Learning and Example Selection for Object and Pattern Detection

This thesis presents a learning based approach for detecting classes of objects and patterns with variable image appearance but highly predictable image boundaries. It consists of two parts. In part one, we introduce our object and pattern detection approach using a concrete human face detection example. The approach first builds a distribution-based model of the target pattern class in an appropriate feature space to describe the target's variable image appearance. It then learns from examples a similarity measure for matching new patterns against the distribution-based target model. The approach makes few assumptions about the target pattern class and should therefore be fairly general, as long as the target class has predictable image boundaries. Because our object and pattern detection approach is very much learning-based, how well a system eventually performs depends heavily on the quality of training examples it receives. The second part of this thesis looks at how one can select high quality examples for function approximation learning tasks. We propose an {em active learning} formulation for function approximation, and show for three specific approximation function classes, that the active example selection strategy learns its target with fewer data samples than random sampling. We then simplify the original active learning formulation, and show how it leads to a tractable example selection paradigm, suitable for use in many object and pattern detection problems

Archaeological Investigations at Salterstown, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland

While American historical archaeologists have made significant progress in their investigations of early seventeenth century English colonies in North America, English colonies of the same period occurring elsewhere have been largely ignored. The archaeological investigation of alternative English colonial contexts is a necessary first step towards an anthropological study of comparative colonialism. Salterstown was a seventeenth century English colonial plantation village in Ulster, now buried beneath a dairy farm. Investigations at Salterstown include archival research, oral history interviews and archaeological excavations over three seasons of fieldwork. Research has monitored the degree of transplantation of English material culture into the Ulster plantations. Native Irish late-medieval survivals and the development of syncretic vernacular traditions unique to Ulster have been recorded. Included are detailed discussions of plantation-period economics, settlement pattern, architecture, ceramics, livestock, footwear, lithics, tobacco pipes, glassmaking and other artifact types. Investigations at Salterstown highlight an early English colonial milieu offering an instructive alternative to North American colonial contexts

Neolithic land-use in the Dutch wetlands: estimating the land-use implications of resource exploitation strategies in the Middle Swifterbant Culture (4600-3900 BCE)

The Dutch wetlands witness the gradual adoption of Neolithic novelties by foraging societies during the Swifterbant period. Recent analyses provide new insights into the subsistence palette of Middle Swifterbant societies. Small-scale livestock herding and cultivation are in evidence at this time, but their importance if unclear. Within the framework of PAGES Land-use at 6000BP project, we aim to translate the information on resource exploitation into information on land-use that can be incorporated into global climate modelling efforts, with attention for the importance of agriculture. A reconstruction of patterns of resource exploitation and their land-use dimensions is complicated by methodological issues in comparing the results of varied recent investigations. Analyses of organic residues in ceramics have attested to the cooking of aquatic foods, ruminant meat, porcine meat, as well as rare cases of dairy. In terms of vegetative matter, some ceramics exclusively yielded evidence of wild plants, while others preserve cereal remains. Elevated δ15N values of human were interpreted as demonstrating an important aquatic component of the diet well into the 4th millennium BC. Yet recent assays on livestock remains suggest grazing on salt marshes partly accounts for the human values. Finally, renewed archaeozoological investigations have shown the early presence of domestic animals to be more limited than previously thought. We discuss the relative importance of exploited resources to produce a best-fit interpretation of changing patterns of land-use during the Middle Swifterbant phase. Our review combines recent archaeological data with wider data on anthropogenic influence on the landscape. Combining the results of plant macroremains, information from pollen cores about vegetation development, the structure of faunal assemblages, and finds of arable fields and dairy residue, we suggest the most parsimonious interpretation is one of a limited land-use footprint of cultivation and livestock keeping in Dutch wetlands between 4600 and 3900 BCE.NWOVidi 276-60-004Human Origin

Taphonomy, environment or human plant exploitation strategies?: Deciphering changes in Pleistocene-Holocene plant representation at Umhlatuzana rockshelter, South Africa

The period between ~40 and 20 ka BP encompassing the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) transition has long been of interest because of the associated technological change. Understanding this transition in southern Africa is complicated by the paucity of archaeological sites that span this period. With its occupation sequence spanning the last ~70,000 years, Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter is one of the few sites that record this transition. Umhlatuzana thus offers a great opportunity to study past environmental dynamics from the Late Pleistocene (MIS 4) to the Late Holocene, and past human subsistence strategies, their social organisation, technological and symbolic innovations. Although organic preservation is poor (bones, seeds, and charcoal) at the site, silica phytoliths preserve generally well throughout the sequence. These microscopic silica particles can identify different plant types that are no longer visible at the site because of decomposition or burning to a reliable taxonomical level. Thus, to trace site occupation, plant resource use, and in turn reconstruct past vegetation, we applied phytolith analyses to sediment samples of the newly excavated Umhlatuzana sequence. We present results of the phytolith assemblage variability to determine change in plant use from the Pleistocene to the Holocene and discuss them in relation to taphonomical processes and human plant gathering strategies and activities. This study ultimately seeks to provide a palaeoenvironmental context for modes of occupation and will shed light on past human-environmental interactions in eastern South Africa.NWOVidi 276-60-004Human Origin

Ways and Capacity in Archaeological Data Management in Serbia

Over the past year and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world has witnessed inequalities across borders and societies. They also include access to archaeological resources, both physical and digital. Both archaeological data creators and users spent a lot of time working from their homes, away from artefact collections and research data. However, this was the perfect moment to understand the importance of making data freely and openly available, both nationally and internationally. This is why the authors of this paper chose to make a selection of data bases from various institutions responsible for preservation and protection of cultural heritage, in order to understand their policies regarding accessibility and usage of the data they keep. This will be done by simple visits to various web-sites or data bases. They intend to check on the volume and content, but also importance of the offered archaeological heritage. In addition, the authors will estimate whether the heritage has adequately been classified and described and also check whether data is available in foreign languages. It needs to be seen whether it is possible to access digital objects (documents and the accompanying metadata), whether access is opened for all users or it requires a certain hierarchy access, what is the policy of usage, reusage and distribution etc. It remains to be seen whether there are public API or whether it is possible to collect data through API. In case that there is a public API, one needs to check whether datasets are interoperable or messy, requiring data cleaning. After having visited a certain number of web-sites, the authors expect to collect enough data to make a satisfactory conclusion about accessibility and usage of Serbian archaeological data web bases

Archaeological investigations at the last Spanish Colonial mission establised on the Texas frontier: Nuestra Senora del Rufugio (41RF1), Refugio County, Texas

Between 1998 and 1999, the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio, conducted archaeological investigations at the Spanish Colonial-period Mission Nuestra Señora del Refugio, located in Refugio County, in southern Texas. This project was conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 2025. The initial phase of the excavations concentrated along US 77, in the TxDOT right-of-way, and the subsequent work conducted led to the exhumation of 165 burials, the discovery of the location of the 1796 church and the associated mission compound features. The excavations and subsequent analyses were guided by several research questions focused on shedding light, through skeletal and biological analyses, on the characteristics of the Karankawa Indians, identifying the influence of the Spanish material culture upon Native American technology (ceramic and lithic), and studying the effect of proselytization and mission life upon the diet, subsistence, health, and physiology of mission neophytes. This report presents the results of a variety of specialized studies including a concise history of the 35-year occupation of the mission based on the archival study of more than 600 documents. It summarizes the excavation and contents of two Colonial trash pit features, and a possible third trash feature, a small midden accumulation, various architectural features, and reports on the results of the excavation of 37 burial features containing the remains of at least 165 individuals. The analysis of the Spanish Colonial ceramics and artifacts indicates that Mexican-made wares and artifacts continued to be provisioned to the mission well into the nineteenth-century, and probably up to the date of its closing, but in decreasing numbers. At the same time, a variety of Native American ceramic wares continued to be made and used at this mission. However, the Native American ceramics from Refugio tend to have distinctive characteristics that may result from cultural contact with other nearby Native American populations, and the desire and/or need to produce wares for the Spanish colonists and missionaries in their midst. The results of the lithic analysis support the view that Native American technology was in transition during the occupation of the mission and at least in part the factors that may be responsible are changes in the subsistence practices of the Native populations and the impact of non-traditional raw materials, tools and weapons on native tool kits. The faunal analysis of the extensive collection suggests that there was very little change in the dominant component of the subsistence strategy, large bovids, during the use of the mission. However, the use of domesticated species declines slightly over time while the consumption of freshwater fish, as a percentage of all fish consumed, increases during the late part of the occupation. The exceptionally comprehensive analysis of the skeletal population indicates that about three quarters of the burial population from the mission were Native American and the remainder was of European and/or a mix of European and Native American ancestry