Session: #789

Round table (without formal abstracts, only list of confirmed discussants / session co-organisers to be provided)

In the past half century, a massive but underused archaeological data resource has been building up, composed of different kinds of noninvasive observation. From the 1950s onward, fieldwalking surveys and aerial photography have been used to map surface archaeological remains and features over millions of square kilometers; more recently, near-surface geophysics and various types of remote sensing methods including lidar have begun to contribute more ‘hidden’ archaeological data. Each of these noninvasive approaches contributes valuable and complementary information about the presence, character, and degree of preservation of archaeological remains in the soil, but so far they have been the preserve of mostly separate groups of academic and commercial actors – subdisciplines that have attempted, but mostly failed, to collaborate. The challenge now is to break down the disciplinary and institutional walls between the different research communities, so that different noninvasive data can be shared and integrated for analysis, and can thus have a much greater impact on heritage management across Europe.
This roundtable session aims to bring together prospective partners to develop a proposal for a MCSA doctoral network, aiming to train up a new generation of scholars and heritage managers, not hampered by tradition, for data sharing, merging and analysis. A broad range of academic, professional, and HM partners will be needed, so students not only learn to understand the ins and outs of each noninvasive approach, but also to understand how these are conditioned by geoscientific circumstances and how current obstacles to data sharing and merging can be overcome.

Noninvasive archaeology, MCSA doctoral network, data sharing and merging

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Archaeological Prospection Community

Martijn van Leusen (Netherlands) ^1,2

Stefano Campana (Italy) ³
Jeroen Verhegge (Belgium) ^4,5