Johan Linderholm

Lago di Bargone, Liguria, N Italy: a reconstruction of Holocene environmental and land-use history

Sediment micromorphology, chemistry and magnetic susceptibility of basin edge deposits at the small, mid-altitude peat site of Lago di Bargone, eastern Liguria, Italy, is compared with a full Holocene palynological sequence and radiocarbon dates from the central part of the peat bog. Micromorphology and MS550 results show that Neolithic to Copper Age forest disturbances and clearings as inferred from the pollen diagrams, occurred during a period of lower water-tables and intermittent drying out of the basin edge deposits. Extensive deforestation and expansion of heath and grassland during the Iron Age and Roman periods is associated with increases in soil erosion and in micromorphological indications of burning. It is argued that the very fine size range of the charred fragments seen in thin sections and the seeming absence of charcoal of coarser size range suggest a system of light, controlled burning, possibly akin to the local tradition of using fire to control weeds and to encourage new grass and herbaceous growth, and not local forest clearance by fire. Micromorphology of the late-Holocene peat contains herbivore dung possibly indicating the use of the site as a watering hole by domesticated stock. The overlying colluvium displays evidence of deep-seated erosion of the local soils and geology which is most likely to have been associated with local mining activities.

Classification of archaeological soil and sediment samples using near infrared techniques

NIR spectroscopy offers the field archaeologist the possibility to rapidly screen a site. The screening results are useful in themselves or can be used to plan a sampling campaign for slower method ...

Functional interpretation of Iron Age longhouses at Gedved Vest, East Jutland, Denmark: multiproxy analysis of house functionality as a way of evaluating carbonised botanical assemblages

The aim of this article is to describe a methodology for defining functional spaces within south Scandinavian Iron Age longhouses using a multiproxy application of archaeobotanical (carbonised plant macrofossil), geochemical (phosphate, loss on ignition) and geophysical (magnetic susceptibility) analyses. The applicability of the methods is illustrated by two case studies from the site of Gedved Vest, eastern Jutland, Denmark. The approach is described and evaluated from an archaeobotanical perspective, discussing its possible implications for interpretation of carbonised plant assemblages from Iron Age settlement contexts. Possible implications to archaeology beyond the scope of archaeobotany are also discussed.

Portable near infrared spectroscopy and imaging on archaeological sites and samples in the MOBIMA project. Part 1. Field spectroscopy

Johan Linderholm and Paul Geladi report on the start of the MOBIMA project to use NIR spectroscopy and imaging to examine archaelogical sites.

Portable near Infrared Spectroscopy and Imaging on Archaeological Sites and Samples in the MOBIMA Project. Part II. The Potential of Hyperspectral Field Imaging

In a previous article, the use of portable near infrared (NIR) spectrometry for archaeological purposes was explained and illustrated. It was also mentioned that there is a difference in speed betw ...

Field-Based near Infrared Spectroscopy for Analysis of Scandinavian Stone Age Rock Paintings:

During the early autumn of 2014 a field-based near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy study was carried out at Swedish and Norwegian Stone Age rock painting sites. This article presents results from one of them, namely Flatruet, Härjedalen, Sweden. Here, field-based NIR measurements were conducted using the 908–1676 nm wavelength range to gather 479 spectra: 427 of rock paintings and 52 of local lithology background. The whole dataset was analysed using principal component analysis (PCA) and four principal components were extracted explaining 98.5% (PC1), 1.4% (PC2), 0.06% (PC3) and 0.04% (PC4). The PCA results showed that there was a large spread in the spectra of both background and red paint objects, but also some evidence of clustering could be seen where background and paintings could be separated. An improvement in separation was achieved with partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) using the background and paint as categorical variables. The most important components of the PLS-DA model showed a better separation in the score plot. A small test set of 10 paint and 10 background samples showed that one of the paint samples and two of the background samples were misclassified. One conclusion is that there is a large spread in background due to varying precipitation of secondary iron oxides. It was also decided to look deeper into local models of painted elks and their pigments alone. This was done using local PCA models and soft independent modelling of class analogies showing that some painted elks could be separated from each other while others were quite similar, which is important for answering questions about origin, age and weathering.

Alternative ways of achieving near infrared information in field images: a tentative approach

Commercial digital cameras can be converted into a tool for NIR field multivariate imaging. Results obtained using such a tool are far less sophisticated than those obtained by NIR spectrometers or ...

Near infrared spectra and hyperspectral imaging of medieval fortress walls in Carcassonne: a comprehensive interdisciplinary field study

A comprehensive study has been launched in the medieval fortress of Carcassonne involving a cooperation between the universities of Umea and Rennes, and the research institute of IRSTEA of Montpell ...

Identification of fragmented bones and their state of preservation using near infrared hyperspectral image analysis

This preliminary work comprises examples where near infrared (NIR) hyperspectral imaging has been applied to identify animal bone material in complex sieved soil–sediment matrices from an archaeological excavation at a Stone Age site in northern Scandinavia. NIR hyperspectral image analysis has been performed, as a fast and non-destructive technique, on whole bone and tooth samples, as well as on soil from the excavation containing fragmented skeletal material in order to identify fragmented bones, to provide information about the skeletal materials chemistry–mineralogy within the site and the different layers as well as studying the possibility of describing their different state of preservation.