archaeotech

Finding Hidden Rooms at Teotihuacan with Science - Archaeotech 134

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Teotihuacan was a massive, important, city near modern day Mexico City. There are several massive pyramids on the site and two of them have caves UNDER the pyramid. The pyramid of the moon was the focus of the paper linked below and Denisse Argote and Andres Tejero use two techniques to try to identify the presence or absense of a cave beneath it. Those techniques are Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) and Ambient Noise Tomography (ANT).

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Archaeology and Big Data with Parker VanValkenburgh and Andy Dufton - Archaeotech 133

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Paul and Chris have been saying for years that there is no digital archaeology because that implies there is archaeology that does NOT have a digital component. Well, that just doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Our guests today, Parker VanValkenburgh and Andy Dufton helped bring a supplement about digital archaeology and the ethical considerations to the Journal of Field Archaeology. They come on today to talk about it.

Parker VanValkenburgh is an archaeologist whose research focuses on landscapes, politics and environmental change in the Early Modern World – particularly, in late prehispanic and early colonial Peru. He received his Ph.D. in 2012 from Harvard University and previously held positions at the University of Vermont (Assistant Prof. of Anthropology, 2013-15) and Washington University in St. Louis (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, 2012-13). Among other projects, he is currently director of the Paisajes Arqueológicos de Chachapoyas (PACha) project, an investigation of long-term human-environment interaction in Peru's Chachapoyas region, grounded in the analysis of archaeological survey, archival research, remotely sensed datasets, and work with contemporary communities in the provinces of Luya, Chachapoyas, and Bongará, Amazonas (Peru). He is also a co-director of the GeoPACHA (Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, HIstory and Archaeology). At Brown, he directs the Brown Digital Archaeology Laboratory and teaches courses on Geographic Information Systems, cartography, critical digital archaeology, the politics of space and landscape, historical anthropology, and the archaeology and anthropology of the Andean region.

Andrew Dufton is a Lecturer in Roman Archaeology and History at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD in Archaeology from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, and previously held a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. His research interrogates the long-term dynamics of urban change in North Africa, from the Iron Age into late antiquity. This work highlights the diversity, haphazardness, and improvisation that best characterise urban life in both ancient and modern contexts. He has excavated and surveyed at sites in the US, the UK, and across the Mediterranean, including acting as surveyor and geospatial data manager at the imperial villa and medieval monastery at Villa Magna (2006–2010); at the Tunisian city of Utica (2011–present); and with Brown University at Petra, Jordan (2012–14).

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Archaeology and Gaming with Amanda "Ama" Gomes - ArchaeoTech 132

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Ama Gomes is on the cutting edge of archaeological outreach and education. At Hokkaido University in Japan she's pursuing a PhD studying developments in archaeological outreach and education. On this episode we talk about her work in the Nintendo Game, Animal Crossing, and how people are interacting with cultural objects and themes in that game.

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Maps for Time Travelers with Dr. Mark McCoy - ArchaeoTech 131

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Archaeology is time travel. Full stop. When. you’re standing on a site holding an artifact it’s interesting to imagine what the landscape and environment was like when the person that created it was standing there. Our guest, Dr. Mark McCoy, is using maps and digital archaeology to envision archaeology as Time Travel.

About Mark: Mark D. McCoy is an expert in geospatial archaeology and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. He is the author of over forty scientific journal articles on the archaeology of the Pacific Islands.

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Computational Curious with Dr. Isaac Ullah - ArchaeoTech 130

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Curious about computational archaeology? Wonder how it’s different from digital archaeology? Us too! Dr. Isaac Ullah from San Diego State University tells us all about it and how he’s using open source software to do computational archaeology and reveal secrets about the history of the world.

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Geophysics, Photogrammetry and Drones with Wesley Weatherbee - ArchaeoTech 129

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Paul and Chris talk to Wesley Weatherbee about his research in the Bay of Fundy. Using drones, photogrammetry and other analysis he is, among other things, looking at early human behavior and occupation.

Wesley is a current graduate student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Saint Mary's University. His research on past cultural landscapes in the Bay of Fundy marries remote sensing and geomorphology with archaeology. He serves on the board of directors for the Nova Scotia Archaeology Society and is part of a diverse team in Nova Scotia developed to investigate critical climate-related risks, opportunities, and capacities relating to archaeology in Nova Scotia. His photogrammetry work has recently been nominated to be in the Cultural Heritage Spotlight on Sketchfab.com. He also runs a blog at digitalarchns.com intending to promote digital archaeology outreach and education.

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Multistaged Magnetic Survey in Florida - Ep 128

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Today we have a free-ranging discussion prompted by the article "Using Multistaged Magnetic Survey and Excavation to Assess Community Settlement Organization: A Case Study from the Central Peninsular Gulf Coast of Florida" by Christina Perry Sampson and Timothy J. Horsley, from the February 2020 issue of Advances in Archaeological Practice.

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Web Mapping and Active Learning With LIDAR Data - ArchaeoTech 127

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The phrase, “archaeologists aren’t taught to do that” is prevalent in archaeology. What are archaeologist’s taught? Well, this paper attempts to use alternative methods and crowdsourcing to analyze LIDAR data and overcome some of the shortfalls of academic education.

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Modeling Concentrations of Maritime Activity In The Past with Dr. Matthew Harpster - ArchaeoTech 126

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Today we talk to Dr. Matthew Harpster about his recent collaborative paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science about modeling concentrations of maritime activity in the past using the submerged archaeological record.

Here is the article abstract:

With a goal of understanding and visualizing the shifting concentrations of movement across the Mediterranean Sea on a centennial basis, the MISAMS (Modeling Inhabited Spaces of the Ancient Mediterranean Sea) Project developed a new GIS-based interpretive methodology that collates and superimposes a series of polygons to model densities of maritime activity in the Mediterranean Sea from the 7th century BC to the 7th century AD. After discussing the project's use of place, space, and maritime landscapes as a theoretical background, this paper explains this new methodology then demonstrates and tests results representing activity in the 1st-century BC western-Mediterranean basin. These results, apparently manifesting distinct socially-constructed places, suggest that this new approach creates new opportunities to understand the movement of people and goods across the Mediterranean in the past, and the varying uses and perceptions of maritime space in antiquity. As this method requires a dense and well-studied corpora of archaeological data, it is theoretically applicable to other maritime regions that have (or will have) the appropriate dataset, and may represent a new research agenda in maritime archaeology.

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Site Assessments After a Significant Weather Event with Dr. Tanya Peres - ArchaeoTech 125

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Way back on episode 93 Paul and Chris talked about the article linked below but couldn’t work out a schedule with the authors. Well, now we have Dr. Tanya Peres on to talk about that article and the challenges and successes experienced when assessing sites after a major rain storm in Tennessee.

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Working Remotely During The Zombie Apocalypse - ArchaeoTech 124

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From video conferencing tools to the immediate and lasting effects on field archaeology, Paul and Chris talk about working during this unique time in history.

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GPR and Geophysics with Dr. Dan Bigman - ArchaeoTech 123

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Dr. Dan Bigman from Bigman Geophysical joins the show once again to talk about GPR and other methods in a CRM context. Of course this works for any project, but, we focused on contract archaeology for some portions of this episode.

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The Problem of Archaeological Data with Dr. Peter McKeague - ArchaeoTech 122

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Every year archaeologists create a wealth of data through fieldwork and research that is essential to our understanding and interpretation of the past. Despite the geographic character of much of that record, we consistently fail to realise its potential. Site plans and detailed survey data are routinely locked into the pages of PDF reports. As a result plans fossilised in print cannot easily be reused alongside other datasets to improve our understanding of the past. There is often no consistency in how mapped data can be combined across projects to map the archaeological landscape. We need to wake up to opportunities digital transformation presents us as archaeologists in presenting our data to a wide audience. Dr. Peter McKeague joins us to talk about this problem.

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Drone-Based Photogrammetry and AI for Automated Arch Survey - ArchaeoTech 121

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Dr. Hector Orengo joins us from Spain to talk about a recent paper where his team discusses using photogrammetry and AI to automate archaeological survey. It’s an interesting approach with promising results.

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eBay Woes and Deep Dive on the Mavic Mini - ArchaeoTech 120

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Be carefule when selling tech on eBay - especially drones. Chris relays his ongoing saga with selling his DJI Inspire Pro. At the time of this posting it’s still not over. Also, we talk about selling tech on eBay in general and we do a deep dive on the new DJI Mavic Mini.

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New Advances in Oxygen Isotope Analysis with Dr. Corey Maggiano - ArchaeoTech 119

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Oxygen Isotope analysis has long been used to analyze a person’s skeletal material to find out where they lived and sometimes how they lived. Until now, this has been on a large time scale - often of years and decades. Now, with this new research, some cases can be analyzed down to the month or even tighter. It’s amazing research and further opens our window to the past.

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Dynamic Communities on the Mesa Verde Cuesta with Kelsey Reese - ArchaeoTech 118

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Paul interviews Kelsey Reese about her research at Mesa Verda and a recent paper in American Antiquity. Kelsey is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Notre Dame and is studying the long-term effects of sustained climate change on contemporary subsistence-based farming communities. This episode focuses that research on Mesa Verde in the American Southwest.

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Analyzing the Chacoan Road Network with Sean Field - ArchaeoTech 117

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Researcher Sean Field joins us to talk about his work performing a least cost analysis on the Chacoan Road Network in New Mexico. The Chaco roads are somewhat of a mystery because of their size. Sean talks about his work and recent paper with Paul and Chris.

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The Tools That We Use: Word Processors- ArchaeoTech 116

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We think of archaeologists' main activity as digging. But anybody who's ever done archaeology can tell you that, regardless of what kind of archaeology we do, writing is a far more important skill. Here on the ArchaeoTech Podcast we talk a lot about the tools that we use in the field, but we don't talk so much about the tools that we use to assemble our thoughts when the fieldwork is over. So today we'll dig into a class of often overlooked tools that we all rely on: word processors.

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A Scary Tech Story - ArchaeoTech 115

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OK, it’s not that scary. However, not understanding the tech you’re using and what it’s capable of can be a harrowing experience that can result in the loss of business and more importantly, a loss of scientific data.

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