Embracing digitality is to a large degree a question of competence of critically understanding a branch of technologies, their use, usefulness and direct and indirect cultural repercussions. It is ...

This chapter argues that while archaeological objects can be experienced, as well as interacted with, remotely through digital displays and interfaces, thus reducing the need of spatial juxtaposition between the observer and objects, there are situations where the physical location of objects and the authority over them remains of crucial significance and imposes limitations on the 'digitisability' of the objects and the qualities they hold. Moreover, future projects will need to develop better means of two-way functionality beyond interactivity. This, in turn, will require new forms of administration of web-content and social media and the overcoming of obstacles for communication.

Recent studies have shown that pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon undertook significant landscape modifications, including earthworks. Our fieldwork has revealed that pre-Columbian settlements in the Santarem Region, Lower Amazon, were not limited to the vicinities of permanent water courses, as formerly often assumed. Instead, numerous archaeological sites, dating from ca.a.d. 1300 up to the time of European colonization in the seventeenth century, have been found in an upland area known as the Belterra Plateau, south of the present-day city of Santarem. These upland sites have been found to be associated with particular features in the landscape: cavities or depressions, known locally as Pocos de agua. LiDAR data shows that a pattern of non-randomly distributed depressions extends far into the densely forested Tapajos National Forest (Flona-Tapajos), allowing us to suggest that the expansion of inland settlement extended considerably farther to the south than what has previously been established through conventional archaeological fieldwork.

This article applies a neo-documentalist approach to explore disciplinary documentation and document practices, assumed to condition disciplinary knowledge-making. The aim is to show how conceptions and materialities of what counts as documentation and documents are intertwined with changing and persisting disciplinary and sub-disciplinary practices of producing information and knowledge, of knowing, and informing. A collective, multivocal autoethnographic method is used to obtain vignettes from five areas of activity in or related to archaeology. The ongoing digitization of archaeological investigation and documentation methods, and of archaeological materials, is used as a shared departure point in the vignettes, explaining how digitization influences documents in each area of archaeology. The vignettes illustrate a multitude of conceptions and materialities of documentation and reveal frictions, both within and between sub-disciplinary areas. In light of the exploration of documentation practices in archaeology, we posit that a neo-documentalist perspective functions as a useful analytical tool for deconstructing habitual and canonical conceptions of documentation in disciplines and practices. The approach is especially powerful for pinpointing and explicating frictions between conceptions of documentation that can cause problems in information sharing and communication. We discuss the potential of the neo-documentalist approach as a practical tool to plan for and implement change in documentation and document practices.

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are fertile soils for agricultural production as well as important archaeological resources for understanding the pre-Columbian past of the Neotropical lowland rainforest. ADEs are threatened by expanding land exploitation and there is a need to develop efficient approaches to soil mapping and analysis for documenting these soils. In this paper we assess the potential of satellite remote sensing and proximal soil sensing to map, predict and monitor ADEs in land affected by agro-industrial development. We use instruments based on portable x-ray fluorescence (PXRF) and electromagnetic induction (EMI) as well as high-resolution satellite data (Spot 6) for detailed soil surveys at a 10-ha ADE site now mainly used for soybean production on the Belterra Plateau, Pará, Brazil. We predict the regional occurrence of ADE in a c. 250km2 test area centred on the known ADE site São Francisco using satellite data. Multivariate adaptive regression splines models were parameterised for predictions of soil organic carbon (SOC), cation exchange capacity (CEC), phosphorus (P) and depth of the A horizon in ADEs from sensor data – both from individual sensors and in sensor combinations. Combining sensors gave the best validation results: the highest modelling efficiencies (E) were 0.70 (SOC), 0.88 (CEC) and 0.74 (for both P and A depth). The most powerful single proximal sensor outputs in the predictions were Sr from the PXRF data and magnetic susceptibility (MSa) as measured by the EMI instrument. In the regional satellite based model we located 17 previously unrecorded ADE sites >2ha. Ground control checks showed that 10 out of 11 sites were correctly classified. We conclude that these sensors are useful in studies of ADE in deforested cropland and provide new opportunities for detailed studies of the archaeological record.

In the Brazilian Amazon patches of anthropogenic soils known as Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) occur. These soils are rich in carbon (C) and plant nutrients compared to the naturally occurring strongly weathered soils. In this paper we explore the potential of visible to near infrared (vis–NIR) and mid infrared (MIR) spectroscopy as an alternative to traditional soil analysis of ADE properties for predicting and assessing spatial distributions. We also test whether partial least square regression (PLSR) models generated from soil data at one ADE site can serve as a basis for predictive assessments of soil characteristics at another. The study was carried out at two locations on the Belterra Plateau, Pará state, Brazil, each including soils that displayed typical ADE characteristics. Laboratory analyses confirmed the occurrence of general properties typical of ADE: elevated pH, phosphorus (P), exchangeable calcium (Ca), cation exchange capacity (CEC), and soil organic carbon (SOC) in the study areas. For C and CEC, MIR models were more efficient than those based on vis–NIR (R2=0.90 and 0.82 vs. 0.72 and 0.63). The soil maps produced from the PLSR models adequately described the spatial pattern of SOC, CEC, and Ca. However, useful models of soil P could not be produced. We conclude that spectroscopy can be useful for assessing the spatial distribution of some of the most important ADE properties. MIR spectroscopy models in particular have the potential to be an alternative to traditional soil analysis.

We tested if hand-carried field proximal soil sensing (PSS) can be used to map the distribution of anthropogenic Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE). ADE soils are rich in archaeological artefacts, nutrients, organic matter and carbon in the very stable form of pyrogenic carbon, also referred to as black carbon or biochar. To test the capacity of PSS to detect signature ADE properties we measured electrical conductivity (ECa), magnetic susceptibility (MSa) and gamma ray data by transect sampling and compared these readings, using fuzzy classification, with datasets on chemical soil properties from a 28 ha large study area located on the Belterra Plateau of the Lower Amazon in northern Brazil. Results indicate that ECa and MSa measurements were good indicators of ADE signatures, but that the gamma radiation sensor was less useful in the deeply weathered soils. PSS and fuzzy classification can be used for rapid field mapping of ADE for both agricultural and archaeological purposes.

Uma das áreas mais promissoras para o estudo das sociedades pré-colombi¬anas complexas na bacia do rio Amazonas é a área do baixo curso dos rios Tapajós, Trombetas e Nhamundá. Há relatos escritos sobre os Konduri e os Tapajó, apresentando informações sobre a sua organização social regional, padrões de comércio, a abundância de alimentos, e o mundo material. Assim, evidências arqueológicas – sítios imensos, solos antrópicos, e belos artefatos – podem ser contrastadas com a informação escrita. Estes ricos depósitos culturais estão desaparecendo a um ritmo alarmante, à medida em que os centros urbanos crescem e se expande a agricultura na região. Apesar desta situação, pouca pesquisa arqueológica tem sido realizada na área, especial-mente quando se trata de investigar os antigos padrões de assentamento e redes de trocas. Nos últimos anos, temos realizado pesquisas na bacia do baixo rio Tapajós. O registro arqueológico indica que a cerâmica mostrando forte semelhança estilística forte com a encontrada no grande sítio cen¬tral está espalhada por pelo menos 90 quilômetros ao sul da presente cidade de Santarém. Este artigo apresenta os resultados de uma pesquisa regional realizada nas proximidades de Santarém, no planalto de Belterra e Alter do Chão, oferecendo uma análise preliminar do sistema de as¬sentamentos na região. Palavras-Chave: Cerâmica tapajônica, padrões de assentamento, baixo Amazonas.

This paper presents and discusses the work and objectives developed within the ongo-ing project Digital Time-travels: New strategies for archaeology and cultural heritage management? The work is focused on the development of new methods for the presentation and publication of archaeological data, particularly the use and effectiveness of digital methods for the presentation of archaeological information to the public. This in-volves cooperation with museums and other institutions as well as with the general public to develop useful and meaningful models of past landscapes and site-contexts with the purpose of augmenting and stimulating public awareness of archaeological remains. This paper presents our work with models visualizing landscape develop-ment and with the design and construction of an interactive interface for mediation and communication of archaeological information through computer-terminals in-stalled as part of museum displays, and through the Internet. The project is funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board and is organized as a joint venture between the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Goth-enburg University, the Department of Architecture at Chalmers University of Tech-nology and the Department of Soil Sciences at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

The Digital Time Travels Project is an interdisciplinary, collaborative initiative which seeks to develop and evaluate new methods for the distribution and representation of digital archaeological information to the public. Toward that end, the project has developed two tools for museum and online use: The first is a physical, tactile model of the Gota Alv river valley in western Sweden, which has been combined with an overhead projector that project a TGIS-based animation of the valleys natural and cultural landscape development from roughly 12500 BP to the present onto the surface of the model. The model is designed to be touched, with various components such as archaeological sites, shoreline locations, and land elevation changes represented by different textures which are also intended to make the model more accessible to the visually impaired. Secondly, a computer application which uses GIS data, 3D scans of archaeological objects, 3D reconstructions and animations of past sites and landscapes to present information about the past in an interactive, multilingual format via touch screen interfaces as well as on the World Wide Web (web). Both the museum exhibit and the web application are under evaluation in order to determine how they are used and how to improve them. In this presentation we outline the development of these tools, evaluate their use, and discuss future plans for their improvement. The museum exhibition opened at Lodose Museum, in the center of the Gota River Valley on June 13th 2009, and a web version of the computer application will later become available through the project website.

This paper describes a project in progress dealing with visualization and mediation of archaeological and cultural heritage information by integrating digital tools in a museum exhibition. In the project an interactive, combined digital and physical model representing the Gota river valley in south-western Sweden is developed. The objective is to utilize audiovisual and tactile information to illustrate the historical development of the region and to communicate historical knowledge in a museum environment in an innovative manner. Although the project is directed to all museum visitors, the focus audience consists of young students and visually impaired. The model comprises three parts: an animation, an audio track, and a tactile model. The animation, together with the audio track, illustrates the landscape development of the valley from the ice age until present. The animations are based on spatial data and calculations for land uplift and shoreline-displacement. The tactile model functions as a background for the projection of the audiovisual component and as communication interface to the visually impaired through a number of unique surface finishes. A first version of the digital model was installed at Lodose Museum at the end of 2007. Late 2008 the combined model will be inaugurated and an evaluation of the visitors’ perception of the model initiated. Feedback has been gained continuously from museum staff and visually impaired, which has influenced the production of the final model. The results of the study will improve knowledge about the impact of digital applications within archaeology and the cultural heritage sector.

Det av Riksantikvarieambetet finansierade FoU-projektet Digitala Tidsresor arbetar sedan varen 2007 med att utveckla datorstodda metoder for formedling, information och kommunikation inom kulturarvsomradet. Arbetet spanner fran framstallning av digitala modeller av enskilda artefakter till illustrationer av kultur- och naturlandskapens utveckling fran tidig forhistorisk tid till nutid. Ett val fungerande samarbete har byggt upp med Lodose Museum och Vastarvet. Formedlings och kommunikationsarbetet riktas dels mot museibesokare och internetanvandare i allmanhet, dels mot de tva specifika malgrupperna skolungdomar och personer med olika grad av synnedsattning. For projektets arbete med tillgangliggorande av kulturarv for synskadade har ekonomiskt stod beviljats fran foreningen ”De Blindas Vanner”. Samarbeten pagar aven med Vitlycke Museum och med Historiska Museet i Stockholm.