Phil Carlisle

Data Standards Supervisor

English Heritage

National Monuments Record Centre

Kemble Drive

Swindon

SN2 2GZ

+44 (0)1793 414824

http://thesaurus.english-heritage.org.uk/

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P Please do not print this e-mail unless you really need to

This is heresy: I was under the impression that some time around 2499BC there was a Council of Nicaea at which they all agreed to throw away their worn out flint implements and replace them with shiny bronze tools!

Seriously though: Chris is right about cultural/period terms; they usually can't be applied equally across the whole country. I can recall that, several years ago, our friends in the old RCHME at Swindon (If you don't know who they were ask an older colleague.) tried to impose a standard C6th-C9th chronology based on the Kings of Wessex. I had to point out that in the Midlands it would be preferable to use a chronology based on the Kings of Mercia.

Chris         

>>> Chris Webster <[log in to unmask]> 24/03/2010 10:01 >>>
This date searching problem is probably not soluble (until we have exact dates for each site, what ever a "date" for a site means!) The underlying confusion, I think, is the use of cultural terms for time periods - to use an earlier example "Saxon" could variously start around 400 in the east of England (or possibly earlier if you think that immigration happened in the "Roman period"). Over here in Somerset the historical evidence suggests "Saxons", probably by now English, control in 680(ish). As Crispin says re the gateway the search is implemented locally and we took the view (contra what Crispin said) that we would use the period names if we could. If you ask the gateway for Neolithic it should send the date range and the search term to the HER  and if a search term is present we use it in preference to the date range as we think that if someone wants Neolithic (as a culture/period term) it is likely to match what we have recorded as such. We're not going to get away from using cultural terms for periods anytime soon and I could make a case for suggesting that these mechanisms of using absolute dates are wrong - in trying to force an ambiguously dated past into a neat digital format I think we may be losing something.

Happy to have a discussion on this at the HER forum - either in the summer if there's time - or at the following winter meeting which, we intend, will pick up earlier discussions about what events are and digital archiving topics.

Chris Webster

Somerset Historic Environment Record
Taunton Castle
Taunton
TA1 4AA

01823 255080

Visit the online HER at www.somerset.gov.uk/her

-----Original Message-----
From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Crispin Flower
Sent: 24 March 2010 07:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bronze Age dates query


Some notes about the Heritage Gateway searching...

I'm assuming that when you searched on "2400-1700 cal BC" you mean using the "Advanced Search" > "When" > "Year Range"?
If so, then the rules of engagement are that this should return any records that overlap the entered period.  Therefore it should return any records entered as "prehistoric" as well as various Neolithic and Bronze Age.
This was a design choice made early on for the Heritage Gateway (not for me to comment on the reasoning). The alternative (entirely possible) would be to return records that match or fall entirely within the specified range, which would bring much fewer results of course, but perhaps more relevant; however it would make the differing date ranges used a more critical issue, and HERs may unpexpectedly return zero results to such a search (e.g. if their EBA started at 2450BC).

Also note that if you search by selecting a period term such as "Early Neolithic" from the pick-list, the search is actually executed using the corresponding calendar years (4000-3300BC in this case). Therefore, the various culture-historical words used in each HER to describe the time periods are irrelevant when using the Advanced Search.

As an aside, note that the query you entered is processed independently by each record provider on the Heritage Gateway, and the Gateway itself just displays the results. So whatever logic is decided on, it is important for users of the Gateway that it is implemented by all providers in the same way.

all the best
Crispin

________________________________

From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records on behalf of Emily Edwards
Sent: Tue 23/03/2010 17:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bronze Age dates query



So you can, I have just tested it out on Heritage Gateway.
I put in 2400-1700 cal BC and it brought up everything with either date in the description and many results that didn't seem to be relevant at all. I would then have to trawl through all of the results (which amount to many, in most cases) to pick out the ones that were actually relevant.
It seems to be the case that each HBSMR uses its own date ranges and approaches to dating constituent parts of a site and that sherds of different periods are clumped together; I have just spotted an example where the entry says sherd: middle Bronze Age to early Iron Age.

If that was all standardised and if the phrase late Neolithic-early Bronze Age was used whenever relevant (or the date ranges more specific) or alternatively if the databases were all clever enough to lead the researcher to specific relevant entries, then it would be much easier.

All the Best

Emily Edwards
Honorary Research Associate with the Institute of Archaeology and
Antiquity at the University of Birmingham


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