Hasil untuk "Archaeology"

L. Malafouris

M. Stokes, T. L. Smiley

E. Flügel

Wilhelm Kerle-Malcharek, Giulio Biondi, Karsten Klein et al.

Immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, are transforming digital heritage by enabling users to explore and interact with culturally significant sites. It is now possible to view and augment digital twins, or digitally reconstructed versions of them, and to enable access to previously unreachable locations for a broader audience. Here, we investigate retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)-based avatars as an interface for accessing further information about digital cultural heritage objects while immersed in dedicated virtual environments. We present a requirement design space that spans the application realm, avatar personality, and I/O modalities. We instantiate it with a RAG system coupled to a conversational avatar in a virtual reality (VR) environment, using the Maxentius mausoleum from the 4th century AD as a case study, through which users gain access to curated on-demand information of the digitised heritage object. Our workflow utilises scholarly texts and enriches them with metadata. We evaluate various RAG configurations in terms of answer quality on a small expert-crafted question-answer set, as well as the perceived workload of users of a VR setup using such a RAG avatar. We demonstrate evidence that users perceive the overall workload for interacting with such an avatar as below average and that such avatars help to gain topical engagement. Overall, our work demonstrates how to utilise RAG-driven VR avatars for archaeological purposes and provides evidence that they can offer a pathway for immersive, AI-enhanced digital heritage applications.

D. Alloni, G. Benato, P. Carniti et al.

Dark matter direct detection experiments can observe solar neutrinos via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, making it possible to test new physics in the neutrino sector. In this article, we study the sensitivity of RES-NOVA, a novel cryogenic calorimetric experiment employing PbWO$_4$ crystals grown from archaeological lead, to neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI). We perform a sensitivity study for a benchmark setup with a nominal energy threshold of 1 keV and an exposure of 1 ton$\cdot$y, both for a conservative (only heat readout) and ideal (heat and scintillation) background rejection scenario. We find that, in its nominal configuration, RES-NOVA can reach sensitivities to NSI at the level of current global fits. With moderate or significant improvements of the threshold down to 0.5 keV and 0.1 keV, RES-NOVA will be able to achieve sensitivities beyond NSI global fit results, testing new areas of the parameter space in the electron and tau sectors, $\varepsilon_{ee}$, $\varepsilon_{ττ}$, and $\varepsilon_{eτ}$. A similar improvement in sensitivities is expected when instead increasing the exposure to 10 ton$\cdot$y.

Zexian Huang, Mashnoon Islam, Brian Armstrong et al.

Historic dry-stone walls hold significant cultural and environmental importance, serving as historical markers and contributing to ecosystem preservation and wildfire management during dry seasons in Australia. However, many of these stone structures in remote or vegetated landscapes remain undocumented due to limited accessibility and the high cost of manual mapping. Deep learning-based segmentation offers a scalable approach for automated mapping of such features, but challenges remain: 1.the visual occlusion of low-lying dry-stone walls by dense vegetation and 2.the scarcity of labeled training data. This study presents DINO-CV, a self-supervised cross-view pre-training framework based on knowledge distillation, designed for accurate and data-efficient mapping of dry-stone walls using Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) derived from high-resolution airborne LiDAR. By learning invariant geometric and geomorphic features across DEM-derived views, (i.e., Multi-directional Hillshade and Visualization for Archaeological Topography), DINO-CV addresses the occlusion by vegetation and data scarcity challenges. Applied to the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape at Victoria, Australia, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the approach achieves a mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of 68.6% on test areas and maintains 63.8% mIoU when fine-tuned with only 10% labeled data. These results demonstrate the potential of self-supervised learning on high-resolution DEM derivatives for large-scale, automated mapping of cultural heritage features in complex and vegetated environments. Beyond archaeology, this approach offers a scalable solution for environmental monitoring and heritage preservation across inaccessible or environmentally sensitive regions.

D. Alloni, G. Benato, P. Carniti et al.

The RES-NOVA project is an experimental initiative aimed at detecting neutrinos from the next galactic supernova using PbWO$_{4}$ cryogenic detectors, operated at low temperatures in a low-background environment. By utilizing archaeological lead (Pb) as the target material, RES-NOVA leverages its high radiopurity, large nuclear mass, and the natural abundance of $^{207}$Pb, making it well-suited for exploring both spin-independent and spin-dependent Dark Matter (DM) interactions via nuclear scattering. This work presents a background model developed for the RES-NOVA technology demonstrator and evaluates its implications for Dark Matter detection. Detailed calculations of nuclear matrix elements, combined with the unique properties of archaeological Pb, demonstrate RES-NOVA's potential as a complementary tool to existing direct detection experiments for studying Dark Matter interactions. The experiment will conduct DM searches over a broad mass range spanning 4 orders of magnitude, from sub-GeV/$c^2$ to TeV/$c^2$. In the most optimistic scenario, RES-NOVA is expected to probe DM-nucleon cross-sections down to 1$\times 10^{-43}$ cm$^2$ and 2$\times 10^{-46}$ cm$^2$ for candidates with masses of 2 GeV/$c^2$ and 20 GeV/$c^2$, respectively.

Borja Anguiano, David Valls-Gabaud, Guillaume F. Thomas et al.

By the 2040s--50s, facilities such as \emph{Gaia}, WEAVE, 4MOST, Rubin, \emph{Euclid}, \emph{Roman}, and the ESO ELT will have transformed our global view of the Milky Way. Yet key questions will remain incompletely resolved: a detailed reconstruction of the Galaxy's assembly from its earliest building blocks, and robust tests of dark matter granularity using the fine structure of the stellar halo and outer disk -- particularly in the Galactic anticenter. Addressing these questions requires high-resolution spectroscopy of faint main-sequence stars (typically 1--2 mag below the turnoff) and turnoff stars ($r \sim 21$--23) in low-surface-brightness structures: halo streams and shells, ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, the warped and flared outer disk, and anticenter substructures. We argue that addressing this science case requires a 30\,m-class telescope in the northern hemisphere, equipped with wide-field, highly multiplexed, high-resolution spectroscopic capabilities. Such a facility would enable (i) a Northern Halo Deep Survey of $\sim 10^{5}$--$10^{6}$ faint main-sequence and turnoff stars out to $\sim 150$--200\,kpc, (ii) chemodynamical mapping of dozens of streams to measure perturbations from dark matter subhalos, and (iii) tomographic studies of the anticenter and outer disk to disentangle perturbed disk material from accreted debris. A northern 30\,m telescope would provide the essential complement to ESO's southern ELT, enabling genuinely all-sky Milky Way archaeology and delivering stringent constraints on the small-scale structure of dark matter.

Laurent Pallas, Laurent Pallas, Laurent Pallas et al.

IntroductionThe femoral anatomy of fossil Theropithecus is poorly known, although it provides critical data for inferring squatting behaviors, a characteristic trait of extant Theropithecus gelada.MethodsHere, we describe and provide functional and taxonomic interpretations on two subcomplete femora from the Afar Depression using a combination of traditional morphometrics (bivariate and multivariate) and 2D geometric morphometric combined with multivariate analyses and hierarchical clustering. ResultsThe ca. 3.20 Ma A.L. 206–1 femur is identified as the oldest known and most complete femur of an adult Theropithecus cf. oswaldi darti and shows a morphology similar to that of extant T. gelada. It supports the hypothesis of an early emergence of squatting behaviors in Theropithecus, prior to the onset of dental adaptations related to the grazing diet of the genus. The ca. 2.60 Ma A.L. 94–5 femur is identified as the oldest and most complete femur known of an adult Theropithecus cf. oswaldi oswaldi. Its knee anatomy is distinct from that of T. o. darti but it nonetheless shares with T. gelada and other fossil Theropithecus functional traits related to squatting behaviors. Unexpected convergences with arboreal cercopithecids are observed in Theropithecus brumpti, indicating diversity in the femoral functional anatomy of Theropithecus. DiscussionOverall, our study highlights the future need to link femoral anatomical diversity with postural and locomotor behaviors by combining paleontological data with neontological data including biomechanical data on the squatting and climbing of large extant papionins.

M. Shanks, C. Tilley

Elliot Vincent, Mehraïl Saroufim, Jonathan Chemla et al.

Archaeological sites are the physical remains of past human activity and one of the main sources of information about past societies and cultures. However, they are also the target of malevolent human actions, especially in countries having experienced inner turmoil and conflicts. Because monitoring these sites from space is a key step towards their preservation, we introduce the DAFA Looted Sites dataset, \datasetname, a labeled multi-temporal remote sensing dataset containing 55,480 images acquired monthly over 8 years across 675 Afghan archaeological sites, including 135 sites looted during the acquisition period. \datasetname~is particularly challenging because of the limited number of training samples, the class imbalance, the weak binary annotations only available at the level of the time series, and the subtlety of relevant changes coupled with important irrelevant ones over a long time period. It is also an interesting playground to assess the performance of satellite image time series (SITS) classification methods on a real and important use case. We evaluate a large set of baselines, outline the substantial benefits of using foundation models and show the additional boost that can be provided by using complete time series instead of using a single image.

نور خضر علي, أبتسام سلمان سعيد

مثلت الهند تجربة رائدة في العالم النامي من حيث مبادئ الديمقراطية والتعددية الحزبية وإعطاء دور مهم ومؤثر للمعارضة السياسية، وأثبات إمكانية تطبيق الديمقراطية, إذ نجحت في تحقيق الاندماج الوطني للسياسات الهندية على الرغم من وجود بعض المشاكل التي تستجد مع كل متغير, فضلا عن نجاح التجربة البرلمانية الهندية بتنوع أيدولجيات أحزابها السياسية, وقاد راجيف غاندي الهند في مرحلة مهمة من تاريخها، وعمل على تعزيز الأسس الديمقراطية وتقوية حكم القانون في البلاد, وكان تعزيز الديمقراطية أحد أهم أغراض راجيف غاندي, فقام بتعزيز قيم الشفافية والمشاركة الشعبية وحقوق المواطنين, وأدرك غاندي أهمية تمكين الشعب الهندي وضمان مشاركته في صنع القرارات.

Lucas M. Valenzuela, Rhea-Silvia Remus, Madeleine McKenzie et al.

Identifying past wet merger activity in galaxies has been a longstanding issue in extragalactic formation history studies. Gaia's 6D kinematic measurements in our Milky Way (MW) have vastly extended the possibilities for Galactic archaeology, leading to the discovery of early mergers in the MW's past. As recent work has established a link between young globular clusters (GCs) and wet galaxy merger events, the MW provides an ideal laboratory for testing how GCs can be used to trace galaxy formation histories. To test the hypothesis that GCs trace wet mergers, we relate the measured GC age distributions of the MW and three nearby galaxies to their merger histories and interpret the connection with wet mergers through an empirical model for GC formation. For the MW, we cross-match the GCs with their associated progenitor host galaxies to disentangle the connection to the GC age distribution. We find that the MW GC age distribution is bimodal, mainly caused by younger GCs associated with Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus (GSE) and in part by unassociated high-energy GCs. The GSE GC age distribution also appears to be bimodal. We propose that the older GSE GCs were accreted together with GSE, while the younger ones formed through the merger. For the nearby galaxies, we find that peaks in the GC age distributions coincide with early gas-rich mergers. Even small signatures in the GC age distributions agree well with the formation histories of the galaxies inferred through other observed tracers. From the models, we predict that the involved cold gas mass can be estimated from the number of GCs found in the formation burst. Multimodal GC age distributions can trace massive wet mergers as a result of GCs being formed through them. From the laboratory of our own MW and nearby galaxies we conclude that the ages of younger GC populations of galaxies can be used to infer the wet merger history of a galaxy.

Anne-Marie Bacon, Nicolas Bourgon, Elise Dufour et al.

Abstract Secure environmental contexts are crucial for hominin interpretation and comparison. The discovery of a Denisovan individual and associated fauna at Tam Ngu Hao 2 (Cobra) Cave, Laos, dating back to 164–131 ka, allows for environmental comparisons between this (sub)tropical site and the Palearctic Denisovan sites of Denisova Cave (Russia) and Baishiya Karst Cave (China). Denisovans from northern latitudes foraged in a mix of forested and open landscapes, including tundra and steppe. Using stable isotope values from the Cobra Cave assemblage, we demonstrate that, despite the presence of nearby canopy forests, the Denisovan individual from Cobra Cave primarily consumed plants and/or animals from open forests and savannah. Using faunal evidence and proxy indicators of climates, results herein highlight a local expansion of rainforest at ~ 130 ka, raising questions about how Denisovans responded to this local climate change. Comparing the diet and habitat of the archaic hominin from Cobra Cave with those of early Homo sapiens from Tam Pà Ling Cave (46–43 ka), Laos, it appears that only our species was able to exploit rainforest resources.

Die Redaktion

Florian Cabot, Yves Revaz, Jean-Paul Kneib et al.

VIRUP is a new C++ open source software that provides an interactive virtual reality environment to navigate through large scientific astrophysical datasets obtained from both observations and simulations. It is tailored to visualize terabytes of data, rendering at 90 frames per second in order to ensure an optimal immersion experience. While VIRUP has initially been designed to work with gaming virtual reality headsets, it supports different modern immersive systems like 3D screens, 180 deg. domes or 360 deg. panorama. VIRUP is scriptable thanks to the Python language, a feature that allows to immerse visitors through pre-selected scenes or to pre-render sequences to create movies. A companion video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJXbcf8kxA) to the last SDSS 2020 release as well as a 21 minute long documentary, The Archaeology of Light, https://go.epfl.ch/ArchaeologyofLight have been both 100% produced using VIRUP.

N. Ferreiro Iachellini, L. Pattavina, A. H. Abdelhameed et al.

The experimental detection of the CE$ν$NS allows the investigation of neutrinos and neutrino sources with all-flavor sensitivity. Given its large content in neutrons and stability, Pb is a very appealing choice as target element. The presence of the radioisotope $^{210}$Pb (T$_{1/2}\sim$22 yrs) makes natural Pb unsuitable for low-background, low-energy event searches. This limitation can be overcome employing Pb of archaeological origin, where several half-lives of $^{210}$Pb have gone by. We present results of a cryogenic measurement of a 15g PbWO$_4$ crystal, grown with archaeological Pb (older than $\sim$2000 yrs) that achieved a sub-keV nuclear recoil detection threshold. A ton-scale experiment employing such material, with a detection threshold for nuclear recoils of just 1 keV would probe the entire Milky Way for SuperNovae, with equal sensitivity for all neutrino flavors, allowing the study of the core of such exceptional events.

Haiming Li, Haiming Li, Haiming Li et al.

The development and adoption of agriculture has been investigated for decades, and remains a central topic within archaeology. However, most previous studies focus on the crop’s domestication centers, leading to gaps in knowledge, particularly in transitional zones between these centers. This paper reviews published archaeobotanical evidence and historical documents to reconstruct the trajectory of agricultural systems in Holocene Jiangsu Province. Comparing these new results to paleoclimate information, historical documents, and archaeological data enables us to better understand the underlying influences of past agricultural development. Our results indicate that a warm and wet climate may have promoted ancient peoples to first settle in Jiangsu between 8,500 and 6,000 BP and adopt rice farming. The continuous warm and wet climate may have facilitated the rapid development and expansion of rice agriculture, ultimately contributing to large-scale human settlement in 6,000–4,000 BP in Jiangsu Province. Between 4,000 and 2,300 BP during a cooler and drier climate millet agriculture diffused southward, facilitating a mixed rice and millet agricultural system. This mixed farming supported a continuesd widespread settlement and population growth in Jiangsu. After 2,300 BP, political instability in north China resulted in further southeastward migration, advanced planting technology was brought about to south China, facilitating highly developed agricultural systems and rapid population expansion in Jiangsu. Population growth led to the establishment of Jiangnan as the regional economic center, where people chose high-yielding rice and wheat rather than millet.

Luca Pattavina, Nahuel Ferreiro Iachellini, Irene Tamborra

We propose the RES-NOVA project which will hunt neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae (SN) via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CE$ν$NS) using an array of archaeological lead (Pb) based cryogenic detectors. The high CE$ν$NS cross-section on Pb and the ultra-high radiopurity of archaeological Pb enable the operation of a high statistics experiment equally sensitive to all neutrino flavors with reduced detector dimensions in comparison with existing Neutrino Observatories, and easy scalability to larger detector volumes. RES-NOVA is planned to operate according to three phases with increasing detector volumes: (60 cm)$^3$, (140 cm)$^3$, and ultimately 15$\times$(140 cm)$^3$. It will be sensitive to SN bursts up to Andromeda with 5$σ$ sensitivity with already existing technologies and will have excellent energy resolution with $1$ keV threshold. Within our Galaxy, it will be possible to discriminate core-collapse SNe from black hole forming collapses with no ambiguity even in the first phase of RES-NOVA. The average neutrino energy of all flavors, the SN neutrino light curve, and the total energy emitted in neutrinos can potentially be constrained with a precision of few $\%$ in the final detector phase. RES-NOVA will be sensitive to flavor-blind neutrinos from the diffuse SN neutrino background with an exposure of $620$ ton $\cdot$ y. The proposed RES-NOVA project has the potential to lay down the foundations for a new generation of neutrino telescopes, while relying on a very simple technological setup

Shteryo Nozharov

The publication is one of the first studies of its kind, devoted to the economic dimension of crimes against cultural and archaeological heritage. Lack of research in this area is largely due to irregular global prevalence vague definition of economic value of the damage these crimes cause to the society at national and global level, to present and future generations. The author uses classical models of Becker and Freeman, by modifying and complementing them with the tools of economics of culture based on the values of non-use. The model tries to determine the opportunity costs of this type of crime in several scenarios and based on this to determine the extent of their limitation at an affordable cost to society and raising public benefits of conservation of World and National Heritage.