Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

The dig in the West Kennet Avenue, August 2013

It’s been almost a decade since I was last digging at Avebury as part of the ‘Negotiating Avebury‘ project, so it was lovely to be invited along with my Avebury Archaeological and Historical Research Group (AAHRG) colleagues to visit the latest excavations at this amazing place, part of the current ‘Between the Monuments‘ project and following the team’s 2012 geophysical survey. This latest project features two of the site directors from the Negotiating Avebury Project, Dr Josh Pollard (University of Southampton) and Dr Mark Gillings (University of Leicester), joined this time by Dr Nick Snashall (National Trust) as co-director.

Looking back in time: Alexander Keiller’s trench reopened

This years dig has opened up two trenches in the area of the West Kennet Avenue where Alexander Keiller identified what he described as a settlement site. Indeed, one of the trenches has been opened up over one of Keiller’s trenches to see what remains and how he dug the site. The excavations are being blogged by the project team as work progresses.

I was amazed to see the deposits in this section of the Avenue. There is a virtually untouched soil going right down to the chalk, soil which looks to have never been ploughed or otherwise interfered with. There are also no major cut features one might expect to find in the chalk around Avebury and elsewhere. Instead, artefacts reside pretty much where they were deposited, helped into their final resting places by the usual range of natural processes such as worm action.

The deposits being excavated

The nature of the deposits has led to the adoption of a slightly different excavation strategy. Single context style recording is not ideally suited so the site has been gridded and then excavated in spits down through the fairly homogeneous soil to the flinty layer and ultimately the chalk beneath. This will allow for fine horizontal and vertical spatial resolution in the excavation data, ideal for the intended GIS based analysis.

The nature of these deposits also raises questions about the often employed strategy common in commercial fieldwork where the ‘topsoil’ is machined off to reveal cut features in the chalk below; such an approach used here would have revealed nothing yet the site is demonstrably rich in information.

Spatial Data

The level; essential bit of archaeological survey kit

With Mark Gillings involved, there was always going to be extensive (and exemplary) use of GIS. To support this, other data is being gathered including photogrammetric data captured using pole mounted cameras (courtesy of Adam Stanford and his amazing Aerial Cam landrover) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The data it is possible to capture using UAVs combined with photogrammetric techniques is highly detailed and most useful for archaeological investigations.

GSTAR

Another reason for my visit was to discuss possibilities relating to my GSTAR project and given that the Between the Monuments project is right in the middle of my study area and data from this site will be extensively digitised, the activities indexed by the HER and Oasis and artefacts lodged with the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, my intention is to look at using some of the data for one of my case studies. This case study will involve the application of Linked Data techniques to (spatial) data from excavations, heritage inventories and museums; more on this to follow later this year, but for now, many thanks to the project directors and the aforementioned organisations for their kind permission to reuse their data.

Trench 2 being excavated, with the megalithic avenue in the background and the Aerial Cam landrover

Photos, Panoramas and PhotoSynths

As usual, I took quite a few photos during my visit! A selection of the best are shown below, taken from my Flickr photoset. I also took the opportunity to create a panoramic image from atop the spoil heap and used all the images to create a PhotoSynth.

Flickr Gallery

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157634971425709″]

Panorama

Photosynth

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