Reconstructing the Ancient Route Network in Pergamon’s Surroundings

The surrounding landscape of ancient Pergamon is characterized by several mountain ranges, the Bakırçay Valley and River and the Aegean coastline. The accessibility of this region was vital for the city since it provided food and resources as well as trade, communication and military movements, all facilitated by a well-developed route network. Despite the importance of roads for the development and prosperity of the city, the ancient route network is still widely unexplored and archeological evidence of roads is extremely rare. This study therefore aims to reconstruct the ancient route network in the surroundings of Pergamon by combining historical and archeological sources with modern computer-aided least-cost path analyses, while also considering changes in the landscape that have occurred since antiquity. Based on these detailed results, conclusions may be drawn about the characteristics and functional diversity of the routes. Although the investigation of the route network in the surroundings of Pergamon cannot be considered complete, the results of this study already offer a valuable basis for further research, analyses, modeling and field work

The view from 'pre-Crusader' Shawbak: towards a first contextualization through GIS visibility and spatial analyses

The view from 'pre-Crusader' Shawbak: towards a first contextualization through GIS visibility and spatial analyses The purpose of this study is to provide a first preliminary interpretation of part of the evidence from Shawbak castle which attests to the presence of a 'pre-Crusader, probably Byzantine fort. The strategic features of the location of the fort, in particular a great abundance of water resources, made it indeed strategically advantageous during the Crusader period and in the later Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Stratigraphic evidence from readings of extant buildings and excavations revealed that the first Crusader foundation of the castle was laid out upon the remains of a LateRoman/Byzantine fortification identified in different parts of the castle. The presence of such fortification should probably be considered contextual to the presence of major forts and potential watchtower sites that have been documented by previous surveys in the area, in particular, a system of strategic locations depending on the castellum of Da'janiya betweenthe Desert highway to the east and the Via Nova Traiana to the west. The need to protect the fertile strip of land east of Shawbak and the natural resources of the area might have required a system of visual control attested to in other nearby regions, which could have involved a signaling network in communication with Shawbak. In this paper, a series of visibility analyses are proposed in order to demonstrate that such system could have worked for Byzantine Shawbak

Reclaiming the Irish border in contemporary cinema

Surprisingly, given the range of films covering the period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland there appears to be a dearth of analysis on the representation of the Irish border in indigenous and Hollywood/British cinematic narratives. Among a range of film examples, this analysis focuses on the work of Shane Connaughton, author/screenwriter of border films The Playboys (Mackinnon, 1992) and The Run of the Country (Yates, 1995) shot in the 1990s, before the Belfast Agreement (1998). Both films provide a rich representation of how the border impacts on the lives of those who exist on either side of the divide. Since the Belfast Agreement and the disappearance of border posts and army barracks across the region, movement has been transformed, as have representations of crossing over. This analysis proposes that in Johnny Gogan’s post Belfast Agreement films, Mapmaker (2001) and Black Ice (2013) and Brian Deane’s short film, Volkswagen Joe (2013) the representations of the border’s liminal spaces embrace in-betweeness as a key element of borderlander identity. In doing so, these films help to reclaim the border as a landscape where people dwell rather than an abstract line on a map

To Petra via Jabal Haroun : Nabataean-Roman road remains in the Finnish Jabal Haroun Project survey area

Työ käsittelee Finnish Jabal Haroun Project -tutkimusryhmän Etelä-Jordaniasta inventoimalla keräämää arkeologista aineistoa (vuosilta 1999-2005) tietutkimuksen kannalta. Työn tarkoituksena on selvittää, miksi tutkimusalueella, Aaronin vuoren ympäristössä, sijaitsee tien jäänteitä ja miten tie on maastossa muinoin kulkenut. Lisäksi työ analysoi tien varsilla havaittujen rakennusten jäännösten suhdetta tiehen ja pyrkii ajoittamaan tien käyttöajankohdan (ajankohdat). Työn alkuoletuksena on, että pääosa tienvarsirakennuksista on liitettävissä tiehen ja tien sijoittuminen tutkimusalueelle johtuu pitkälti lähistöllä sijaitsevan Petran noususta merkittäväksi, Nabatealaisten harjoittaman kaupan keskukseksi, Lähi-idässä ajanlaskun alkuun mennessä. Tien jäänteitä tarkastellaan maisema-arkeologisin perustein. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että analyysissä korostuvat sekä kulttuuriset että ympäristölliset vaikuttimet. Niiden välistä, aikaan sidottua, suhdetta arvioidaan menneen ihmistoiminnan selittämiseksi. Tutkimusmenetelmät ovat paikkatietojärjestelmien soveltaminen, kohdekohtainen arkeologisen aineiston ja sijainnin tutkiminen, vertailevan aineiston käyttö sekä kolmiulotteinen tarkastelu. Tie ajoitetaan tienvarsikohteiden keramiikkalöytöjen avulla sekä rakenneanalyysin perusteella. Tutkimus osoittaa tien syntyneen alueen sijainnin takia. Sijainti oli edullinen suhteessa luonnonvaroihin, asutuskeskuksiin ja luontaisiin kulkuväyliin. Tien rakentajat osasivat taidokkaasti hyödyntää alueen luonnonpiirteitä ja käyttivät erityisiä menetelmiä vaikeiden tieosuuksien turvaamiseksi luonnonvoimien tuhoilta. Suurin osa tienvarsirakenteista voidaan katsoa johtuvan suoraan tien olemassaolosta, pieni osa rakenteista palveli pääsääntöisesti muita maankäytön muotoja. Petran vaikutus tien olemassaoloon ja muotoon oli suuri, kaupungin kehitys ja kukoistus näkyvät tiehen liitettävässä arkeologisessa aineistossa. Tien aktiivinen käyttö näyttää jatkuneen myös Roomalaisaikaan ensimmäisille vuosisadoille jKr., jonka jälkeen se hitaasti hiipui

Researchers in the panopticon? Geographies of research, fieldwork and authoritarianism

Building on an emerging scholarly literature that discusses methodological issues related to the safety of researchers, I explore the lived experiences of Western researchers who conducted fieldwork in authoritarian settings. Through an analysis of power as a relational phenomenon, the article examines the ways in which researchers are subject to diffuse topologies of power that can be deployed in various contexts and at various scales. Evidence suggests that as researchers immerse themselves into fieldwork, their everyday encounters with the authorities make them become progressively aware of their surroundings and of the fact that they might be being observed. Researchers thus discipline themselves and normalize a number of self-policing behaviours and practices that can significantly influence processes of knowledge production

"We are used to it" : explorations of childhood perceptions of danger and safety in living in the Johannesburg inner city.

This thesis is an exploration of the daily realities of childhood in the Johannesburg inner city, investigating how the children understand and negotiate the possible dangers and probable safeties of the inner city. Growing up in the inner city is an image few think is possible. However, throughout my research I will argue for a conceptualisation of childhood that speaks to the urban public spaces in the Johannesburg inner city and an inner city that speaks to the a new childhood in South Africa. I have used danger and safety negotiation as the bridge between studies of the Johannesburg inner city and studies of a South African childhood, and as a bridge in the gap between theories on childhood and theories on the city. I investigate the ways that the children negotiate the everyday dangers in the city and develop practices of safety, and how these practices and avoidance techniques speak to the reality of living in the inner city. The very nature of the congested inner city offers a freedom that many suburban childhoods lack, and that the children experience an independent mobility within an infamously dangerous space speaks to the changes within the inner city often hidden behind the skewed opinion of many of the Johannesburg inner city. I make a claim that the inner city offers more freedom of mobility that is expected. This mobility is a relatively simple and well practiced form of creating visibility within the pedestrian congestion of the city. These practises of visibility, I argue, is heavily reliant on the layout of the inner city and the ways in which children understand the dangers that face them. As such, their safety practices are a complex network of sharing cautionary stories and avoidance techniques. For most children, this environment is also the only space that they know and therefore, what to outsiders might seem a dangerous, chaotic and confusing space is to the children just their everyday experience. These are the stories about which I write

The Udhruh Archaeological Project – the 2011-2012 Field Survey

Provincial Roman and Medieval Archaeology, colonial expansio

Spatiotemporal analysis of forest fire risk models : a case study for a greek island

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesForest fires are a natural phenomenon which might have severe implications on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. Consequently, the integrated protection of these ecosystems from forest fires is of high priority. The aim of the project lies in the development of two preventive models which will act in synergy in order to effectively protect the most critical natural resource of the island, namely, the abundant forests. Thus, fire risk modeling is combined with visibility analysis, so that we may primarily protect the most susceptible territory of the study area. The corner stone of the methodology is primarily relied on the multi-criteria decision analysis. This framework applied not only for the fire risk estimation and the corresponding evolution in a context of 20 years, but for visibility analysis as well, determining the most suitable locations for the establishment of a minimum number of watchtowers. The fire risk map for 2016 indicated that 34% of the entire study area is covered by territory of low fire risk; 27% of moderate risk; 34% of high and very high risk, while there is a 6% of the island which is characterized by extremely fire risk. Similar conclusions can be drawn for 1996, since no significant changes have been observed, especially on the land cover types and their spatial arrangement. Based on the visibility results, more than 40% of the entire island is visible from the selected location scheme consisting of just 8 watchtowers. The intense topography constituted the most critical barrier in increasing this percentage. Some good practices to counterbalance the relative small percentage of visibility could include; the extensive patrols in unmonitored regions through the intense road network of the island; the adoption of drones covering the aforementioned areas, especially when extreme meteorological conditions are expected

Assessing the different dimensions and degrees of risk of child sexual abuse in institutions

This research report has been published by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It identifies four dimensions of risk of child sexual abuse in institutional settings: situational, vulnerability, propensity and institutional risks. It draws on the existing research to examine how risk factors might operate cumulatively in the context of institutions. It examines to what extent various risk factors are more likely to occur in some institutions or activities than in others