The Leirvik 'Bonhústoftin' and the Early Christianity of the Faroe Islands, and beyond.

The best-preserved early church site on the Faroe Islands, locally known as Bønhústoftin (English: prayer-house ruin), is located in the settlement of Leirvík on the island of Eysturoy. Although the site is well known it has neither been the subject of a proper archaeological survey nor has it ever been included in discussions of the nature of early Christianity in the Faroe Islands. The site was recently surveyed and described by the authors, and the results of this work are presented here. Other sites of related type, both in the Faroe Islands and elsewhere, are identified and the archaeological and historical contexts within which these sites should be considered, including the evidence from Toftanes and Skúvoy, are discussed.

What is this thing called Historical Archaeology?

Historical archaeology, in its narrow temporal sense -as an archaeology of the emergence and subsequent evolution of the Modern world- is steadily taking pace in Spanish academia. This paper aims at provoking a more robust debate through understanding how Spanish historical archaeology is placed in the international scene and some of its more relevant particularities. In so doing, the paper also stresses the strong links that have united historical and prehistorical archaeology since its inception, both in relation to the ontological, epistemological and methodological definition of the first as to the influence of socio-political issues in the latter. Such reflection is partly a situated reflection from prehistory as one of the paper’s authors has been a prehistorian for most of her professional life.

Posterior Probability Modeling and Image Classification for Archaeological Site Prospection: Building a Survey Efficacy Model for Identifying Neolithic Felsite Workshops in the Shetland Islands

The application of custom classification techniques and posterior probability modeling (PPM) using Worldview-2 multispectral imagery to archaeological field survey is presented in this paper. Research is focused on the identification of Neolithic felsite stone tool workshops in the North Mavine region of the Shetland Islands in Northern Scotland. Sample data from known workshops surveyed using differential GPS are used alongside known non-sites to train a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier based on a combination of datasets including Worldview-2 bands, band difference ratios (BDR) and topographical derivatives. Principal components analysis is further used to test and reduce dimensionality caused by redundant datasets. Probability models were generated by LDA using principal components and tested with sites identified through geological field survey. Testing shows the prospective ability of this technique and significance between 0.05 and 0.01, and gain statistics between 0.90 and 0.94, higher than those obtained using maximum likelihood and random forest classifiers. Results suggest that this approach is best suited to relatively homogenous site types, and performs better with correlated data sources. Finally, by combining posterior probability models and least-cost analysis, a survey least-cost efficacy model is generated showing the utility of such approaches to archaeological field survey.

Archaeological Excavation Confirms the Geophysical Anomalies Recorded at the Cathedral of Tarragona - A Comparative Study

An integrated geophysical survey was conducted in September 2007 at the Cathedral of Tarragona (Catalonia, NE Spain), to search for archaeological remains of the Roman temple dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. Many hypotheses about its location have been put forward, the most recent ones suggesting it could be inside the present cathedral. Tarragona’s Cathedral, one of the most famous churches in Spain (12th century), was built during the evolution from the Romanesque to Gothic styles. As its area is rather wide, direct digging to detect hidden structures would be expensive and also interfere with religious services. Consequently, the use of detailed non-invasive analyses was preferred. A project including Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and Ground probing radar (GPR) was planned for a year and conducted during a week of intensive field survey. Both ERT and GPR provided detailed information about subsoil structures. Different ERT techniques and arrays were used, ranging from standard Wenner-Schlumberger 2D sections to full 3D electrical imaging using the MYG array. Electrical resistivity data were recorded extensively, making available many thousands of apparent resistivity points to obtain a complete 3D image after full inversion. The geophysical results were clear enough to persuade the archaeologists to excavate the area. The excavation confirmed the geophysical interpretation. In conclusion, the significant buried structures revealed by geophysical methods under the cathedral were confirmed by recent archaeological digging as the basement of the impressive Roman Temple that headed the Provincial Forum of Tarraco, seat of the Concilium of Hispania Citerior Province.

Resistivity imaging survey of the Roman barrows at Bartlow, Cambridgeshire, UK

Resistivity imaging was carried out on four large Roman barrows at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire. The geophysical survey formed part of a wider research project designed to record and assess the landscape context of the largest surviving Roman burial mounds in Britain. The barrows today range in height from 6.6 m to 13.2 m and their steep profile loosed particular practical and modelling challenges. Data were obtained using a Campus Geopulse resistance meter with up to 50 electrodes spaced at 1 m intervals and lines up to 76 m long. A total of 24 lines was obtained. Topographic corrections were applied to the pseudosections, whichwere inverted using Res 2 Dinv and Res3 Dinv. Resistivity imaging was particularly successful in identifying evidence for the antiquarian explorations of the site. Central collapse features or in-filled tunnels image as high resistance features in all barrows and in one (Barrow IV) there is also a low resistance feature in the approximate position of a known antiquarian tunnel. Barrow VI had a thick covering of high-resistivity that may relate to nineteenth century landscaping and reconstruction of this monument. Resistivity imaging also revealed possible evidence for ancient revetments in all four large barrows. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Archaeology on Egypt's edge: archaeological research in the Dakhleh Oasis, 1819-1977

This article provides the first substantial survey of early archaeological research in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis. In addition to providing a much-needed survey of research, this study embeds Dakhleh’s regional research history within a broader archaeological research framework. Moreover, it explores the impact of contemporaneous historical events in Egypt and Europe upon the development of archaeology in Dakhleh. This contextualised approach allows us to trace influences upon past research trends and their impacts upon current research and approaches, as well as suggest directions for future research.

Bronze Age perceptions of wetlands: recent archaeological work on the Humber estuary

This paper addresses the perception of different wetlands in and around the Humber estuary in the Bronze Age. Combining past and current research, it will be argued that the perception of intertidal wetlands was nearly diametrically opposed to the perception of riverine floodplains. This contrasting perception is reflected in the material culture of the Bronze Age, and may be explained through the particular manner in which landscapes changed following marine transgressions. This work was largely undertaken within the framework of the Humber Wetlands Survey, an integrated archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research programme funded by English Heritage since 1992

Time-lapse geophysical investigations over known archaeological features using electrical resistivity imaging and earth resistance

Electrical methods of geophysical survey are known to produce results that are hard to predict at different times of the year, and under differing weather conditions. This is a problem which can lead to misinterpretation of archaeological features under investigation. The dynamic relationship between a ‘natural’ soil matrix and an archaeological feature is a complex one, which greatly affects the success of the feature’s detection when using active electrical methods of geophysical survey. This study has monitored the gradual variation of measured resistivity over a selection of study areas. By targeting difficult to find, and often ‘missing’ electrical anomalies of known archaeological features, this study has increased the understanding of both the detection and interpretation capabilities of such geophysical surveys. A 16 month time-lapse study over 4 archaeological features has taken place to investigate the aforementioned detection problem across different soils and environments. In addition to the commonly used Twin-Probe earth resistance survey, electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) and quadrature electro-magnetic induction (EMI) were also utilised to explore the problem. Statistical analyses have provided a novel interpretation, which has yielded new insights into how the detection of archaeological features is influenced by the relationship between the target feature and the surrounding ‘natural’ soils. The study has highlighted both the complexity and previous misconceptions around the predictability of the electrical methods. The analysis has confirmed that each site provides an individual and nuanced situation, the variation clearly relating to the composition of the soils (particularly pore size) and the local weather history. The wide range of reasons behind survey success at each specific study site has been revealed. The outcomes have shown that a simplistic model of seasonality is not universally applicable to the electrical detection of archaeological features. This has led to the development of a method for quantifying survey success, enabling a deeper understanding of the unique way in which each site is affected by the interaction of local environmental and geological conditions.

Glastonbury Abbey: archaeological investigations 1904-79

This volume reports on the results of the Glastonbury Abbey Archaeological Archive Project, a collaboration between the University of Reading and the Trustees of Glastonbury Abbey, funded principally by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project has reassessed and reinterpreted all known archaeological records from the 1908–79 excavations and made the complete dataset available to the public through a digital archive hosted by the Archaeology Data Service (http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1022585). The scope of the project has included the full analysis of the archaeological collections of Glastonbury Abbey by thirty-one leading specialists, including chemical and compositional analysis of glass and metal and petrological analysis of pottery and tile, and a comprehensive geophysical survey conducted by GSB Prospection Ltd. For the first time, it has been possible to achieve a framework of independent dating based on reassessment of the finds and radiocarbon dating of surviving organic material from the 1950s excavations. The principal aim of the Glastonbury Abbey Archaeological Project was to set aside previous assumptions based on the historical and legendary traditions and to provide a rigorous reassessment of the archive of antiquarian excavations. This research has revealed that some of the best known archaeological ‘facts’ about Glastonbury are themselves myths perpetuated by the abbey’s excavators.