Project description
Innovative methodology to understand ancient traffic flow
Ancient stone architectural elements such as thresholds and paving stones exhibit wear from pedestrian and vehicular movement, indicating heavily trafficked areas. However, archaeologists require written records or experimental data to ascertain the frequency of past movements. Supported by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the TAS project seeks to comprehend ancient traffic flow between different areas by pioneering new research methods. It will use experimental methods such as rock mechanics and experimental archaeology to determine abrasion resistance data. Additionally, the project will develop an agent-based model to analyse movement within urban spaces and explore emergent characteristics of urban traffic. TAS also aims to mitigate physical threats to cultural heritage through a novel risk assessment approach.
Objective
Stone architectural elements are perhaps the most ancient witnesses of an archaeological site. Among those, threshold/paving stones are elements that take place almost at the first stage during the construction of the place. Repetitive pedestrian or vehicle movement gradually leaves a mark; this is most visible on thresholds or paving stones. The use-wear can be used to estimate which places and roads were used more; archaeologists are almost always successful in identifying spaces of movement from micro to macro scales, but only rarely can they understand the intensity (frequency) of past movement. With experimental methods in the field of rock mechanics, the abrasion caused by pedestrian traffic on rocks per unit time are calculated in a controlled setting. On the other hand, such data (unless there is a written record) are unavailable for the archaeologist, and the only evidence available is an abraded stone.
The main aim of this research is to understand ancient traffic flow between spaces and to go beyond descriptive mapping-based strategies. The methodology will examine the threshold/paving stones that were already unearthed and abrasion resistance data will be determined by experimental methods (rock mechanics, experimental archaeology etc.). Following the analysis phase, the project will build an agent-based model to explore movement in and between spaces; mainly to investigate emergent characteristics of urban traffic. In this way, it can be stated that the proposal of the research is innovative in this aspect, as it will create a concrete and new line of research and interpretation of archaeological contexts and will allow the testing of existing models. Finally, an other deliverable of the project is to investigate ways of reducing physical threat to cultural heritage by means of creating a new form of emergent risk assessment.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands