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Archaeologists reveal traces of Henry VIII’s Otford Palace

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A team of community archaeologists have conducted a survey in Kent, England, revealing traces of Henry VIII’s Otford Palace, also known as the Archbishop’s Palace.

The site of Otford palace lies in the parish of Otford, Kent, a few miles south-east of Greater London and adjacent to the Pilgrims Way.

The origins of the present site can be traced back to the Saxon period, however, the first documented mention of a structure on the site was by Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury, which was valued at £60 in the Doomsday survey of 1086.

Over the course of the following 400 years, the original manor house underwent significant expansions under the remodelling efforts of Archbishop William Courtenay. He transformed the house into a stunning edifice with a great hall in the late 14th century.

Image Credit : Darent Valley Landscape Partnership

150 years later, William Warham, Courtenay’s successor, made a lasting impact on Tudor building design with the construction of a building that can be seen as a precursor to Hampton Court and many styles of Tudor architecture.

In 1514, Warham embarked on a complete redesign of Otford, creating a palace that was fitting for a prince of the church, and which conveyed a clear expression of his power and status. He demolished most of the existing buildings and constructed a new lavish palace that established the current layout of Otford Palace.

Cardinal Wolsey took Warham’s place as the key political leader in Tudor England and intensified a rivalry that was to continue until Wolsey’s death.

When we look at the plan and design features of Otford Palace, and compare them to Wolsey’s edifice at Hampton Court, we can see a glimpse of the rivalry and dislike that existed between both men. Both buildings were built over existing manor houses and they shared common architectural features.

Otford Palace was designed and laid out on such a scale that it compares favourably with any of the largest contemporary palaces in England. At over 163m by 98m, it covered an area greater than the later renaissance influenced Nonsuch Palace, or the moated area of Eltham Palace.

As part of the English Reformation, Henry VIII acquired Otford Palace and it became a Royal Palace with the title The Honour of Otford in 1537. Despite some investment by Henry, the upkeep was insufficient, and the condition of the building gradually worsened.

From 1553 to 1558, Cardinal Reginald Pole, the final Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, resided at the palace. He was the last of 56 Archbishops of Canterbury to occupy the Palace before it fell out of use.

Image Credit : Darent Valley Landscape Partnership

As part of a community led project by the Darent Valley Landscape Partnership, an organisation that works to conserve and enhance the distinctive heritage landscapes of the Darent Valley, community archaeologists have conducted an electrical resistance survey across Palace Field adjacent to the surviving palace ruins.

The survey measures the pattern differences as electrical current is passed through the ground, revealing archaeological features which can be mapped when they are of higher or lower resistivity than their surroundings.

The study has revealed the NW tower of the palace and the western range, showing the higher resistance where the wall foundations lie, in addition to sections of the palace layout.

The Hidden Palace – Otford’s own Hampton Court project is working alongside the Archbishop’s Palace Conservation Trust to help safeguard the Palace’s future and make it more accessible to the local community.

Darent Valley Landscape Partnership

Header Image Credit : Shutterstock

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Archaeology

Nazca geoglyphs discovered used AI deep learning

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Archaeologists from the Yamagata University have used AI deep learning to discover new geoglyphs in the northern part of the Nazca Pampa in the arid Peruvian coastal plain.

Geoglyphs in the Nazca Pampa were first identified during the 1920’s, with ongoing studies since the 1940’s revealing various figurative geoglyphs of zoomorphic designs, geometric shapes, and linear lines.

Geoglyphs can be categorised into three main types: figurative, geometric, and lineal. Archaeologists suggest that the lineal geoglyphs were created by the Nazca, a culture that developed during the Early Intermediate Period and is generally divided into the Proto Nazca (phase 1, 100 BC to AD 1), the Early Nazca (phases 2–4, AD 1 to 450), Middle Nazca (phase 5, AD 450 to 550) and the Late Nazca (phases 6–7, AD 550 to 750).

The relief type dates from the Late Formative period (400 to 200 BC), as the iconography of the geoglyphs are similar to that of Formative petroglyphs found on outcrops of rock. During this period, the region was inhabited by the Paracas Culture, an Andean people that emerged around 800 BC until 100 BC.

Since 2004, Yamagata University has been conducting geoglyph distribution surveys using satellite imagery, aerial photography, airborne scanning LiDAR, and drone photography to investigate the vast area of the Nazca Pampa covering more than 390 km2.

In 2016, the researchers used aerial photography with a ground resolution of 0.1 m per pixel to create a detailed survey of the region. Overtime, the team have identified various geoglyphs, however, the process is very time consuming, so they have adopted AI deep learning to analyse the photographs at a much faster rate.

The results of a study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, has revealed the discovery of four new Nazca geoglyphs using this new method by creating an approach to labelling training data that identifies a similar partial pattern between the known and new geoglyphs.

The four new geoglyphs depict a humanoid figure, a pair-of-legs, a fish, and a bird. The humanoid geoglyph is shown holding a club in his/her right hand and measures 5 metres in length. The fish geoglyph, shown with a wide-open mouth measures 19 metres, while the bird geoglyph measures 17 metres and the pair-of-legs 78 metres.

According to the study authors: “We have developed a DL pipeline that addresses the challenges that commonly arise in the task of archaeological image object detection. Our approach allows DL to learn representations of images with better generalisation and performance, enabling the discovery of targets that have been difficult to find in the past. Moreover, by accelerating the research process, our method contributes to archaeology by establishing a new paradigm that combines field surveys and AI, leading to more efficient and effective investigations.”

Yamagata University

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105777

Header Image Credit : Yamagata University

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Archaeology

Archaeologists study fortress in southern Georgia to understand community resilience

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A team of archaeologists led by Cranfield University is conducting a detailed study of the fortress of Dmanisis Gora in the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia.

The study is part of a project to understand why communities in the region were more resilient than other parts of the world during the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age around 1200 BC.

Dmanisis Gora is located at the north-eastern edge of the highland zone between two such gorges. The site consists of a compact defensive core that has two defensive walls with an enclosed area of 3.7 acres.

On the plateau behind the citadel area, a third wall, extending about 1000 m from edge to edge on the plateau, encloses a much larger area of about 138.3 acres that contains numerous circular and linear stone features.

During the so-called ‘12th Century BC crisis’ and its aftermath, the majority of Middle Eastern regions underwent a period of significant turmoil characterised by the disintegration of empires, famine, crop failures, armed conflicts, and mass migration.

In contrast, the Caucasus region (consisting of present-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) appears to have been shielded from this tumultuous period, exhibiting only gradual transformations in material culture and patterns of settlement.

Either the region managed to entirely avoid the widespread disruption, or it did not experience the same cultural, economic, and political repercussions as other areas. This suggests that the communities in the region might have been more resilient, enabling them to withstand and adapt to the challenges in a comparatively effective manner.

Dr Erb-Satullo, from Cranfield University, said: “The key to understanding why the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition is different in the Caucasus is to study the fortress communities that dot the landscape during this period. We’re looking for clues about life in the Late Bronze Age through examining areas such as ceramics, burial rituals, farming practices, tools and social structures.”

“Given the upheaval at that time in other nearby regions, we are intrigued to find out more about one of these sites and determine what underlies their apparent resilience,” added Dr Erb-Satullo.

The project expands upon earlier pilot excavations carried out at the site prior to the pandemic, along with a thorough survey conducted in Autumn 2022 using drone-based photogrammetry. This is done by using the latest forensic technologies including isotopic analysis of animal remains, metallurgy, magnetometry and deploying drones to scan the area.

“What’s really exciting about this site is its size, preservation, and the fact that it has layers dating precisely to the years around the 12th Century BC crisis,” continued Dr Erb-Satullo. “Many fortresses are on hills which are prone to erosion. But this one has relatively flat topography, so the sediment will have built up in layers over time, helping to preserve artefacts and archaeological clues from the Late Bronze age.”

Cranfield University

Header Image Credit : BING Maps

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