Roman Roads

Just quickly. Looking at the downloads available from the Ancient World Mapping Centre (those nice people behind the Barrington Atlas). The above easily created by dropping their Roman roads shape file onto a base map of Europe (very old, using Digital Chart of the World elevation polygons - vector data [hurrah!] - but broken down by country which made stitching the lot together rather painful).

Swineshead Abbey

A slight departure. The idea behind the Lincolnshire Fenland Lidar project was to produce seamless mapping at all scales, from that A0 poster on my wall down to the best resolution that 2m lidar can offer (about 1:5000 in my experience). I still feel the chosen colour ramp works well, but it represents a compromise and individual sites are certainly worth revisiting. This image is of Swineshead Abbey (occupying higher ground slightly south of centre), with the motte and bailey castle Manwar Ings just to the NW. Starting with Environment Agency data as usual, but seeing what SAGA GIS will do for us. I have wondered if the abbey wasn't sitting on a watercourse with access to the sea. Some of the sinuous channel forms here reinforce that idea.

Mapping Legio XX Valeria Victrix

This is something of a crossover post. Recent effort in mapping has gone into mastering (by which I mean 'knowing just enough to make it do what I want in this particular instance') v.3 of the Googlemaps API. The aim has been to map locations of the inscriptions of soldiers of the Twentieth Legion. Now up and running. You can see more here.

Pretty standard piece of mapping really, but enough changes from the last time I did it (probably version 1) to have me scratching my head from time time. Getting the database xml formatting right (and the html formatting inside the xml) was half the battle.

Plenty still wrong with it. I don't really need all those layer options. Watercolour is quite fun the first time, but really the Imperium tile set created by the Pelagios Project is my preferred option. Too many coincident points at some places (eg Chester!) for this to truly work; some inscriptions refer to people known from other sources to have served with the legion and are not particularly informative in themselves; I will find a better marker symbol eventually (or revert to something standardised)... but for now it does demonstrate the geographical range of the dataset reasonably well.

Roman Empire

This derives from one of a series of marble maps alongside the Via dei Foro Imperio in Rome. Set up in 1912 and now somewhat discoloured and stained, this version has been photoshopped back into something approaching a pristine state (at least within the borders of the Empire). Original labelling is in Italian (Germanico anyone?), so I’ve removed that as well. I like the (authentically) 3D coastline effect and have used it as a basemap (and talking point) in presentations. This purports to show the empire at its greatest extent under Trajan, although the province of Mesopotamia was a very temporary addition. The sites of Kalkreise and Kalefeld (orange) and forts at Laugaricio and Balklava (red) indicate some of the range of earlier and later activity well beyond this border.

The projection appears to be Lambert Conformal, more or less, but my perspective corrections to the upward viewpoint of the original photo have probably distorted this somewhat, so I don’t get a precise fit. Still, most things drop into place pretty well and reprojection (as here to Miller Cylindrical) have an intruiging effect.

Lidar visualisation 2

Taking that last map of slope severity and draping it over a 3D surface model. Some things certainly more evident. I hadn't noticed the hollow way ascending the slope in the bottom left previously; earthworks below the woods in the bottom of the valley; still wonder what to make of the mounds on the far hillside. This produced using SAGA GIS which I'm more impressed with the more I get to grips with its capabilities.

Lidar visualisation

An extract from the Derwent Valley lidar (a pilot study towards the DerwentWISE project). Experimenting with different visualisation techniques. Conventional relief shading, although quite easy to understand, has its downsides in that results can be very dependent on lighting direction. A raft of other techniques has been tried - Sky View Factor, Local Relief Modelling, Insolation Modelling - to varying (but often very good)effect. This plot uses modelling of Slope Severity with pleasing results. I'm particularly interested in the mounds on the hill-top at the north of the image. They don't seem to have been recognised before. Too regular to be natural?

Edmund Artis and Castor

Castor, west of Peterborough, is the site of a substantial ("palatial") Roman structure (or series of structures). Known from the 18th century, they were fairly extensively excavated by Edmund Artis in the 1820s and have been the subject of much work since (if on a rather piecemeal basis). Upex in Britannia 42, 2011 is now the definitive account. This is Artis's plan of the structures investigated by (or just known to) him rectified to fit the modern Ordnance Survey map of the village. Although doubt has been expressed on the accuracy/alignment of some of Artis's structures, the base mapping is impressively accurate. Our own work at the barns near the south-west  corner of the map shows that there is another building range (with hypocaust) here, apparently unseen by Artis (since the barns depicted on his map still stand, it is difficult to imagine he plotted the position of his structure that far out).

Upper Witham Valley 2

This is a slightly wider view of the previous area, again showing the Lincoln edge and low-lying land west towards the River Trent. This time using an (old) bit of GetMapping aerial photography with overlay to pick out some details (inconveniently stopping at the County boundary in the case of the Fosse Way Roman road, I note). Google 'technology evangelist' Ed Parsons reportedly once said he disliked cartographers, “more than anyone in the world”, but I'm afraid I'd have to agree that simply taking a photo of the earth's surface (or a street) isn't the same as creating a map (hence the proliferation of layers and options within google maps over the years). I think the map version actually works better here.

Upper Witham Valley 1

Not really what I would necessarily call the 'Upper' Witham Valley, but following here the terminology of Jolliffe, T. 2010 Archaeology of the Upper Witham Valley, BAR British Series 524, Oxford. One wonders if the title is deliberately obscuring given the (unsuccessful) attempt to keep all site locations secret (an impressive piece of work, this one peculiarity aside). I have always thought the hill-shading on early Ordnance Survey products a much more expressive way of depicting the landscape, even if it lacks the objectivity of contouring. Draping a piece of standard 1:50000 map over a surface model has nice effects where the topography is marked (you can hardly miss the Lincoln edge).

Malawi

Nothing archaeological about this at all (though now I have a base map, all I would need is a list of sites). Our director has spent time working on charity projects in Malawi and the question of availability of mapping came up. Something rather smaller scale was really wanted, but I though I would at least see what I could come up with from SRTM data and other freely available digital sources. The colour scheme may look familiar. I use it a lot (even if it has potential to mislead)!

Chorography and Archaeology

Looks like I just missed this (not that I could have got to Durham on a Wednesday at short notice). Only really chose the blog title as a substitute for something entirely prosaic (Mapping and Archaeology anyone?). Seems there may be an academic discipline about to spring up.

Derwent Valley Lidar

Lidar survey again, and the Derwent Valley again, but somewhat further north than the extract posted earlier, this time at Belper. Same river, different project. Assessing the existing Environment Agency lidar coverage as part of the DerwentWISE Landscape Partnership Project. Nothing much of archaeological interest leaping out so far. The Roman road from Derby (Littlechester) to Buxton is meant to cross the river (east to west) near to the southern edge of this plot, ascending the slope on the west bank (at least according to one theory). I'd like to say the lidar helps prove it one way or the other. Sadly, I can't.

Roman Lincolnshire

I must have produced multiple versions of this over the years (somewhere I've got a more colourful version for use in presentations). This one appeared in the conference proceedings Rumours of Roman Finds that I put together a couple of years back. Ancient coastline based on The Fenland in Roman Times version with additions based on lidar surveys. Bannovalium is deliberate (Rivet and Smith have it as cognate to such as Luguvalium and nothing to do with vallum at all, despite the name of the local school). Despite Mackreth's strictures Durobrivae will probably ever be known as Water Newton for all that it actually falls in Chesterton parish.

Great Steeping and Firsby

Lidar plot of Great Steeping and Firsby on the northern margins of East Fen. Well-preserved medieval earthworks in and around the villages. Broader headlands (baulks?) evident more widely where the ridge and furrow is ploughed out, usual EA data source.

Apropos of nothing particular. Just the result of an afternoon spent realising that my pre-MapInfo 9 workaround (so that's going back quite a way) produced some nasty data holes (well, the data holes were already there, they just end up looking more obvious). Easily solved. Just adds something more to the to-do list.

English place-names (2)

Another in a similar vein. This time a search of the OS Gazetteer for places named 'something Green'. The striking pattern shows the contrast between the nucleated settlement of the 'central province' and the landscape of dispersed hamlets, farms and so on elsewhere ('something End' produces a similar effect). Roberts and Wrathmell produced a version of this in their Atlas of Rural Settlement in England. Although published in 2000, their (interesting and informative) maps appear of another age, hand-plotted if not actually hand-drawn (their Fig. 30 'Green' map references 1928 OS mapping as its source).
Same map base. Slightly different treatment of coast and sea. Labelling aside I think I prefer the earlier version.

English place-names (1)

Map of place-names in '-by'. Long recognised as an indicator of early Scandanavian settlement in the east and north of England. Experiment with the Ordnance Survey 1:50000 Gazetteer. The scatter of Welsh matches shows the downside to the approach, but the map does shows the main focus very well. Basemap from SRTM data reprojected to Ordnance Survey National Grid with application of colour ramp and hill shading. Labelling on the faint side but still experimenting with sea and coasts.

Holdingham 1796

Map of Holdingham, a small hamlet on the outskirts of (but now almost entirely subsumed within) Sleaford, Lincolnshire, home of Richard of Haldingham author of the Hereford Cathedral Mappa Mundi. This map was created as part of investigations into a middle Saxon settlement and 13th century manor house on the north side of the village. Really just a Photoshop job. Starting from a poor black and white photocopy, the end result is much more pleasing (although the canvas texture map may be a step too far).

Roman sites in the lower Nene Valley

First draft of a map showing Roman sites in the general area of our ongoing excavations at Oundle near Peterborough. Perhaps what many would call the 'middle' Nene (at least I'm sure the Middle Nene Archaeological Group would), though from my point of view once the river hits Peterborough and enters the Fenland it's a whole different story. Topographic mapping using the OS Panorama dataset. Sites of Roman villas etc taken from a variety of (paper) sources and in need of checking (the villa at Cotterstock was clearly in the wrong place when dropped onto the topographic background, so I have doubts about others). Revised version in due course. This may do for our open day on the 16th June.

Derwent Valley - Little Eaton

This is a Lidar plot of part of the Derwent Valley just north of the city of Derby at Little Eaton produced with Environment Agency data. I've just dug this out for a potential upcoming project. It was created for an external client some time back (to be honest I can't entirely recall for what purpose). Downstream is the site of the Roman fort at Littlechester, of which I probably do have an image somewhere. Here we see the river channels and levees of the Derwent and surviving areas of medieval ridge and furrow.

Mapping and Archaeology

Much of my day job as Project Manager for (Archaeological Project Services) Trent and Peak Archaeology (as of Feb 2014) involves the, often pretty routine, preparation of costing and specifications, wrangling of staff and equipment and trying to keep fieldwork projects running smoothly (and to budget!). Luckily, I don't have to do that all of the time (or it might have stopped being interesting a long time ago). One of my other roles (and one that grabs my interest rather more) lies in survey, mapping, CAD and GIS work, taking that archaeological information and displaying it in informative and (I hope) interesting ways. Time and again I find myself working up maps and images for very limited circulation and thinking I should really put these together somewhere. So now I will. Some of this will be new some of it may be quite old. But hopefully it won't just languish on my hard drive in future.