Hello, I'm Andrew with interests in maps and geology and have been around the Chilterns for many years and often wondered about their many earth features I have come across and the old ways. The Iron Age Hill Forts Conference at Tring stirred me on to a lecture course in Chilterns Archaeology and two recent Lidar/QGIS training days.
Afternoon all.
Live and work in the Chilterns, met Ed at a Hillfort talk. Can't wait to study the Lidar image's.
I do a lot of metal detecting, all 300 year plus finds recorded on the PAS database.
Hi, I'm Susan from Berkhamsted, recently retired after many years in online IT development, especially databases. I've been checking out the images of the WW1 practice trenches in Ashridge, just north of Berkhamsted - they are well known but this imagery shows them up very clearly. There are a lot of features in Ashridge that are covered by trees, I'm looking forward to exploring them on the portal
If you fancy it, why not introduce yourself below. Tell us your name, where you're from, and what your interests are.
Dear All, my name is Stuart King, an 'Old Bucks Boy' by birth and inclination. I am very interested in woodland archaeology and have my own dig!
My lifetimes expertise has been in traditional and historical woodcraft, even to the extent of sharing this in a few episodes of TimeTeam, happy days!
Hi everyone. I'm Gareth, I live in Berkhamsted, work from home on website stuff but studied geology in the distant past. A very amateur archaeologist, love trying to piece together how the landscape has come to its present form, what it used to look like and how it was used. I enjoy walking around trying to understand what was going on under our feet. Love the idea of using Lidar to help in this process.
Hello All, I'm Martin. I live in Woodley e. of Reading and so the aonb is within relatively easy reach but not right on my doorstep. However I walk energetically with some mates alternate Fridays in the Ibstone area because we have no comparable hills in Berkshire to train on. Whilst my background is physical chemistry and IT, I have dabbled in archaeology for the last six years since I retired. I engaged with Ed initially because I use QGIS to plot iron age and roman sites in gazetteers published by the Berkshire Archaeology Society in its journal. This project is a very exciting way of systematically but non intrusively scouring the landscape for features of archaeological interest. I am also intrigued to experience the citizen science approach in such a pure form.
Hello,
I'm Martina, currently finalising my course MSc Applied Landscape Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education. During my study, I have undertaken a work placement with Historic England's Aerial Investigation and Mapping team in York, where I was trained in mapping from aerial photographs and LiDAR. The support of HE York and Swindon continued with a partnership during my dissertation for which I have developed a method to create time-depth and archaeological hotspot maps from AI&M project data (formerly NMP).
The "Beacons of the Past" project is exactly the way forward to explore and map wide landscapes and map new features from LIDAR with the help of volunteers, which will be a great source of information for further analysis, such as hotspot maps for targeted investigation and excavation.
I would be happy and excited to be a part of this interesting and inspiring project and look forward to fantastic views and new discoveries of archaeological features in this beautiful landscape.
Hello,
My name is Tom Lutzenberger and I'm based in Sacramento, California, U.S. Obviously, I won't be able to spin an odd weekend up to the local area, but I signed up to see what I could add analyzing the images created. I've done similar work as a volunteer for the United Nations on projects in Ghana and Nigeria.
My background is in anthropology, and I regularly volunteer for field surveys of sites and potential areas back here in the U.S. In fact, I just finished a related projects for the Forest Service in Northeast Arizona (we like to call the area the Egypt of America due to the concentration of ancient evidence and traditions in the Four Corners of AZ, UT, CO, NM).
I have a specialization in GIS and cartography, and mapping images has always been a hobby of mine. I'm a bit of a night owl or as I tell my wife, I'm always on Hawaii time, so it would be likely I would be up and able to communicate with UK folks more than not. Looking forward to an interesting project and a bit of change from American archaeology.
Tom
If you fancy it, why not introduce yourself below. Tell us your name, where you're from, and what your interests are.
I'm Norman. I live in Oxford and I obtained a Certificate and Diploma in Archaeology several years ago. I am particularly interested in the scientific aspects of archaeology and am amazed by the power of techniques like Lidar.
Hi I'm Nick. I live in West London. I have no formal qualifications in archaeology at all ( hope that's allowed!) but I've always been totally fascinated by the idea of how our historical forebears have left their impression on the landscape we see today. I used to be an orienteer in the past and totally captivated by maps and their ability to portray the shape of the land. I am also a keen walker and have walked on numerous occasions through the Chilterns. When I saw news of this project I thought this was definitely for me!
I have one question I'd like to ask. Clearly the LiDAR survey area is quite extensive (one of the reason you have opened this up as a citizen's project) but I wondered if there were any way to narrow down the areas of search to those which might have a better probability of finding an item of interest?
Hi,
I’m Yves Benini, I’m following the course of Archeology in Practice from Oxford University and Wendy is my tutor. She mentioned the project so I registered and I love it so far 🙂 On my first try I found few spots I believe can be of importance. Unfortunately I’m new to this so I will need to wait for your feedback 😉 That would be great to have some kind of follow up for each submission on the map, and be able to view what others have found as well. Anyway it is already a great and fun tool to use;)
I have one question I'd like to ask. Clearly the LiDAR survey area is quite extensive (one of the reason you have opened this up as a citizen's project) but I wondered if there were any way to narrow down the areas of search to those which might have a better probability of finding an item of interest?
Welcome aboard Nick! Sorry for the slightly delayed response - I've been off on holiday (they let me have one occasionally).
We believe that there are sites worth recording pretty much everywhere across the survey area, so we aren't planning to narrow down our focus people to look at specific areas. Urban areas offer the least opportunity for archaeology to survive to be visible in the LiDAR, but using the visualisations in combination with the OS mapping and aerial imagery should allow you to identify and ignore these if you wish.
Posted by: yves
Unfortunately I’m new to this so I will need to wait for your feedback
That would be great to have some kind of follow up for each submission on the map, and be able to view what others have found as well. Anyway it is already a great and fun tool to use;)
Thanks Yves, and welcome to you too! Absolutely, it's definitely a learning process to get more of a hang for this, and we are hoping to start the feedback part of the project in the near future, by Christmas if we can! In that process you will get feedback on every site that you have recorded. I appreciate that's not immediate, so I'll perhaps start trying to bring more examples into blog posts, so people can get some more help with finding sites.
And a bit further down the line we will start to release sites that have been identified. In the mean time you can use the Scheduled Monuments layer to look at some of the known sites, and how they appear in the LiDAR, and check out Nigel's post stickied in the archaeological discussion forum with other sources you can go to to find known sites in the region, if you want to chase up where those are and what they might look like.
Hi All, I'm Ade Armishaw. My main area of interest is in Twentieth Century military sites and remains. I have previously used LiDAR to locate WWII public trench air raid shelters (which it is surprisingly good for). It's not only an amazing resource but I also find it distractingly beautiful. The Chilterns are not an area that I'm very familiar with, but hopefully I will be able to contribute something useful.
Fantastic Ade - happy searching! Hope you find the portal easy to use, and feel free to post in the discussion forum if you find anything interesting.
Hi Ade - there were 13000 yards of WW1 practice trenches dug all over Berkhamsted Common and golf course, and some Boer War training structures, so there's plenty for you to find there
