-geo-referenced data are discussed, and one approach to presenting such data in a GIS environment is explored. Inference of social determinants for cemetery layout from spatial data presented in ArcMap is critically examined. Spatial patterning is identified that suggests social identity and kinship were both important factors in the selection of dress and personal ornaments for burial.
(Re)surveying Mediterranean Rural Landscapes: GIS and Legacy Survey Data
Robert E Witcher
Legacy data have always been important for Mediterranean archaeologists. Over the past decade, one specific category of legacy data, that deriving from regional survey, has become particularly important. Not only has the scale of research questions become larger (requiring greater reliance on others' data), but the surface archaeological record is deteriorating (diminishing the ability to recover good data). The legacy data from many individual surveys have now been subject to digitisation and GIS analysis, successfully redeploying data collected for one purpose within new theoretical and interpretive frameworks. However, a key research focus is now comparative survey - using the results of many different Mediterranean surveys side-by-side to identify regional variability in settlement organisation, economy and demography. In order to overcome the significant methodological differences between these surveys, attention has focused on the documentation of metadata. Yet, many legacy data lack vital information about their creation and hence how they might be (re)interpreted and compared. GIS has been advanced as an environment in which to contain, order and analyse the data necessary for comparative survey. However, there is a danger that the technology will facilitate inappropriate use of these datasets in a way that fails to acknowledge and understand the very real differences between them. Here, emphasis is placed upon the use of GIS as a space for exploratory data analysis: a process that encompasses and emphasises the integral processes of digitisation, visualisation and simple analysis for the characterisation of datasets in order to derive an alternative form of metadata. Particular emphasis is placed upon the interaction of past human behaviour (e.g. in the Roman period) and archaeological recovery (i.e. the behaviour of archaeologists in the present, or recent past); these two sets of 'social action' combine to create distinctive archaeological datasets. This search for 'contextual' metadata within individual legacy survey datasets supplements more 'formal' metadata and facilitates both interpretation of individual surveys and comparison between them. Case studies from Italy are used to illustrate the kind of iterative and incremental approach to legacy survey data advocated.
Integrating Legacy Data into a New Method for Studying Architecture: A case study from Isthmia, Greece
Steven Ellis
Timothy E Gregory
Eric E Poehler
Kevin R Cole
This article outlines a new methodology developed to disentangle the hitherto incomprehensible maze of poorly preserved architecture at the Archaic through late Roman period Panhellenic sanctuary at Isthmia, Greece, into clearly defined buildings with their relative construction phases. The methodology combines on-site architectural analyses with the digitisation and reintegration of the site's legacy data within a GIS. The results of this study, still in its preliminary stages, reveal an area east of the Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia as a built environment of rather large and complex units in contrast to the conventional interpretation of a series of small and unimportant structures.