Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Via the seasite mailing list, this article about the difference between underwater archaeology, salvage, and treasure-hunting really got me thinking.

I started off as a diver, then a marine archaeologist, and often came into contact with the strange point of view that if you find something underwater, like something from a wreck, it’s OK to prise it off and take it home to display proudly on your wall, yet you’d hardly go and break the wing-mirror off someone’s car. A friend became an archaeologist for Odyssey, the controversial marine salvage firm, and was ostracised amongst the academic community for his decision, yet he just wanted to put food on his children’s table, and felt that it was better for Odyssey to have some archaeologists trying to do things right than none at all.

Clearly, the difference between archaeology and treasure hunting or salvage is not clear, and is often quite emotive. This latest article, though, makes me feel even more uneasy about this strange blurring of lines. From what I can tell, treasure-hunters felt it was their right to steal things, even when visited by the police and the coast guard.

I don’t think this happens all that often on land, though we have occasionally had to hire 24 hour security for our sites to stop metal-detectorists coming in and digging things up. And sometimes to stop feral children getting in and setting fire to things. But that’s a different story…

The only conclusion I can come to is that people think it’s OK to do this sort of thing underwater, or at sea, because they don’t think they will be seen or caught. So, people behave themselves only because they think they will be censured by their peers, not because of any inherent sense of right or wrong. How depressing…

I’ve spent the best part of the day musing (whilst working, obviously) about this article, on rivers as archaeological artefacts. It’s a really good article, on how we perceive rivers in archaeology, given their pesky tendency to change course, texture, size and so on.

It suggests that we tend to think of rivers as primarily natural features, part of the landscape and full of nice ducks and fishes. Or, in archaeological terms, we treat them as environmental features and subject them to a barrage of scientific techniques designed to test their sediments, so we see them as nothing more than receptacles for more interesting things that have fallen in, such as bugs, seeds, people, boats, etc. We don’t tend to take notice of them as cultural features in their own right, as we would a road, or even a field.

I’m not sure that I totally agree that rivers get ignored as cultural features, after all I’ve spent the best part of two years on projects where the river was a fairly central feature. However, I do think we could perhaps do more by them, give them the credit they deserve, after all in prehistoric times (and more recently in some areas) they were the primary transport network, and have always been social and political boundaries, supplies of food and drink, and the location of most of the industry.

With my database-head on, I think we need a method of describing them in a way that embraces their flexibility and dual nature. They are never just going to be one thing at a time, which makes it difficult to use standard methods of classification. To classify a standard archaeological feature, such as a mill, we would tend to say that it had several phases of use that follow on from each other, but at any one time it has one primary function. Obviously this isn’t going to work for rivers! Another approach would be to split a river up into sections, and define a different use for each section. These would need to overlap so that you could show multiple uses.

I’m not going to take this much further right now, but it has made me think a little more about rivers and how we look at them, and I will try and apply this next time I get one in a project…

So, here’s to rivers and all that sail on them/fall in them/use them/draw pictures of  them/write stories about them.

Just what we needed- some good news- the AHRC are to continue funding the ADS. There isn’t any information publicly available yet as to how long the funding will last, and there is an intimation that charges for use will have to change, but all in all this is a good thing!

February’s quick links:

• Via my new colleague (Hi Ben), some tutorials for using QGIS and GRASS as opposed to (or in conjunction with) ArcGIS on an archaeological project
• Andlinux- a different way of accessing linux-based programmes without going through cygwin.  I’ve managed to get GRASS installed, though I haven’t tried it out in anger yet.
• A n00bs guide to installing linux programmes from source. Don’t be scared, it’s not that bad, though I’d add in how to get the command line to send it’s output to a log file for those times when it all goes wrong and you didn’t happen to catch the error as it scrolled past really fast…