To use or not to use: 3D documentation in fieldwork and in the lab

Excavating an archaeological site involves many decisions and trade-offs to be made. This is not only due to the limited resources on site but also has methodological roots. As excavations are destructive, decisions on the quantity and on which details documentation should focus must be taken. For documentation, a wide range of tools are available. One such tool is 3D documentation. It brings with it many benefits like the possibility to move in a 3D space through the excavation, the generating of ‘virtual’ profiles, or high precision DEM’s to name a few. 3D documentation of finds offers the possibility of fast unwrapping of complex features, fast drawings from different angles, or printing as a replica for different purposes. However, when compared to conventional methods, more problematic issues arise as well. 3D models must be calculated before the excavation can proceed. The calculation either needs time or powerful hardware. The method also results in a vast amount of data, as, in contrast to a drawing, most details are recorded. The question here is how to balance and evaluate these pros and cons. With this session, we want to ask: How and on which basis do you decide when choosing the documentation method? How do you evaluate the cost and time benefit of 3D documentation, also taking into account consequential costs such as data storage and curation over long periods of time? Is the time saved in the field doubled in the office? How much of the recorded data is used in the evaluation? We aim to bring together archeologists, technicians, and restaurateurs concerned with the above stated questions, whether working in the field or the lab, or as decision-makers in managing positions. We highly encourage members of commercial archaeological enterprises and of heritage offices to bring in their points of view

Integrating all Dimensions: 3D-Applications from Excavation to Research to Dissemination

3D-technologies are increasingly shaping the way archaeologists work and think. The fact that 3D recording techniques are becoming part of the standard toolkit in archaeological fieldwork opens up enormous opportunities for research and public outreach. As archaeological excavations are seen to be destructive, conventional documentation techniques have been shaped over decades if not centuries to mitigate as much information loss as possible. This includes the development of fitting tools and workflows as well as best practices in archaeological data collection, long-term archiving, research and dissemination. As new tools, 3D-Technologies need to be implemented into these existing best practices and workflows. In order to take full advantage of the new possibilities, we consider an integrated approach from the beginning of a project to be essential. This enables the successful implementation of 3D-technologies in all stages: it is not only important during fieldwork, but also later during research or public outreach. There, for instance, challenges concerning interoperability or quality may arise and have to be coped with. Also, the irreversibility of archaeological excavations has to be met with the functioning of long-term archiving of mostly large and complex datasets. Despite the increasing implementation of 3D-technologies in everyday archaeological practice, the overall experience of knowing what decisions to make and how they will affect the later possibilities and limitations is still developing. Nevertheless, there are ever more successful projects showing how 3D-techniques can be fully integrated into archaeological practice. This session aims to bring these examples of integrated research projects to a broader archaeological audience. As these potent documentation techniques have found their way into everyday practice, a broad dissemination and discussion of their possibilities and arising challenges is urgently needed

A new Approach for Structure from Motion Underwater Pile-Field Documentation

For a pilot study carried out by the University of Bern together with local partners in Summer 2018 at the pile-dwelling site Bay of Bones (Rep. of Macedonia), a new workflow for underwater pile-field documentation was developed. The site lies in shallow water of 3–5 meters depth and the most obvious constructive remains of the prehistoric settlement are thousands of wooden piles. The piles, mainly of oak and juniper, are excellently preserved in the lake sediments. The aim of the project was to document and sample 40 m2 surface area of the pile-field and the dendrochronological analysis of the samples. Dendrochronological sampling requires cutting the top-ends of the piles and thus changes the preserved situation. Therefore beforehand documentation must ensure the localization of each pile on a map. This calls for a method that ensures a) that every pile is distinctly labeled and b) the location of each pile is accurately captured. While on land, this can easily be achieved, underwater working conditions complicate common procedures. E.g. by measuring with a folding ruler from a local grid, there is later no way to evaluate measuring mistakes or the internal error of the local grid. In addition, for unpracticed divers measuring by hand underwater is not only time-consuming but also tends a lot more to erroneous results than on land. The goal was therefore to find a time-saving, accurate and easy to carry out way to locate the positions of several hundred piles in shallow water. The best solution for us to achieve these goals was a new standardized and reproducible workflow with Structure from Motion (SfM). The applied approach for underwater SfM-documentation includes on-site workflow and post-processing. The on-site workflow covers all steps from the preparation of the archaeological structures to the photographic data acquisition, the calculation of a preliminary 3D-model and its on-site verification. The crucial step was to ensure the suitability for modeling of the data before the situation underwater was irreversibly changed through sampling. Post-processing was carried out in Adobe Photoshop, Agisoft PhotoScan and QGIS where the data was optimized in quality and standardized from digital image processing to the construction of a georeferenced orthomosaic. Applying these results, we can later visualize patterns in the spatial distribution of the piles concerning e.g. their age, their size or their wood species. This will lead to answers regarding architecture, internal chronology, and in-site settlement dynamics. With this newly standardized two-step-workflow for underwater structure documentation, we are able to asses and compare the quality of each orthomosaic in a reproducible way. The presented method is highly promising for underwater-documentation of prehistoric pile-fields, yielding accurate digital plans in an efficient and cost-saving way.</p

Linking Neolithic lakeshore settlements through raw material of siliceous artefacts

This paper presents the results of the provenience analysis of siliceous artefacts from Neolithic lakeshore settlements studied in the scope of the SNSF-project MET (“Mobilities, entanglements and transformations in Neolithic societies on the Swiss Plateau (3900-3500 BCE) supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Project No 100011 156205). The aim of this paper is to compare the cultural entanglements as defined by the pottery studies with the regions of origins of the knappable siliceous sedimentary rocks (KSSR) raw materials. The analysed siliceous artefacts were found in cultural layers of wetland settlements in the Northern Alpine Foreland, most of which are dated dendrochronologically with extreme precision. The sources of the raw materials were determined by the identification of the sedimentary microfacies of the siliceous artefacts, which allows the accurate location of the exploited outcrops without destroying the artefacts. This enabled detailed insights into complex entanglements, ties and mobility patterns in the raw material procurement between settlement communities on the Swiss Plateau, southern Germany and eastern France. Furthermore, these results were compared visually with stylistic entanglements in the pottery of the 4th millennium BCE. As a first attempt in this direction, this paper shows the potential of studies on mobility patterns when different find categories are studied in combination regarding their raw materials but also their typology

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

Diving into Research. A Talk about the NEENAWA Scientific Diving Course and a resulting new Project at Lake Ohrid.

A central part of the Institutional Partnership (SCOPES) “Network in Eastern European Neolithic and Wetland Archaeology” (NEENAWA, 2015–2018) was a European Scientific Diver (ESD) course, realized in summer 2017. Together with participants from Russia, the Ukraine and the FY Republic of Macedonia we, four Bernese students, successfully absolved the examination which was held under the conditions of the German commission for Scientific Diving (KFT). The first part of this presentation will show what it means to be trained as a scientific diver under European law, to give an idea of what we did during our course and what the advantages of an education within the framework of the European Scientific Diving Panel are. The course has been conducted at the Bay of Bones, a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement on the shore of Lake Ohrid, FY Republic of Macedonia. The second part gives an outlook on the new prospects that the ESD course opened for us. With colleagues we met during this course and NEENAWA project, we have started to plan new research activities. The aim was to apply scientific diving as a method to bring forward dendrochronology where it has not been used so far. We chose the Bay of Bones at Lake Ohrid as research site. During the ESD-course a small survey was carried out which already raised several questions we want to explore further. In about 5 m depth lie well-preserved cultural layers with thousands of piles and artifacts. Until now the chronology of this site is mainly based on ceramic typology. The goal of the project is to change this by applying combined dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. As a method, photogrammetry together with a combination of a standard grid on the lake floor and DGPS will be used. This allows systematic, fast documentation resulting in a georeferenced map of the sampled piles

Between East and West: Combined Analysis of Stylistic and Technological Aspects of Pottery at the Neolithic Site of Burgäschisee-Nord (Switzerland)

The wetland site of Burgäschisee-Nord is located on the northern shore of the small lake Burgäschi in Central Switzerland. It is one of several Neolithic sites located at the lake shore and has been newly excavated between 2015-2017 within the framework of the international and interdiscpiplinary project “Beyond lake villages. Studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact at small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria”. During the 37th century BC, the site Burgäschisee-Nord is culturally located between two regions each associated with a specific pottery style (eg. Western Switzerland with the so-called Cortaillod style and the region of lake Zurich with the so-called Pfyn style). Both stylistic influences are reflected in the ceramics of the sites at lake Burgäschi, however in Burgäschisee-Nord (3700-3650 calBC) an unexpected quantity of pots is produced in a style related to eastern Central Switzerland (Lake Zurich region). To conduct an in-depth study of these stylistic interrelationships a crossed-analysis was applied, combining stylistic, technological and petrographic methodologies. The technological analysis, based on the reconstruction of the “chaînes opératoires”, shows comparable results to the stylistic study of the material. For example, the surface treatments of pots in Burgäschisee-Nord are close to those identified on pots of settlements around lake Zurich. Nevertheless, the techniques of shaping refer to both the regions of Western Switzerland and Lake Zurich. The petrographic analysis reveals that the analysed ceramics have been produced with local raw materials, without having a relation to stylistic features. The combined approach allows us to draw a more profound picture of the pottery production at lake Burgäschi in the 37th century BC and its entanglements with Western Switzerland and the Lake Zurich region

Between East and West. Analysing influences and entanglements through a combined analysis of stylistic and technological aspects of pottery manufacturing. The case study of the Neolithic site of Burgäschisee-Nord (Switzerland).

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Bildbasierte 3D-Dokumentation. Wie wird sie genutzt? Eine Umfrage zum Einsatz von 3D Technologien in der Archäologie

Zwischen Januar und März 2020 wurde durch die «EAA Community for 3D-Technologies in Archaeology» eine international ausgerichtete Umfrage zur Nutzung von bildbasierten 3D-Technologien durchgeführt. Das Ziel war, einen breiten Einblick in die Anwendung von bildbasierten 3D-Technologien in der Praxis zu erhalten. Die Auswertung der Befragung erlaubt es, den Stellenwert der Methoden und die wichtigsten Anwendungsziele der Anwender*innen herauszuarbeiten. Zudem gibt sie Einblick in die verwendete Software und Dateiformate sowie in die Umsetzung der Archivierung. Damit lassen sich die wesentlichen Herausforderungen für die weitere Entwicklung und fortschreitende Implementation von 3DTechnologien in die Praxis erkennen