Archaeological Excavation Methodology Research Papers

Iron Age (500 BC-1000AD) settlements have been excavated in large numbers in Denmark and Scandinavia, and not only the houses but the layout of the farms and villages are well illuminated themes. Since this is not the case everywhere in... more

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Archaeological excavation is an important method to explore ancient heritage. We all know that the excavation means digging the earth. The earth is excavated for the purpose of exploring the ancient movable and immovable objects of... more

In mining operations carried out below the water table, mine area could potentially affect the surrounding. With further deepening of the mine and quarry, the drawdown can impact on water supply wells and base flow. The variation in... more

In mining operations carried out below the water table, mine area could potentially affect the surrounding. With further deepening of the mine and quarry, the drawdown can impact on water supply wells and base flow. The variation in radius of influence under confined and unconfined aquifer condition is assessed using a hypothetical case study with three operational quarry sites. Average pit-wise radius of influence (R0) for the pit mine, under unconfined and confined aquifer conditions is 963 m and 61 km, respectively, whereas effective radius (Re) for total (cumulative) excavated mine area is 1.7 and 146 km, respectively. It means that the maximum and minimum value of overall impact/influence for the unconfined aquifer lies in-between 963 m and 1.7 km. Similarly that the maximum and minimum value of overall impact/influence for the confined aquifer lies in-between 61 and 146 km. Meanwhile, Re or effective radius for total (cumulative) excavated area seems more appropriate from evaluation viewpoint due to the overlapping (superposition) concentric mining quarries. Thus, assessment of quarry-wise and total radius of influence is of importance to fulfil targeted production, economically with minimum interruptions as part of the mine planning. Moreover, it helps us to assess, monitor and regulate the impact of a mine-dewatering program in the area. Also, the pumping test is often used to estimate radius of influence; it can trigger the inflow or radius of influence. Estimate of the radius of influence using analytical equation mainly independent of discharge/abstraction from the aquifer stands as a preferred choice for the prediction of radius of influence at the quarry/mine pit. There is a strong rationale that policies should be informed by such analytical assessment because it helps us to prevent or minimize negative impacts as part of regulation and pit-mining management and are useful tools for practitioners to design economically efficient and cost-effective in situ groundwater remediation systems, to contain contaminant plumes, to evaluate the surface–subsurface water interaction and to verify numerical models.

Advances in 3D modeling technology, and the availability of inexpensive, easily-learnable processing software has enabled archaeological fieldwork to be carried out at a significantly higher resolution, with far greater accuracy than... more

Archaeological projects have been for many years now considered enterprises run mainly by public funding. Additionally, in many countries it is a commonly accepted notion that supporting heritage will automatically mean money loss and the... more

Archaeological projects have been for many years now considered enterprises run mainly by public funding. Additionally, in many countries it is a commonly accepted notion that supporting heritage will automatically mean money loss and the need for extra funding is a constant " curse " for many site managers. In particular cases insufficient funding precludes the management of the site from running even basic maintenance work, consequently causing bad publicity, as less areas become accessible for visiting, and reducing the opportunities to improve the site facilities. The primary purpose of this paper is to explore through case-studies what are the key aspects of a successful management plan and business plan and what are the major financial, political issues encountered during the development of projects and how to handle these issues. It will also highlight the importance of involving different stakeholders as means to increase the chances of the success of site management, its conservation and valorisation. The second purpose is to explore limitations in achieving financial self-efficiency while managing an archaeological site and demonstrating the need to change the approach to Italian Heritage in order to " rescue " it from the risk of abandonment due to lack of funds. If a site can reduce the reliance of public funds it will protect the site from possible conservation and valorisation issues due to funds cuts as a consequence of economical crisis like it has occurred since 2008. The last goal of this paper is to explore what actions can be taken to reach a much wider public, including those that would not naturally come to visit the site, and understand the possible threats of the rise of visitor numbers, while investigating the possible benefits in terms of job creation within the site and in the buffer zone. The final question which will be tried to answer is: are all sites potentially sustainable or is it necessary to consider the closure of some to preserve them until more funds become available? Presentation Preference-Oral

This book gives an overview of modern archaeological techniques and methodological approaches: geophysical and geochemical prospection, extensive excavations and analyses.

nr. TH3-12 HOW TO MAKE A FIELD SCHOOL WORK: managing issues, dangers, opportunities Archaeology Field School is supposed to be a training environment for students who aspire to ultimately become archaeologists, but is it the right place?... more

Archaeological remains seem to prove that the archaeological site of Sarnath was indeed a manufacturing cum-factory site, even from the age of Mauryas and continued up to the 12th Century CE. As a proof to this, remains such as the... more

Stratigraphic archaeological excavations demand high-resolution documentation techniques for 3D recording. Today, this is typically accomplished using total stations or terrestrial laser scanners. This paper demonstrates the potential of... more

El texto expone una visión narrativa de la práctica arqueológica. El tema es la narrativa, tratada como un estatuto cognitivo que insistentemente se presenta en la naturaleza de la práctica arqueológica y sus representaciones del pasado.... more

Convegno venerdì 18 e sabato 19 settembre 2015
Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti Palazzo Franchetti
Campo Santo Stefano Venezia

Stratigraphic archaeological excavations demand high-resolution documentation techniques for 3D recording. Today, this is typically accomplished using total stations or terrestrial laser scanners. This paper demonstrates the potential of... more

Stratigraphic archaeological excavations demand high-resolution documentation techniques for 3D recording. Today, this is typically accomplished using total stations or terrestrial laser scanners. This paper demonstrates the potential of another technique that is low-cost and easy to execute. It takes advantage of software using Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithms, which are known for their ability to reconstruct camera pose and threedimensional scene geometry (rendered as a sparse point cloud) from a series of overlapping photographs captured by a camera moving around the scene. When complemented by stereo matching algorithms, detailed 3D surface models can be built from such relatively oriented photo collections in a fully automated way. The absolute orientation of the model can be derived by the manual measurement of control points. The approach is extremely flexible and appropriate to deal with a wide variety of imagery, because this computer vision approach can also work with imagery resulting from a randomly moving camera (i.e. uncontrolled conditions) and calibrated optics are not a prerequisite. For a few years, these algorithms are embedded in several free and low-cost software packages. This paper will outline how such a program can be applied to map archaeological excavations in a very fast and uncomplicated way, using imagery shot with a standard compact digital camera (even if the images were not taken for this purpose). Archived data from previous excavations of VIAS-University of Vienna has been chosen and the derived digital surface models and
orthophotos have been examined for their usefulness for archaeological applications. The absolute georeferencing of
the resulting surface models was performed with the manual identification of fourteen control points. In order to express the positional accuracy of the generated 3D surface models, the NSSDA guidelines were applied.
Simultaneously acquired terrestrial laser scanning data - which had been processed in our standard workflow - was
used to independently check the results. The vertical accuracy of the surface models generated by SfM was found to be
within 0.04 m at the 95 % confidence interval, whereas several visual assessments proved a very high horizontal
positional accuracy as well.

Archaeological Excavation Methodology

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