Digital Geoarchaeology: Bridging the Gap Between Archaeology, Geosciences and Computer Sciences

Abstract

Modern archaeology increasingly crosses academic boundaries by combining different new methodologies in order to answer research questions about ancient cultures and their remains. Above all, the geosciences became an indispensable counterpart of archaeology and cultural heritage management. As to the investigation of past archaeological landscapes and palaeoenvironments, the term Geoarchaeology is commonly used, representing the utilization of traditional and the development of new geoscientific applications for archaeological purposes. In addition, computationally engaged research became absolute state of the art in modern archaeology, in geoscientific landscape reconstructions and in the deciphering of spatio-temporal interactions between man and nature. Despite this multidisciplinary constellation, the thematic and methodological overlap of humanities, natural sciences and informatics is frequently disregarded. It is beyond debate that multidisciplinary approaches, which especially emerge at the interface of adjacent subjects, substantially contribute to a better understanding of ancient landscapes, their forming processes and the resulting cultural heritage. They allow fusing complementary perspectives for the first time and therefore go far beyond unilateral research designs. Digital Geoarchaeology, which is to be established in this chapter as a new concept for the first time, can therefore be regarded as an intersection of disciplines that contributes to the consolidation of different academic perspectives. It represents a novel approach in terms of computer scientific methods combined with geoscientific know-how and archaeological expertise to multi-methodically investigate past humanenvironmental relationships. Accessing this multidisciplinary interface helps overcome potentially restricted, monodisciplinary perceptions and provides new forms of unbiased approaches for investigating the interplay of man and nature. Thus, closer collaboration and dialogue across disciplinary boundaries will offer promising prospects for future research at the human-environmental interface.

Possibilities of Using Remote Sensing in Archaeological Research in Bengal Delta in Bangladesh - A Human-Influenced Alluvial Terrain

“…As mentioned earlier that major part of Bangladesh is covered with Quaternary alluvial deposits, the region is tectonically influenced, and the sediments have experienced impacts of climate change as well. Such factors must have influenced the human settlements in the alluvial terrain, found ideal for past settlements [54]. Factors that influences changes in the landforms of the country at present time discussed in the previous paragraphs might have also influenced in the past resulting burial of human settlements or archaeological marks on the delta.…”

“…Thus, another advantage of modern-day technology may be taken that includes integration of data from multiple sources to extract better and/or more information, and even multitemporal, multi-resolution, multi-sensor or multi-data type may be integrated, depending on the objectives of the work. The use of remote sensing has been applied to archaeological prospection and monitoring since the early days of aviation [53][54][55]. Lambers [56] found great potential for a truly semantic analysis of remote sensing data for archaeological purposes.…”

The battle of Vossenack Ridge: exploring interdisciplinary approaches for the detection of U.S. Army field positions on a Second World War battlefield

“…Digital geoarchaeology (Siart et al 2018a & b) and innovations in near-surface geophysics (Linford et al 2019), for example, have opened up new perspectives. Not only do these approaches lead to a broader understanding of archaeological landscapes, but also to a new scale of exploration, prospection and GIS-driven spatial analysis of the materiality of war (Nolan 2013;Siart et al 2018a).…”

Reflections on the Use of Social Networking Sites as an Interactive Tool for Data Dissemination in Digital Archaeology

“…Additional digital neighbouring "disciplines" also exist, such as the highly independent, do-it-yourself and mainly self-funded punk archaeology, as well as digital geoarchaeology, digital history, digital literary history, digital musicology, or digital philology (e.g. Ghilardi, Desruelles, 2009;Graham et al, 2016;Gregory, 2014;Murrieta-Flores et al, 2017;Nichols, Altschul, 2012;Pugin, 2015;Schofield, 2017;Siart et al, 2017).…”

“…Comparing digital archaeology and digital geoarchaeology may show that these different digital "disciplines" are more formally divided than they practically are. Recently, it was claimed that the use of digital methods and applications derived from geomatics in an archaeological context would define digital geoarchaeology (Siart et al, 2017). Nonetheless, spatial analysis using geographic information systems (GIS), for example, is inherent to archaeology, geology, geomatics, geoarchaeology, digital geoarchaeology, as well as digital archaeology (e.g.…”