3d models from archival film/video footage

A tutorial on using open source photogrammetry tools with archival video footag

The Space Between: The Geography of Social Networks in the Tiber Valley

In displaying archaeological information as points on a map, we lose elements of the social and economic geography of the region we are studying. This paper suggests a methodology for exploring the space between our ‘dots-on-the-map’, based on the rapidly developing ‘science of networks’. It takes as a case study the distribution of sites using stamped brick in the Tiber Valley. It suggests that contradictions between local and global understandings of spatial relationships were exploitable economic opportunities

On Connecting Stamps – Network Analysis and Epigraphy

Network analysis is both a method and a theory for exploring the relationships inherent in archaeological materials. In this paper, I direct attention to what may be the lowest-hanging fruit for archaeological network analysis: epigraphic materials. Epigraphic materials are replete with obvious and clearly visible social networks. In their archaeological aspect, further relationships can be discerned and distilled. I work through two brief case studies connected with Roman stamped bricks from the Tiber Valley, looking at both social and archaeological relationships. Network analysis may best be used not to prove a particular theory about these materials, but rather to generate new insights and new ways of reconsidering these materials. When more archaeological or epigraphic datasets become available, network analysis will become a regular tool in the archaeologist's data tool kit

Networks, Agent-Based Models and the Antonine Itineraries: Implications for Roman Archaeology

This paper presents a way of looking at Roman space from a Roman perspective, and suggests ways in which this point of view might open up new approaches in Roman archaeology. It turns on one conception of Roman space in particular, preserved for us in the Antonine Itineraries. Working from a position that considers the context of the itineraries as movement-through-space, this paper presents an investigation using social network analysis and agent-based simulation to re-animate the itineraries. The itineraries for Iberia, Gaul, Italy, and Britain are considered. The results of the social network analysis suggest structural differences in the way that the itineraries presented space to the reader/traveler. The results of the simulation of information diffusion through these regions following the routes in the itineraries suggest ways that this conception of space affected the cultural and material development of these regions. Suggestions for extending the basic model for more complicated archaeological analyses are presented

TravellerSim: Growing Settlement Structures and Territories with Agent-Based Modeling

Agent-based modeling presents the opportunity to study phenomena such as the emergence of territories from the perspective of individuals. We present a tool for growing networks of socially-connected settlement structures from distribution map data, using an agent based model authored in the Netlogo programming language, version 3.1.2. The networks may then be analyzed using social-networks analyzes tools to identify individual sites important on various network-analytic grounds, and at another level, territories of similarly connected settlements. We present two case studies to assess the validity of the tool: Geometric Greece and Protohistoric Central Italy

Fleshing Out the Bones: Studying the Human Remains Trade with Tensorflow and Inception

There is an active trade in human remains facilitated by social media sites. In this paper we ask: can machine learning detect visual signals in photographs indicating that the human remains depicted are for sale? Do such signals even exist? This paper describes an experiment in using Tensorflow and the Google Inception-v3 model against a corpus of publicly available photographs collected from Instagram. Previous examination of the associated metadata for these photos detected patterns in the connectivity and rhetoric surrounding this ‘bone trade’, including several instances where ‘for sale’ seemed to be implied, though not explicitly stated. The present study looks for signals in the visual rhetoric of the images as detected by the computer and how these signals may intersect with the other data present

The Insta-Dead: The rhetoric of the human remains trade on Instagram

There is a thriving trade, and collector community, around human remains that is facilitated by posts on new social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Etsy, and, until recently, eBay. In this article, we examine several thousand Instagram posts and perform some initial text analysis on the language and rhetoric of these posts to understand something about the function of this community, what they value and how they trade, buy, and sell, human remains. Our results indicate a well-connected network of collectors and dealers both specialist and generalist, with a surprisingly wide-reaching impact on the 'enthusiasts' who, through their rhetoric, support the activities of this collecting community, in the face of legal and ethical issues generated by its existence

Network Analysis and Greco-Roman Prosopography

Social network analysis as a distinct field of study had its genesis in the anthropological revolt against structural-functionalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was born through an awareness among a new generation of scholars that structural- functional models failed to make adequate space for human agency. Attention to personal networks – who knew whom, and how closely they were connected – seemed better suited to understanding individual decision-making than the previous generation's focus on groups and roles. It quickly became evident that any serious attempt to map social networks of meaningful size – the population of an entire village, for instance – would all but require a rigorous quantitative approach..

Getting Started with Topic Modeling and MALLET

This article Published by the Editorial Board of the Programming Historian is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Available at: http://programminghistorian.org/lessons/topic-modeling-and-malletIn this lesson you will first learn what topic modeling is and why you might want to employ it in your research. You will then learn how to install and work with the MALLET natural language processing toolkit to do so. MALLET involves modifying an environment variable (essentially, setting up a short-cut so that your computer always knows where to find the MALLET program) and working with the command line (ie, by typing in commands manually, rather than clicking on icons or menus). We will run the topic modeller on some example files, and look at the kinds of outputs that MALLET installed. This will give us a good idea of how it can be used on a corpus of texts to identify topics found in the documents without reading them individually

The Haunted School on Horror Hill

As gaming technology for personal computers has advanced over the last two decades, the text-adventures that predominated in the 1980s ceased to be commercially viable. However, the easy availability of powerful authoring systems developed by enthusiasts and distributed free over the Internet has led to a renaissance in text-adventures, now called “Interactive Fiction.” The educational potential in playing these text-based games and simulations was recognised when they were first popular; the new authoring systems now allow educators to explore the educational potential of creating these works. The authors present here a case-study using the ADRIFT authoring system to create a work of interactive fiction in a split grade 4/5 class (9 and 10 year-olds) in Quebec. They find that the process of creating the game helped improve literary and social skills amongst the student