Vincent Gaffney - Böcker

Heritage is everywhere, and an understanding of our past is increasingly critical to the understanding of our contemporary cultural context and place in global society. Visual Heritage in the Digital Age presents the state-of-the-art in the application of digital technologies to heritage studies, with the chapters collectively demonstrating the ways in which current developments are liberating the study, conservation and management of the past. Digital approaches to heritage have developed significantly over recent decades in terms of both the quantity and range of applications. However, rather than merely improving and enriching the ways in which we understand and engage with the past, this technology is enabling us to do this in entirely new ways.The chapters contained within this volume present a broad range of technologies for capturing data (such as high-definition laser scanning survey and geophysical survey), modelling (including GIS, data fusion, agent-based modelling), and engaging with heritage through novel digital interfaces (mobile technologies and the use of multi-touch interfaces in public spaces). The case studies presented include sites, landscapes and buildings from across Europe, North and Central America, and collections relating to the ancient civilisations of the Middle East and North Africa. The chronological span is immense, extending from the end of the last ice age through to the twentieth century.These case studies reveal new ways of approaching heritage using digital tools, whether from the perspective of interrogating historical textual data, or through the applications of complexity theory and the modelling of agents and behaviours. Beyond the data itself, Visual Heritage in the Digital Age also presents fresh ways of thinking about digital heritage. It explores more theoretical perspectives concerning the role of digital data and the challenges that are presented in terms of its management and preservation.

Heritage is everywhere, and an understanding of our past is increasingly critical to the understanding of our contemporary cultural context and place in global society. Visual Heritage in the Digital Age presents the state-of-the-art in the application of digital technologies to heritage studies, with the chapters collectively demonstrating the ways in which current developments are liberating the study, conservation and management of the past. Digital approaches to heritage have developed significantly over recent decades in terms of both the quantity and range of applications. However, rather than merely improving and enriching the ways in which we understand and engage with the past, this technology is enabling us to do this in entirely new ways.The chapters contained within this volume present a broad range of technologies for capturing data (such as high-definition laser scanning survey and geophysical survey), modelling (including GIS, data fusion, agent-based modelling), and engaging with heritage through novel digital interfaces (mobile technologies and the use of multi-touch interfaces in public spaces). The case studies presented include sites, landscapes and buildings from across Europe, North and Central America, and collections relating to the ancient civilisations of the Middle East and North Africa. The chronological span is immense, extending from the end of the last ice age through to the twentieth century.These case studies reveal new ways of approaching heritage using digital tools, whether from the perspective of interrogating historical textual data, or through the applications of complexity theory and the modelling of agents and behaviours. Beyond the data itself, Visual Heritage in the Digital Age also presents fresh ways of thinking about digital heritage. It explores more theoretical perspectives concerning the role of digital data and the challenges that are presented in terms of its management and preservation.

Croatia has a unique geographical and historical position within Europe, bridging central and south-east Europe. From the Pannonian Plain to the southern Adriatic maritime landscape, interconnectedness flows through Croatia’s history. This dynamic past is increasingly being reflected upon by a new and exciting generation of Croatian scholars who are firmly embedded within a strong national tradition of archaeology but who also look outward to draw insights into the nature of material culture they encounter in Croatia and Croatian identity itself. Croatia at the Crossroads (24-25 June, Europe House, London) provided the opportunity to reflect upon such interconnectedness and Croatia’s historic place within Europe. This event typified the desire of Croatian archaeologists to engage with such matters on an international level and to situate their scholarship within broader regional dynamics. Following the foundation of the new Croatian state, the opportunities for new forms of engagement have grown. This has stimulated thinking regarding both approaches to archaeology and the potential cultural cross-fertilisation that has resulted in Croatia’s rich archaeological and historical record. This has led to in new, exciting understandings of archaeological material, and this was revealed in contributions to the Croatia at the Crossroads conference. The papers published here arise from the exceptionally interesting presentations and discussions held in London at the conference. Each of them takes Croatia’s particular interconnectedness in terms of social and cultural relationships with the wider region as the starting point for exploring issues across a broad chronological range, from human origins to modernity. Within this, contributors pick up on a variety of different fields of interconnectedness and forms of interaction including biological, cultural, religious, military, trade, craft and maritime relationships. In many ways, these papers represent opening conversations that explore ways of thinking about new and established data sets that are entering Croatian scholarship for the first time. They also act as a set of complementary discussions that transcend traditional period and national boundaries. We hope that by bringing them together the volume will provide an insight into current trends in Croatian archaeology and stimulate fruitful discussions regarding future directions.

The landscape of Fort Hood, in central Texas, presents archaeologists and cultural resource managers with some of their most exacting but absorbing challenges. That much is clear from the activities of the many archaeologists and heritage managers who have sought to use the extensive cultural database and unique landscape of the base as a test bed for research and management methodologies. This project, carried out as an international collaboration between the Fort Hood Cultural Resource Management Team and the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (University of Birmingham, UK), sought to provide a novel application of historic landscape characterisation (HLC) methodologies at the base. For decades, the effective stewardship and management of cultural resources at Fort Hood, Texas, has proven to be a formidable challenge. Balancing this responsibility with the Army mission at Fort Hood, which includes ongoing intensive mechanized training across a 217,000-acre military reservation, has tested the abilities of even the most capable of cultural resource managers. The identification of over 2,000 archaeological sites on the installation, while a great accomplishment, pales in comparison to the demands of determining site significance. Now, with this innovative historic landscape characterization study, the authors have presented us with an extraordinary opportunity to view these resources within the context of a cultural landscape that systematically considers the multiple roles of Fort Hood. It is hoped that this will facilitate the move from significance determinations that are site-specific to ones based upon, as the authors state, the concepts of group value and spatial relationships at a landscape level. The accompanying CD (displaying selected data layers provided as Google Earth layers) assists readers in viewing and interpreting the data and the value of HLC procedures and output for the purposes of heritage management. Contents: 1. The Origins and Aims of the Fort Hood Historic Landscape Characterisation Project; 2) Approaches to historic landscape characterisation; 3) Fort Hood in Context; 4) The Fort Hood archaeological database; 5) The historic landscape characterisation project.

12,000 years ago the area that now forms the southern North Sea was dry land: a vast plain populated by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. By 5,500 BC the entire area had disappeared beneath the sea as a consequence of rising sea levels. Until now, this unique landscape remained hidden from view and almost entirely unknown. The North Sea Palaeolandscape Project, funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, have mapped 23,000 km2 of this “lost world” using seismic data collected for mineral exploration. "Mapping Doggerland" demonstrates that the North Sea covers one of the largest and best preserved prehistoric landscapes in Europe. In mapping this exceptional landscape the project has begun to provide an insight into the historic impact of the last great phase of global warming experienced by modern man and to assess the significance of the massive loss of European land that occurred as a consequence of climate change.

How we understand our shared and individual heritage, interpret and disseminate that knowledge is increasingly central to contemporary society.  The emerging context for such development is the field of heritage science.  Inherently interdisciplinary, and involving both the Arts and Humanities, engineering, conservation and the digital sciences, the development of heritage science is a driver for change; socially, economically and technically. This book has gathered contributions from leading researchers from across the world and provides a series of themed contributions demonstrating the theoretical, ethical, methodological and technical methods which lie at the heart of heritage science. Archaeology, conservation, museology, the arts, forensic sciences, and heritage management are represented through collaborative research with specialists in applied technologies including object and terrestrial laser scanning, multi-spectral imaging, visualisation, GIS and 3D-printing.Together, the chapters present important case studies to demonstrate the recent advances and best practise within the discipline, highlighting the value of digital transformation across the heritage community that includes objects, monuments, sites and landscapes spanning two million years of natural and cultural history from all over the world. Visual Heritage: Digital Approaches in Heritage Science is aimed at a broad academic and practice-led readership, which extends across many disciplines and will be of considerable value to scholars, practitioners, and students working within heritage and computer science at all levels. The content, which applies heritage science across two million years of cultural history will be appreciated by a general audience, as well as those wishing simply to explore the vast range of potential technical applications across all the disciplines represented in the book.