The use of Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) technology is revolutionizing Maya archaeology, as it penetrates through thick vegetation prevalent in Maya environments, uncovering the structures and features below. At the site of El Mirador in the Petén Department of Guatemala, lidar data has been analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map features, such as residential buildings and quarries, that other technologies like satellite imagery have missed. El Mirador is a large site dating to the Preclassic through Post Classic periods (1000 BCE to 1500 BCE) and is argued to have the largest monumental architecture built by the Lowland Maya, but the nature of socioeconomic and political coordination at the site is poorly understood. Through analysis of quarry and residential structure volumes outlying areas of El Mirador at various distances from the city center, this research seeks to understand more about the nature of coordination at the site in terms of limestone production. Buffer zones of 150m and 300m were created around a central residence group in each selected area. This research shows that zones closer to the city center produced a greater volume of limestone than those further away; however, the quarries within each buffer zone did not produce enough stone even for the structures within their immediate zone. The total quarry volumes in the 150m buffer zones are greater than the combined volumes in the area between the 150m and 300m buffers, indicating a measure of coordination from each central structure group. Further research of quarrying at residential groups could help uncover the nature of supra-household coordination at Preclassic sites where the exact nature of elite involvement in quarrying is still not completely understood.

Many areas of the world are experiencing the effects of the water crisis. The water crisis is a widespread phenomenon whereby many regions are experiencing a shortage of water, lacking access to clean potable water. This study uses existing literature to examine the ways in which the ecological knowledge of ancient civilizations can be applied to modern water management in attempt to address the current water crisis. The literature reviewed for this study, stemming from notable books and peer reviewed journals, were published between 1882 and the present year. As part of a purposive sample, the following civilizations were chosen: Tenochtitlan (presently Mexico City), Angkor, and Petra. Past and present water management in the three locations are examined, as well as their impact on industry and social systems. Findings within the literature indicate that ancient methods of water management are able to provide water for populations of equal or greater size than their modern counterparts. Similarly, some studies have determined that modern water systems are problematic in their production of waste by-products, and inefficiency in water collection and distribution. The implications determined from the results of this study are discussed, as well as the limitations that arose throughout the review. The study seeks to fill the gap in literature connecting ancient water management techniques to modern practices, helping establish suggestions for reforms to address the current water crisis in the process.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Caribbean island of Tobago was contested by several European powers. Among them was an unlikely colonizer, the small Duchy of Courland, located in the western part of modern-day Latvia, which established the New Courland colony on the west coast of Tobago, in May 1654. The aim of this study was to determine the exact geographic location of this settlement through examination of historical texts, maps, and geographic information systems (GIS) data. Remote sensing and GIS methods were used to map the Courlander Fort Jacob on the site of an earlier Dutch fortification, Nieuw Vlissingen. Subsequently, a predictive model was created in ArcGIS to analyze the probability of a 17th-century animal-powered sugar mill location on the territory of an 18th-century British sugar estate. Several locales were identified as matching the model criteria. The results of this study contribute to the knowledge about the New Courland colony and can be used in the design of a future archaeological fieldwork project.

Fibre plants favour different growth conditions and require different levels of husbandry. However, the fibres share some physical and material properties, which make them difficult to distinguish in the archaeological record. This thesis evaluates the effectiveness of methods for characterising bast fibres including; fibre chemical analysis, mechanical testing and fibre morphology, to propose that longitudinal microfibrillar angle (MFA) and cross-sectional circularity (Ct) used in a two-step procedure to analyse selected modern fibres of nettle (Urtica dioica L.), flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) and hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) could offer an alternative approach. The reliability of MFA and Ct, as diagnostic features, was evaluated under a temperature accelerated degradation 48week trial with eight fibre types from three deposition soils Post deposition, surviving fibres were subjected to evaluation of changes in MFA and Ct. An additional check on the diagnostic efficacy was conducted within a blind-test protocol. Finally, the research programme employs MFA and Ct in the diagnosis of a range of archaeological textile fibres from museum collections and fibres from the Kasr el Yahud mass burial. The thesis includes recommendations to address future post thesis research programmes.

No description available.

The thesis is compilation of four manuscripts discussing the stable isotope analysis modem and archaeological faunal material from Namu, British Columbia. These studies concentrate on the application of stable isotopic analysis of biogenic material for paleonvironmental interpretation over the Holocene. The first study addresses the use of phosphate and carbonate associated oxygen isotopes in bioapatites (Sebastes spp. vertebrae) as a proxy for the isotopic composition of water from approximently 6,000 to 2,000 years before present (BP). The second study evaluates sclerochronological sampling strategies as applicable to the study of bivalves with implications for sampling fragmented material such as that found in archaeological deposits. The third study investigates stable isotopes composition of estuarine bivalve carbonate (Saxidomus gigantea) and the controlling environmental and biological factors. Finally, the fourth study uses a 5,000 year record of archaeological S. gigantea to provide a paleoclimatic record at Namu over the mid-late Holocene. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

No / Archaeological research has been influenced by feminist thought and critique for decades. In the early 1990s, new narratives began to be written about the past. Starting with a search for women and gendered identities in our prehistories, these have developed into a new way of understanding the relationships between people, objects and animals, both in the past and in the present. Archaeological research has been concerned with the relationships between the ‘human’ and the ‘other’ for a number of decades, whether they involve nonhuman animals, objects we use and create, or attitudes to the landscape and environment. The nonhuman, in other words, is central to our work. We hope in this piece to demonstrate the contribution archaeological insights could make to feminist theorising about the nonhuman.

Information systems used in archaeological research have several needs that can be summarized as follows: interoperability among diverse, heterogeneous systems, making information available without significant delay, providing a sustainable approach to long-term preservation of data, and providing a suite of services to users of the system. In this thesis, we describe how digital library techniques can be employed to provide solutions to these problems and describe our experiences in creating a prototype for ETANA-DL. ETANA-DL is a model-based, componentized, extensible, archaeological Digital Library that manages complex information sources using the client-server paradigm of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). We have designed and developed the prototype system with the following main goals: 1) to achieve information sharing between different heterogeneous archaeological systems, 2) to make primary archaeological data rapidly available to users, 3) to provide useful services to users of the DL, 4) to elicit requirements that users of the system will have beyond the services that it supports, and 5) to provide a sustainable solution to long-term preservation of valuable archaeological data. Consequently, we describe our approach to handling heterogeneous archaeological information from disparate sources; suggest an architecture for ETANA-DL, to be validated through prototyping; and show that given a pool of components that implement common DL services, a prototype DL can be rapidly created that supports several useful services over integrated data. Further, and most fundamentally, we note that understanding complex information systems is a difficult task. Finally, therefore, we describe our efforts to model complex archaeological information systems using the 5S framework, and show how we have used the resulting partial models to implement ETANA-DL with cross-collection searching and browsing capabilities. / Master of Science

No / The University of Bradford was constructed in the 1960s, following the demolition of Victorian streets, houses, and local community buildings. An on-campus archaeological excavation took place in 2021 as a result of Covid-19 restrictions. Using a variety of archive sources, the results of the Dig led to an armchair exploration of both former Victorian residents and also the social history of the former community. This reflective piece documents the archive journey taken by someone who is not an archaeologist and touches upon the experiences of heritage attachment. / University of Bradford, School of Social Sciences Research Fund

No / In archaeological prospection, computer processing is essential for all stages of data manipulation. This article investigates the contributions which informatics has made in the past and looks at its potential for the future. It is shown how the workflow of satellite imagery, aerial photography and geophysical prospection can be broken down into measurements, acquisition, processing, visualisation and interpretation. Based on these categories, the advantages of digital data manipulations are explored with individual examples. It is shown that informatics can greatly assist with the final archaeological analysis of the measurements but that human experience and assessments are crucial for a meaningful interpretation.