Open source solutions for Norwegian Stone Age, Chaos theory, and the ADED-project 2018-2020
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 09/10/2019

This paper will use open source solutions from the MUSIT archaeology database in relation to a study applying elements from Chaos theory. It will explore changes in Norwegian Stone Age site distributions in the diverse landscape in South-Eastern Norway. The MUSIT database system is developed by the five university museums in Norway, and has until now concentrated on artefacts that are published online for free use (unimus.no/arkeologi/forskning). Excavation data will be included through a three-year project, ADED (Archaeological Digital Excavation Documentation) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. ADED will develop a system for aggregation and open data solutions for large excavation data, facilitating queries and data extraction across single excavation projects. The present project analyse sites and georeferenced artefacts, all from the MUSIT database, combining them with environmental data related to fluctuating forest and tree limits. The archaeological material can be seen as a Poincaré set created through accumulated activities in the landscape. Results of excavations and surveys are assumed to reflect human activities during the Stone Age and Stone using period. These activities took place in a multidimensional space and over multiple periods. Such data can be studied as a projection onto a hyperplane, which can indicate how casual the choice of place might have been. A study of the Poincaré set will describe fluctuations of human movements through occasionally registered activities through time in the landscape. The paper also demonstrates how ADED's online excavation data will make such analyses more feasible in the future.

(Espen Uleberg, Mieko Matsumoto)