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Bringing the Neolithic Figurines of Koutroulou Magoula Back to Life

Clay Neolithic figurines are some of the most enigmatic archaeological objects, which depict in a miniature form humans, animals, other anthropomorphic or zoomorphic beings, and often hybrid or indeterminate entities. Figurines have excited scholarly and public imagination, and have given rise to diverse interpretations. The assemblage from Koutroulou Magoula, a Middle Neolithic site – 5800-5300 BC – in central Greece (excavated under the co-direction of Prof. Continue reading →

Portus Summer Blog Round-Up

Between May and December last year I found myself working for quite a period of time on the Portus survey and excavations. The research and practical elements of the project were, as ever, thrilling, involving a large team of individuals from different backgrounds interested in different aspects of the archaeology of the site and surrounding landscape, and on the different approaches and methods applied as part of the project. Continue reading →

Bodiam data again

Yesterday, I said that I expected to see a strong negative correlation between “I didn’t learn very much new today” and “I learned about what Bodiam Castle was like in the past.” In fact, when I ran the correlation function in R, it came out at a rather miserly 0.33, much lower than I expected. So I asked R to draw me a scatterplot: And there it is, some correlation, but not as much as I was expecting. Continue reading →

A first look at my Bodiam data

Last week, I had a look at the developing script for the new Bodiam Castle interpretive experience (for want of a better word). It’s all looking very exciting. But what I should have been doing is what I’m doing now, running the responses from the on-site survey I did last year through R, to see what it tells me about the experience with out the new … thing, but also what it tells me about the questions I’m trying out. A bit of a recap first. Continue reading →

En route for Easter Island and a piece of Google’s doodle

Photogrammetry image of the statue featured in the Google doodle from 15 January 2014 (James Miles, ACRG) A century ago today, the Mana, an auxiliary schooner captained by Scoresby Routledge, stewarded by his wife Katherine and crewed by a collection of English seamen, fishermen, scientists and the odd Royal Navy lieutenant, had just been hauled up onto a floating deck in Talcahuano on the Chilean coast. They were nearly a year into their voyage. Continue reading →

The Bartle Test

I’ve been reading about the Bartle Test. It came up in conversation when somebody asked about player motivations. Turns out people have been asking similar questions for years, and after much discussion on the bulletin board of a UK “Multi-User Dungeon” Richard Bartle came up with a 1996 paper, outlining four gamer types. A few years later, Erwin Andreasen and Brandon Downey came up with a web based test which players could take. So I took it. Continue reading →

Portus in National Geographic Espana

Computer Graphic Reconstruction of Portus (BBC/ Portus Project) It was very heartening to see that the National Geographic Espana, which is celebrating its 125th Anniversary, voted the results of our 2013 Portus Field School excavations, which were presented at a public lecture at Rome in November, as one of the ten principal archaeological finds of 2013. This is a great tribute to all the staff and students who were involved in the project. Continue reading →

Portus and its Hinterland

Portus and the Mediterranean As we enter a new year of research and education focused on Portus I thought I would flag up some wider activities from last year relating to the site, its hinterland and wider networks. The first of these is our new ERC funded project. In October 2013 the European Research Council announced that a bid that I had submitted to the Advanced Grant scheme for a project to the value of €2.49 million (£2.1 million) had been successful. Continue reading →