The apparatus of digital archaeology

Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses – technological, methodological, software, hardware, material, immaterial – which in their own ways and to varying degrees shape the nature of Digital Archaeology. Our attention, however, is perhaps inevitably more closely focussed on research questions, choice of data, and the kinds of analyses and outputs. In the process we tend to overlook the effects the tools themselves have on the archaeology we do beyond the immediate consequences of the digital. This paper introduces cognitive artefacts as a means of addressing the apparatus more directly within the context of the developing archaeological digital ecosystem. It argues that a critical appreciation of our computational cognitive artefacts is key to understanding their effects on both our own cognition and on the creation of archaeological knowledge. In the process, it defines a form of cognitive digital archaeology in terms of four distinct methods for extracting cognition from the digital apparatus layer by layer

Automatic landmark annotation and dense correspondence registration for 3D human facial images

Dense surface registration of three-dimensional (3D) human facial images holds great potential for studies of human trait diversity, disease genetics, and forensics. Non-rigid registration is particularly useful for establishing dense anatomical correspondences between faces. Here we describe a novel non-rigid registration method for fully automatic 3D facial image mapping. This method comprises two steps: first, seventeen facial landmarks are automatically annotated, mainly via PCA-based feature recognition following 3D-to-2D data transformation. Second, an efficient thin-plate spline (TPS) protocol is used to establish the dense anatomical correspondence between facial images, under the guidance of the predefined landmarks. We demonstrate that this method is robust and highly accurate, even for different ethnicities. The average face is calculated for individuals of Han Chinese and Uyghur origins. While fully automatic and computationally efficient, this method enables high-throughput analysis of human facial feature variation.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

05491 Abstracts Collection -- Spatial Cognition: Specialization and Integration

From 04.12.05 to 09.12.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05491 ``Spatial Cognition: Specialization and Integration\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Liberating clocks: Developing a critical horology to rethink the potential of clock time

Across a wide range of cultural forms, including philosophy, cultural theory, literature and art, the figure of the clock has drawn suspicion, censure and outright hostility. In contrast, even while maps have been shown to be complicit with forms of domination, they are also widely recognised as tools that can be critically reworked in the service of more liberatory ends. This paper seeks to counteract the tendency to see clocks in this way, arguing that they have many more interesting possibilities than they are usually given credit for. An analysis of approaches to clocks in continental philosophy critiques the way they have too often been dismissed as unworthy of further analysis, and argues that this dismissal is based upon an inadequate understanding of how clocks operate. Seeking to move towards more critical and curious approaches, the paper draws inspiration from critical cartography in order to call for the development of a ‘critical horology’ which would emphasise both the fundamentally political nature of clocks, and the potential for designing them otherwise. A discussion of temporal design provides a range of examples of how clocks might open up new horizons within the politics of time

Fast forward: technography of the social integration of connected and automated vehicles into UK society

The emerging connected and automated vehicles (CAV) have caught much research attention in the past few years. However, a techno-centric bias in the CAV research domain implies the lack of in-depth qualitative studies. To fill the gap, this Ph.D. project bridges the fields of Social Anthropology with STS by adopting technography, an ethnography of technology, to enable a thick description of the CAV technology’s social integration into UK society. By critically drawing a holistic view of the ongoing process of the CAV social deployment, it aims to (1) unfold CAV’s potential problems and dynamic contributions to everyday life through the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries, and (2) reveal and analyse the institutional practice on its social rollout. Based on pilot research and one-year-long fieldwork in London and Edinburgh, the thesis investigated a wide range of important socio-political aspects where fundamental topics such as trust, human-and-machine relationship, social safety, political transparency, and equity in transport systems were explicated. Different from the planners’ top-down CAV imaginaries that focused on its contribution to functional safety, environment, and the economy, the public’s bottom-up imaginaries highlighted issues that were related to their travelling experiences, such as inequity of transport service distribution and sexual harassment during commutes. These findings inspired thinking and rethinking on what constitutes the success of technology’s social deployment from multiple perspectives. In particular, it critically pointed out that safety means not only technological feasibility but also social safety that refers to a safe commuting environments. Such finding in my thesis thus suggests that CAV technology is not a one-size-fits-all solution to problems in our transport system and calls for research effort to the broader socio-political and ethical areas of this technology. through an investigation of the institutional practice, it identified four major institutional forces, including technicians, industry stakeholders, researchers, and policymakers who have been working on these aspects with different approaches and priorities. Apart from acknowledging their efforts in building safety cases, pushing forward the CAV legislation, and engaging the public in trials, it critically explained challenges such as technical uncertainty and political tension in developing and implementing a legal framework. Hence, the project contributes to an understanding of a close encounter between the CAV technology and its imaginaries, in which, technical and socio-political problems and potentials fabricate the richness in its social deployment. It also explicates the importance of embracing multiple perspectives and calls for continuous research in this field

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo