Materials and materiality

Sections: 10.1.1 Introdution; 10.1.2 Preservation and recovery; 10.1.3 Phasing and chronology; 10.1.4 Biographies of materials (Crops, consumption and craft at Broxmouth and beyond; Re-use and recycling; Identities and social relationships beyond Broxmouth); 10.1.5 The materiality of Broxmouth

Residue analysis

Sections: 10.1.1 Introdution; 10.1.2 Preservation and recovery; 10.1.3 Phasing and chronology; 10.1.4 Biographies of materials (Crops, consumption and craft at Broxmouth and beyond; Re-use and recycling; Identities and social relationships beyond Broxmouth); 10.1.5 The materiality of Broxmouth

From lidar to LSCM: micro-topographies of archaeological finds

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS), or lidar, is an enormously important innovation for data collection and interpretation in archaeology. The application of archaeological 3D data deriving from sources including ALS, close-range photogrammetry and terrestrial and photogrammetric scanners has grown exponentially over the last decade. Such data present numerous possibilities and challenges, from ensuring that applications remain archaeologically relevant, to developing practices that integrate the manipulation and interrogation of complex digital datasets with the skills of archaeological observation and interpretation. This volume addresses the implications of multi-scaled topographic data for contemporary archaeological practice in a rapidly developing field, drawing on examples of ongoing projects and reflections on best practice.Twenty papers from across Europe explore the implications of these digital 3D datasets for the recording and interpretation of archaeological topography, whether at the landscape, site or artefact scale. The papers illustrate the variety of ways in which we engage with archaeological topography through 3D data, from discussions of its role in landscape archaeology, to issues of context and integration, and to the methodological challenges of processing, visualisation and manipulation. Critical reflection on developing practice and implications for cultural resource management and research contextualize the case studies and applications, illustrating the diverse and evolving roles played by multi-scalar topographic data in contemporary archaeology

Out of the ordinary. The materiality of the south-east Scottish Iron Age.

A materiality approach is developed in this thesis in order to understand social-material relationships during the south-east Scottish Iron Age. The focus is on everyday objects, traditionally lesser studied in terms of cosmological value, made of bone and antler, stone, clay/pottery and metal (copper alloy and iron) from the Broxmouth Hillfort assemblage and other excavated Iron Age sites in East Lothian. This study sets out to move away from typology to examine the connections between these materials through their sourcing, affordances (signative and pragmatic), design, manufacture, use and deposition. In addition to the archaeological evidence, a range of analytical methods are employed; including laser scanning confocal microscopy, raman spectroscopy, and residue and isotopic analysis. It becomes evident that the materials studied, despite their predominantly local availability, were invested with meaning in appropriation, making, and were deliberately curated and maintained in use, assembling rich personal biographies. Identities were tied up with making, using and depositing of materials in turn embodying beliefs of fertility, renewal and productivity which were central to Iron Age cosmology, continuing into the Roman Iron Age. These results contribute to our understanding of the construction and practice of society in the Iron Age of Britain, with implications for how we may design our own 21st Century material worlds. It is proposed that social relations in the Iron Age of south-east Scotland were heterarchical.Society of Antiquaries of Scotlan

The ACCORD project: Archaeological Community Co-Production of Research Resources

This paper introduces the AHRC funded ACCORD project, a partnership between the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art, Archaeology Scotland, the University of Manchester and the RCAHMS. The ACCORD project examines the opportunities and implications of digital visualisation technologies for community engagement and research through the co-creation of 3D models of historic monuments and places. Despite their increasing accessibility, techniques such as laser scanning, 3D modelling and 3D print- ing have remained firmly in the domain of heritage specialists. Expert forms of knowledge and/or professional priorities frame the use of digital visualisation technologies and forms of community-based social value are rarely addressed. Consequently, the resulting digital objects fail to engage communities as a means of researching and representing their heritage. The first part of this paper pres- ents how the ACCORD project seeks to address this gap through the co-design and co-production of an integrated research asset that encompasses social value and engages communities with transformative digital technologies. The second half of this paper (section 4) presents a case study of an ACCORD project based in Argyll which highlights the nature of community relations with expert groups, issues of archaeological authority and the transformative power of co-production using digital recording techniques

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project

This article examines the question of authenticity in relation to 3D visualisation of historic objects and monuments. Much of the literature locates their authenticity in the accuracy of the data and/or the realism of the resulting models. Yet critics argue that 3D visualisations undermine the experience of authenticity, disrupting people’s access to the materiality, biography and aura of their historic counterparts. The ACCORD project takes questions of authenticity and 3D visualisation into a new arena – that of community heritage practice – and uses rapid ethnographic methods to examine whether and how such visualisations acquire authenticity. The results demonstrate that subtle forms of migration and borrowing occur between the original and the digital, creating new forms of authenticity associated with the digital object. Likewise, the creation of digital models mediates the authenticity and status of their original counterparts through the networks of relations in which they are embedded. The current pre-occupation with the binary question of whether 3D digital models are authentic or not obscures the wider work that such objects do in respect to the cultural politics of ownership, attachment, place-making and regeneration. The article both advances theoretical debates and has important implications for heritage visualisation practice

3D visualisation, communities and the production of significance

In this paper, we discuss how community co-production of heritage records facilitates the production and negotiation of new forms of value and significance. We draw on case studies from the ACCORD project, which used 3D digital technologies for community engagement through co-creation, to explore how a site’s significance can be affected and challenged through community recording. Whilst multiple modes of recording operate in this way, digital 3D recording, long held as the sole domain of the technical expert, is often deployed by heritage professionals as a means of enhancing authorised historic and scientific values through the sophisticated and precise recording of a site’s physical structure. Here we argue that these recording techniques can also offer a means of exploring and challenging existing authorised regimes of significance and insignificance, giving voice to alternative and richer perspectives through the recording process itself, as much as through the resultant record. This challenges orthodox thinking about both the primary purpose and effects of digital recording and opens up new directions for their use in heritage practice

Disrupting the heritage of place: practising counter-archaeologies at Dumby, Scotland

The notion of counter-archaeology is echoed by the opposing faces of the volcanic plug of Dumbarton Rock, Scotland. On the one side is the ‘official’ heritage of Dumbarton Castle, with its upstanding seventeenth-century military remains and underlying occupation evidence dating back to at least the eighth centuryad. On the other side lies a landscape of climbing, bouldering and post-industrial abandonment. This paper develops counter-archaeology through the climbing traditions and boulder problems at Dumbarton Rock and brings to the surface marginalized forms of heritage. Climbers and archaeologists have co-authored the paper as part of a collaborative project, which challenges the binary trope of researcher and researched and provides a model for a collaborative, co-designed and co-produced counter-archaeology

Analysis of Policies Supporting Teachers to Tackle Linguistic and Cultural Diversity and Facilitate Inclusion from the Perspectives of Iceland and the Faroe Islands

In today’s fast changing multicultural societies, governments and organisations must use their agency to ensure the contribution and inclusion of all cultures and ethnicities. A key factor for enabling this is ensuring education plays a leading role in facilitating the creation of an inclusive society. In this context, the education of teachers must be a priority given the reach and impact teachers have on a society. Therefore, teacher education with its role in preparing pre-service teachers for teaching in a multicultural setting is uniquely placed to enable focus on and engender a foundation for enabling inclusivity, equality and social justice in education. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the policy framework needed for preparing preservice teachers to work with learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The aim is to gain knowledge and understanding of how the concepts of inclusion and culturally responsive pedagogy are reflected in teacher education policy in the island nations of Iceland and the Faroe IslandsPeer reviewe