Geosciences

This article discusses a GIS analysis of the results of the Carthaginian Countryside project conducted by Joseph Greene from 1979 to 1983. The 136 sites identified by the project constitute one of the largest datasets of site locations recorded in the hinterland of Carthage from multiple time periods. The results of this survey have generally not been integrated into modern studies of the region because the project was never fully published and has not been digitised. This paper discusses the challenges of working with legacy data and the importance of using GIS to both preserve and analyse the Carthaginian Countryside project. The results presented here reveal new insights into the antiquity of the rural landscape around the city of Carthage and the importance of revisiting legacy datasets to contextualise current research.

This article discusses a GIS analysis of the results of the Carthaginian Countryside survey conducted by Joseph Greene from 1979 to 1983. The 136 sites identified by the project constitute one of the largest datasets of site locations recorded in the hinterland of Carthage from multiple time periods. The results of this survey have not generally been integrated into modern studies of the region because the project was never fully published and has not been digitised. This paper discusses the challenges of working with legacy data and the importance of using GIS to both preserve and analyse the Carthaginian Countryside survey. The results presented here reveal new insights into the antiquity of the rural landscape around the city of Carthage and the importance of revisiting legacy datasets to contextualise current research.

Households, Settlements, and Landscapes in Iron Age, Roman, and Early Medieval Northumbria: A Spatial Analysis of NorthEast England, c. 100 BC-AD 800 This thesis argues that the spatial organisation of the built environment in northeastern England between c. 100 BC-AD 800 reflects the complexities of culture contact, the transmission of ideas, and social change. It is suggested here that the examination of space and place in Britain between the late Iron Age (c. 100 BC-AD 43), Roman (c. AD 43-410) and Early Medieval (c. AD 410 to 800) periods can be used to analyse the changes and/or continuities in socio-cultural ideas and traditions. Two study regions to the north and south of Hadrian's Wall within the boundaries of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria are analysed using established and innovative computational techniques to understand what affect, if any, the inhabitants of Iron Age and Roman Britain had on the shape of the Early Medieval built environment. Settlement data was compiled into a Geographical Information System and established spatial analysis techniques that focus on site placement were combined with an innovative use of Visibility Graph Analysis to quantitatively analyse the spatial organisation of households and communities between c. 100 BC and AD 800. Visibility Graph Analysis is used to statistically measure the visual arrangement of built space in order to examine continuities or disruptions to the organisation of structures and settlements. The results alter our understanding of this period by revealing broad continuities in the spatial organisation of the built environment across the analysed time periods. This suggests that regional identity was influential in the formation and use of the built environment in the two study regions between c. 100 BC and AD 800. This has significant implications for understanding how Britain was transformed over the longue durée between the Iron Age and Early Medieval periods. These findings suggest that continuities in the spatial arrangement and organisation of the built environment are indicative of gradual change rather than abrupt disruption, and adds to current debates on how regions of Britain were transformed between late prehistory and the early historic era. "The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged."

For archaeology to survive in the present and for critical discourse on the past to thrive, archaeologists must advocate for the discipline's continued relevancy. In this Debate article, the authors illustrate the potential and challenges of such advocacy by examining contemporary perceptions of the Roman period Hadrian's Wall and how it relates to modern border landscapes-namely the US/Mexico border. They argue that archaeologists have not addressed the imagined continuity of socio-political narratives surrounding borderlands, calling for wider recognition of border materiality. The authors contend that the uncritical portrayal of the past, particularly in politically charged spaces such as border zones, can contribute to inequality and oppression in the present.

Roman frontiers continue to have a significant impact on contemporary geopolitical landscapes. In East-Central Europe, the Lower Danube frontier serves as the border between Romania and Bulgaria, while Hadrian’s Wall is persistently drawn into popular discourse as the imagined border between England and Scotland, despite it never functioning as a boundary between these nations. These frontiers each involve waterscapes that had a noteworthy impact on the frontier landscape and its continued memorialisation.

This chapter explores the waterways in and along frontiers as not only geographically expedient end points of the built environment but that have a linked materiality that has not been critically appraised and brought into discussions of these frontiers. Through a comparative approach focusing on portions of Hadrian’s Wall as well as the Roman frontier along the Lower Danube, this chapter demonstrates that an understanding of the interactions between the built and natural boundaries is essential for understanding their long-term impact on modern socio-political landscapes. Using spatial analysis within a geographical information system (GIS), this chapter probes the dual nature of waterways as both barriers and networks and how these aspects worked together to create perceived border zones that still exist in popular imagination of borders today.

As zoonotic diseases coevolved with early agriculture, social distancing within dense human settlements could have conferred a selective advantage in terms of infection risk. Here, we consider the case of Trypillia mega-settlements after 4000 BC, as virulent diseases began affecting humans in the Black Sea region. Through epidemiological susceptible-infected-recovered-susceptible (SIRS) models situated on clustered networks and on a site plan of a Trypillia mega-settlement, we show the adaptive benefits of decreasing either occupation density or the frequency of interactions with other communities across the settlement. We explore critical thresholds in these parameters that may shed light on the fluctuations of population densities at Trypillia mega-settlements before and after approximately 3600 BCE. Our findings suggest that disease was probably a significant driver of human settlement patterns by late Neolithic times.