Archeologia e Calcolatori 2 - 1991

The authors present the research activity carried out at the “Centre de recherche sur les Traitements Automatisés en Archéologie Classique”. This activity can be divided into two main themes. The purpose of the first is to publish works intended to standardise descriptive archaeological language. The second aims at creating data banks, with particular reference to classical archaeology, and videodisks permitting the association of images to the relative documents.

The author explains the principles applied by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione for the automatic processing of archaeological data in connection with the tasks of protection and preservation of the national cultural heritage. These principles aim at characterizing each archaeological work and at determining the relationships between these and their territorial context in a global historical dimension. Recent research works, and in particular those (generally disappointing) undertaken in the context of the so called “Giacimenti Culturali”, pointed out the necessity of a conceptual, more than technological, coordination. For this reason some fundamental methodological tools were implemented: “Dizionari Terminologici”, “Strutturazioni dei dati” and photographic inventories published by the Institute.

This paper presents an experimental project in the use of Personal Computers for teaching archaeology at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Venice. During three academic years from 1987/88 to 1989/90 the students worked on input and output of excavation data from existing information complied on sheets called “Unità Stratigrafiche” and “Elementi Strutturali”, using the Software Data Base III Plus. Furthermore the students began to use the graphical software package AutoCad, to draw the successive layers including their with tridimensional rendering.

The paper identifies a number of possible developments in archaeology in the ’90s. The epigenetic panorama is seen as evolving in three major directions, which are termed, ironically, “pie archaeology”, “ambush archaeology” and “glove archaeology”. This latter direction, an emerging but still undefined area at the critical interface between archaeological theory and Artificial Intelligence, is identified as the most promising for the near future, particularly since it may unblock the impasse which hinders theoretical development. This “pipe-dream” is discussed with reference to the Anglo-Italian field-survey project, the “Progetto Alto-Medio Polesine-Basso Veronese”, where an attempt is being made to put theory into practice

The determination of cultural groups is revealed as one of the basic principles in undertaking the study of social formations in the Bronze Age complex panorama in the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper an analysis model is proposed for its identification in a southern area of the Iberian mountain range by means of statistical multivariate analysis (Cluster Analysis and Principal Components Analysis) and study on the pottery, particularly the decoration. In this way, we have succeeded in identifying two groups with distinct personalities, coincidental with many other microregions whose diversification emerges in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600-1300 BC), showing a process of territorial fragmentation after the apparent uniformity dominant during the Early Bronze Age.

In this paper a comparison between data on African Red Slip from several Italian and African sites is attempted. The aim of this preliminary survey is the detection of variations in the distribution and use of this ceramic production in the 5th century AD. At the same time the patterns of trade, and the differences between the diffusion in African sites, the overseas distribution and the local markets, are examined. Those differences can be detected by means of comparative analysis between contexts coming from different kinds of settlements: major centres, ports or more or less isolated sites. The presence of the various productions and forms of ARS have been compared with multivariate statistical analyses.

The article is addressed to the archaeologist, usually a “non expert” beneficiary of the innovative computer science techniques, but, at the same time, bearer of very complex requests. It proposes to give a concise and up to date view of the state of CAD software, especially as regards tridimensional graphics.

The article is addressed to the archaeologist, usually a “non expert” beneficiary of the innovative computer science techniques, but, at the same time, bearer of very complex requests. It proposes to give a concise and up to date view of the state of CAD software, especially as regards tridimensional graphics.

The author describes new additional qualities of the program ARBOR which allow a less redundant object description and facilitate the setting up and the use of pictorial databases.

Nike is a computer system to support the archaeologist’s work. It can be used from the early phases of an archaeological excavation: from information gathering, to the actual excavation, up to the elaboration of its results. Nike organises in a single data base both graphical and textual data, in order to facilitate the collection, preservation, maintenance, and retrieval of information. Nike is a highly interactive system, and the navigation in the database depends on the result of the previous choice, according to the logical links present in the data itself, and guided by the specific needs of the researcher

The article explains the theoretical aspects of a cataloguing plan financed in the context of the so-called “Giacimenti Culturali” (Lana 41/86, Art. 15). This work concerns some areas of the city of Rome, in particular, monumental and topographical survey, territorial and architectonical cataloguing techniques, that are discussed here with the aid of computer science. The subsequent development of this plan will have as a fundamental issue the drawing of a prototypal magnetic Forma Urbis, suitable for, the safeguarding of the cultural heritage or for scientific purposes.

As part of an on-going project for a London based Archaeological Information System, work on the automatic generation of stratigraphic adjacency matrices has been jointly undertaken by the Department of Urban Archaeology (MOL) and the Department of Photogrammetry and Survey (UCL). Such a program has been developed on an Apple Macintosh using SQL treewalking techniques (under Oracle RDBMS) and a Hypertext interface which handles graphic presentation and manages rule based drawing conventions (using Supercard object-oriented hypertext). The ultimate goal of this research is the creation of an interactive reporting structure which allows access to many levels of recorded and interpretive site information.

This article proposes a hypertext technology-based system for the management of archaeological documentation. The system is conceived to give archaeologists the means to have on-line all information about an archaeological context, so that this information is available to more than one workstation. In such a way the archaeologist is enabled to operate in real-time, to extract and manipulate on different levels the information on which the research is based.

A set of related historical, geographical and cultural arguments shows that a connection exists between urban planning and territorial morphology for seven Greek colonies in Sicily, namely: Himera, Megara Hyblaea, Siracusa, Gela, Agrigento, Heraclea Minoa, Selinunte. It is discussed here how, in those cases, the neighbouring landscape justifies the geographical location, the site choice, and the displacements of functional and architectural elements in the site. The enlighted connection is concerned with both functional and aesthetical aspects of the landscape. The quantity and complexity of documents led to a different methodology of data analysis and presentation, i.e. the hypertext methodology, which, although not new, has been highly developed in the last few years thanks to the capillary diffusion of computers and especially the flourishing of programmes for the development of hypertext applications.

Un Colloque 'Epigraphie et Informatique' s'est tenu à l'Université de Lausanne les 26 et 27 mai 1989 sous le haut patronage de l'AIEGL (cf. compte rendu in Epigraphica LI, 1989, p. 275-279). A l'issue du colloque, le bureau de l'AIEGL et les partecipants ont désigné une commission chargée de recueillir des reinsegnements sur l'utilisation de l'informatique dans les recherches conduites acutellement en épigraphie grecque et latine.