John and others,
I've been finding increasingly that attatching cultural labels such as
'Pictish' to SMR dates is counter-productive. 'Pictish' is a far from
universally Scottish concept, let alone a British one. Dealing with
exeGesIS system and lookup tables in the Western Isles, I've taken the
Scandinavian approach even further, and dropped all cultural labels in the
first 3/4 of the first millenium, carrying the Iron Age through to the
Viking Age beginning AD 790. And I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't
drop even that, for reasons of long-term compatibility of databases.... It
seems to me that the first millenium developments north of the Border are
so disparate that any cultural labels at all are bound to be local and not
national, and if we are keen to provide a national (Scottish or British)
date list, it's going to have to be dates only, or very neutral terms like
Late Iron Age, Early Mediaeval &c. With Angles, Britons, Romans, Danes,
Norwegians, Picts, Scots, Tom, Dick and Harry all north of the Border in
different places, at different times, cultural concepts get too confusing
for words....
Mary MacLeod
Arc-eolaiche nan Eilean Siar
----------
> From: John Wood <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: Exegesis SMR - searching by period
> Date: 21 September 1999 09:39
>
> I was very interested to see this. A set of 'nationally' agreed set of
> definitions (does this mean England or Britain?) would be absurd. For
> example, periods defined as 'Anglo-Saxon' or 'Roman' would be irrelevant
to
> us, just as 'Pictish' wouldn't be a lot of use to the folks in Hampshire.
> We tend here to take the Scandinavian approach and bring the 'Iron Age'
> through to around 500AD. It shows the problem of culturally defined
period
> labels. A GIS type approach might be useful or it might just generate
> endless debate about the geographical areas to which different cultural
> labels could be given. However, people do want to retrieve things from
our
> SMR as 'Pictish'. Maybe alongside the cultural labels we need to have
sites
> recorded to periods defined in actual years. But then we run into the
> problem that the Iron Age seems to have started here later than it did in
> the south...
>
> Interesting problem anyway.
>
> John Wood
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> John Wood
> Senior Archaeologist
> Planning and Development Service
> The Highland Council
> Glenurquhart Road
> Inverness IV3 5NX
>
> Tel: 01463 702502
> Fax: 01463 702298
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Web: http://www.higharch.demon.co.uk
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: JD Richards [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 20 September 1999 15:17
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: RE: Exegesis SMR - searching by period
>
>
> On Mon, 20 Sep 1999, Fernie, Kate wrote:
>
> > I know that there are various projects on the go looking at networking
> > archaeological databases across the UK and Europe. It would be
> interesting
> > to know how any such network might tackle the problem of boundaries
which
> > differ in time and space.
> >
>
> At ADS we've always envisaged that such an interface would need to be
> GIS-based, with the period term list specific to the GIS polygon. This is
> achievable in Dublin Core schemes under DC.coverage, but not yet
> implemented by us, or anyone else, as far as I'm aware...
>
> Julian Richards
>
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr Julian D. Richards Tel: +44 1904 433930
> Director, Archaeology Data Service Fax: +44 1904 433902
> Department of Archaeology Email: [log in to unmask]
> University of York
> The King's Manor
> York, YO1 7EP, UK
>
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