Keith Foster, the treasurer for the Council for Independent Archaeology (with the scary acronym CIA), attended the DART community workshop last week. Yesterday we received an e-mail asking for a short article for his newsletter. This is great news! This means we will be able to reach all of the CIA community, get more feedback and improve the research outputs.

The DART Project: An ISAP introduction.
Ant Beck, Rob Fry.
Geophysical and Aerial survey have substantially increased our understanding of the nature and distribution of archaeology. However, there is variable understanding of the physical, chemical, biological and environmental factors which produce the archaeological contrasts that are detected by the sensor technologies. These factors vary geographically, seasonally and throughout the day, meaning that the ability to detect features changes over time and space. This is not yet well understood.
Detection of Archaeological Residues using remote sensing Techniques (DART) is a three year, £815,000 …

I’ve set up a DART project Flickr group to allow us to share images and short videos related to the project with each other and the wider world. Please feel free to add to it and use the content posted there:

Yesterday Ant Beck, Dan Boddice, Rob Fry, Laura Pring, David Stott and Keith Wilkinson has a site visit to the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester. We met up with Tom Overbury (Principal Lecturer) and Tony Norris (RAC farm Manager). The general aims were to:
To meet the RAC team and for them to meet the DART field Team
To get the lie of the land
To look at the potential archaeological locations
To identify logistical issues/constraints
To agree a timetable for working with a particular focus on

When we can conduct preliminary geophysics
When we can install …

Hi, 
I represent the Bradford-based PhD on the project, and will be specifically looking at the effects of soil moisture variation and seasonality on the contrast properties of archaeological residues.  These are complex and, from a geophysical standpoint, are vital to the understanding of detection. I have an (archaeological) geophysics background, having worked in the past as a Terrestrial Geophysicist for the British School at Rome and at Wessex Archaeology which led to my most recent role as the Project Officer of the Silchester Hinterland Project. I recently graduated with an MSc. in Archaeological …

We’ve set up the DART meeting schedule for 2011 which is as follows:

Now that Cambridgeshire has been bought into the mix we needed to get the SMR search moving. Rog provided me with the extent of his transcription of the 1996 vertical photography– which was mainly in Cambridgeshire. I then got in touch with Quinton Carroll (Senior Archaeologist at Cambridgeshire County Council) who has been amazingly helpful. He has suggested intersecting the extents of Rog’s transcription area with the land holdings of Cambridge CC (Camb CC owns land which it leases to tenants to farm). This should provide us with a more streamlined …

During the site debate DART consortium member Bob Evans raised an important point:
I had some qualms about the Cirencester site, primarily because I was considering it from a ‘visible’ point of view, ie recording marks on air photos. And the chances of recording crop marks or patterns in an area of reasonably high rainfall and lowish potential soil moisture deficits, even though soils are generally shallow, might not be that great. Under that scenario Sod’s law could well give us 2 years of wettish summers and no crop marks, so …

I’ve had some discussions with DART members and thought I’d share them with you. Essentially, the discussions have been about shifting the “site” forcus to the Royal Agricultural College (RAC). This has a number of benefits, principally the following:

We can easily get site access
We have a partner who is interested in the output
The RAC would like to use project output in there teaching programmes
The RAC may change their cropping programmes, land management techniques (e.g. fertilising) to address our research questions
We may be able to keep the sensors in for a …

The Rhind Lecture Series has been made available on line. A number of these lectures provide essential background for those DART members who do not have an archaeological background. Please watch the videos: http://dartproject.info/WPBlog/?p=312

Data has been requested to help identify the sites DART will study. In addition field methods are being written up. Feedback is appreciated (see attached documents and mindmap: http://dartproject.info/WPBlog/?p=174)

Publications: Antiquity have expressed interest in an early publication in their Project Gallery

Collaborations: the collaborations section has been added to the web-site http://dartproject.info/WPBlog/?page_id=303. A new link collaborative link has been made with Dr. Duncan Williams at Porton Down.

PhD Studentships: Two PhD studentship positions have been offered and accepted. We will send the details of these candidates to AHRC for approval and formal appointment.

Resources: All the publically available resources are aggregated through the public website available at www.dartproject.info.