We hope everyone has a wonderful break and keep an eye out for our 12 days of finds from the archive published everyday of the festive period!
Keep your eyes peeled for our 12 Days of Chirstmas
Category Archives: Heritage Research team
At the beginning of the week the heritage team (Chris, Catriona and myself) met with the landscape architects at Influence®. We were interested in discussing the similarities and differences between their landscape and visual impact assessments and our own approaches to studying the impact on the setting and significance of heritage assets (discussed in this blog).
Landscape and visual impact assessment is often required as part of a planning application and helps to assess the effects of future development on the landscape. A report will help to inform design, in order to reduce and offset some of the adverse effects of development on the surrounding area. It will consider the existing character of the place, and potential changes to the available views. A study of the landscape can be applied to all urban and peri-urban landscapes, towns, villages and rural areas, coast and islands area; and the views can encompass a wide range of features including National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Nature Reserves, Listed Buildings, Scheduled Monuments, etc. Of course there is large overlap in the subject matter, although the principle difference between the approaches in that landscape and visual impact assessments attempt to establish and protect the landscape and views as experienced by current individuals. Our research seeks principally to outline the impact of development on understanding the past context of heritage assets and negate factors that might detract from how we comprehend the past, in essence to assess the likelihood for encountering subsurface archaeology and how developments will affect standing heritage assets.
Getting a chance to discuss the similarities and differences between our approaches helped us to appreciate the complexities of each other’s disciplines. We ended up being able to reflect on our own practices and in the future will be incorporating features from their approach to landscape and visual impact assessment into our own study of the impact future development of the setting and significance of heritage assets. It was a great opportunity and are very grateful to the staff at Influence in Newark for hosting us.
In Spring 2016 we were subcontracted by University of York to convert a visual model of the pre-1834 House of Commons, St. Stephen’s Chapel Westminster to an acoustic model. The work was commissioned as part of the Virtual St Stephen’s Project, an AHRC-funded research project and was a collaboration between the departments of History (Dr John Cooper), and Electronics (Dr Damian Murphy).
One of the major elements of the project was the creation of a three dimensional computer model detailing St. Stephen’s chapel at various points in its lifetime. The three dimensional model was then used on a touch screen device to allow visitors to interact with the reconstruction. Creating these models not only provides a great opportunity for public engagement it also allows evidence from a range of sources to be brought together and used to create an interpretation of a lost space.
The Virtual St Stephen’s Interactive model
However, as beautiful and engaging as these models are they do not consider the soundscape of the space. In recent years archaeologists have started to explore the opportunities for applying acoustic technology. Catriona came to AAL following the completion of her PhD looking at this technique.
For the Virtual St Stephen’s project we started with the three dimensional mode produced by Dr. Anthony Masinton and simplified it to use as an acoustic model. Acoustic technology is not as sophisticated as the technology to produce visualisations; the models have to be less complex. They also use the same information in slightly different ways. Both models require the size and shape of a space to be accurate, however; where a visualisation needs information about how surfaces are coloured and textured, an acoustic model needs to understand how sound will reflect, or be absorbed by different materials.
The acoustic model of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster
The resulting model can provide a series of numerical values which tell us about the space; how sound decays from various positions in the room, how clearly sounds can be heard. We can also create auralizations; acoustic reconstructions. Under the right conditions they allow a listener to experience sound from the modelled space. We hope to use these models to explore the experience of listening to speeches in the pre-1834 House of Commons.
The project featured on The Lost Chapel of Westminster on BBC Parliament on Sunday and is still available on iPlayer.
The initial stages of archaeological work can often be complex and differs greatly between sites depending on the individual peculiarities of the project. Often the first stage of work falls to the Heritage Research Department at AAL, consisting of Josh, Catriona and Jesse, and the writing of Desk-Based Assessments (DBAs).
Aerial photograph showing cropmakrs comprising circular enclosures
The starting point for a report is usually the local Historic Environment Record (HER); previously known as Sites and Monuments Records (SMRs). They are databases of information relating to the historic environment and contain information about archaeological works, buildings, landscapes, finds and a whole range of other things associated with the human past. You can access a lot of the information from Heritage Gateway if you are undertaking personal research.
The results of a HER search will tell us what known archaeological and heritage assets are located within defined area. However, this record is not everything. A report can also include sifting through the local archives for historical documents; indicating land use of the site over time, or investigating cropmarks shown on aerial photographs, and analysing maps of the past for evidence of shrunken villages. Some sites require a closer understanding of the underlying geology to predict whether prehistoric activity is likely, and others need to check whether 20th century buildings are likely to have truncated the archaeological resource.
Ridge and Furrow spotted on a site visit
A DBA is often undertaken at the pre-planning stage in order to highlight the potential for archaeological remains in advance of construction taking place. This allows the developer to prevent damage to the archaeological resource and the associated costs of excavation by changing the specifics of the development. For instance, the developer might choose to leave open spaces for recreation on houses estates over areas of known archaeological interest in order to avoid disturbing underlying remains. You never know, your local park might be on the ground of a Roman villa or a medieval castle! In addition, DBAs allow the local planning authorities to make decisions about whether or not excavation is required for planning permission, in cases where it is not practical to change the nature of the development. That’s when archaeologists get their hands dirty!
Preparing DBAs can be really rewarding projects for people who want to expand their knowledge of British Archaeology. You have to know a little bit about everything, and know where to start looking for more information and when to spend more time exploring something.
Heritage Open Days is a festival in England over four days in September. During these four days thousands of events across the country allow you to explore the history and culture sitting at your feet. Heritage Lincolnshire has co-ordinated Heritage Open Days in Lincolnshire since 1994 they provide free access to lots of interesting properties, tours, events and activities across the county. This weeks blog is a pick of the ones our staff plan to take advantage of!
Chris (Clay) and Al both plan to visit the Old Tile Works at Barton upon Humber. Chris because he led a community project to survey the site in 2010 before it was restored, and Al because he loves all things industrial!
Jesse is going to see Earth as a Natural Building Material, as it would be intriguing to see how buildings made of materials that rarely survive in the archaeological record are constructed, and to give you a bit of ‘real-life’ experience within that historical setting!
Josh would like to visit the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, as it has numerous objects, artefacts, and trinkets, from people’s everyday life in Lincolnshire from 1750 to the present day. It will be interesting to see how life has changed over the last few centuries and how different things would have been for all of us not that long ago.
Rachel hoping to go on the guided walk along the Ice Age route of the River Trent, between Lincoln and Newark. We would like to experience this lost river route as she’s really interested in how the landscape has changed over time; as an archaeologist she tends to concentrate on how people have affected the landscape, but this walk will help her to understand the natural phenomenon that has shaped the area she now call home.
Cat is keen to get to Gainsborough Old Hall as she loves a medieval interior.
Fee is a glutton for punishment and is going to visit All Saints’ Church in Winterton and St Peter’s Church in Barton Upon Humber following a watching brief at Winterton. (Cat might sneak along as well as she loves a medieval church!)
Nasha also has her eyes on a church; St Peter at Gowts Church in Lincoln, as the stories surrounding the building sound fascinating.
Rob is also following up on a job and is planning on visiting Belton House. He ran a geophysics project their recently and is hoping to return to have a look inside the building!
Jedlee and Duncan are interested in visiting Lincoln’s Oldest Church of St Mary le Wigford to see the Saxon Tower.
Ryan is planning on going to Gibraltar Point as the walk is nice and there is lots to see and do.
Dominika plans to visit the RAF Binbrook Heritage Centre.
Alice is going to try and get to the talk on the Submerged Forest at Cleethorpes’ as she was part of the team tracing the track erosion.
Debbie has an interest in stained glass and has always wanted to have a go so she’s going to check out the Heritage Craft Demonstrations at Strawberry Glass.
At the end of the March I spent four days at the University of Oslo for the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) annual conference. AAL were fantastic and supported my attendance, as did a low income bursary from CAA International. Last summer, prior to getting a job with AAL, I agreed to run a session with Stuart Eve of LP Archaeology at the conference focussing on digital approaches to multisensory engagements with the past (Interpretations from digital sensations). We decided to run the session on the back of a series of discussions we have both had on twitter about each of our research trying to move beyond a visual interpretation of the past.
Piotr Dziewanowski from the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk presenting scans of the Soldek
Lawrence Shaw’s 3D printed Digital Elevation Model
While I was out there I also had some great conversations about how to introduce more digital techniques or applications into commercial archaeology, a slightly ignored subject, and “enthusiastically” discussed over a few glasses of wine at the fantastic Museum of Cultural History… The underlying theme of those discussions was not that commercial archaeology did not need to introduce new and shiny methodologies and applications, but rather that there was no time in the commercial world to roll out and field test new on site approaches and in the UK archives are frequently not willing to accept digital data. For example, I saw numerous approaches to using tablets onsite for recording, instead of the traditional context sheets. This would allow us to avoid digitizing these at the end of the project and should in theory force the appropriate data to be collected in the field. However, setting up and ensuring this system works on the software end would require a lot of development. There are costs associated with buying in the kit. And also is the hardware capable of dealing with a British winter… (Though Mike and Flo from LP highlighted that you can buy ruggedized tablets; the issue is ensuring they are cleaned and dried on return from the field).
One of the Viking Ships and the incredible building they are housed in
Detail of the woodworking from one of the ships
One of the sessions that really stood out for me was run by Gary Lock, Agiatis Benardou, Costis Dallas, Paul Reilly and Jeremy Huggett; a roundtable on scenarios for the next five years of archaeological computing. It was a really challenging session making us all think about the future of digital archaeology and I’m looking forward to hearing about the follow up to the session.
Finally on the last day I “conference-bombed” the digiTAG session ran by my friend Sara and her colleagues. They had a couple of presenters drop out and wanted to fill a couple of spots. All I can say what seemed like a good idea at 10pm after a few pints seemed less appealing at 6am the next morning. But I gave a quick presentation on theorising archaeo-acoustics, a presentation I had wimped out of submitting to their session in the first place; and I think it was well received (or at least twitter seemed to think so). The whole session was fantastic and drew together a number of my thoughts on the lack of theoretical engagement with digital approaches. I was sad to miss the concluding discussions.
Site visit selfie #safteyfirst
What is your job role?
Office dog
How long have you worked for Allen Archaeology?
Nearly 6 months
How would describe your excavation technique?
Fast! But possibly in need of direction
How long have you been working in archaeology?
Nearly 6 months
How did you get into archaeology?
One member of my household staff had to go away for a week so the other had to bring me to the office. Everyone was so nice I couldn’t possibly consider doing anything else.
What is the best thing about your job?
Engaging with people, when I’m in the office everyone wants to talk to me and see what i’m “working” on!
Working hard in the office
Specialist skills?
Claiming sites – if you want that piece of masonry or mud marked, I’m your dog!
Best site hut biscuit?
Any within nose height!