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Aerial Photogrammetry at Portus

In the previous post by Stephen Kay on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles at Portus he discussed the work that has been completed on site in terms of capturing aerial photography. Aerial photography plays a significant part within the understanding of any archaeological site and this is especially true at Portus. Continue reading →

New city wall discovered at Ostia

Researchers from the universities of Southampton and Cambridge have discovered a new section of the boundary wall of the ancient Roman port of Ostia, proving the city was much larger than previously estimated. The team, led by Professor Simon Keay (Southampton) and Professor Martin Millet (Cambridge), has been conducting a survey of an area of land lying between Ostia and Portus. Continue reading →

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles at Portus

Since the start of excavations by the Portus Project in 2007, aerial photography has played an important role in the recording, analysis and presentation of the research. The ability for the archaeologist to have a bird’s-eye view of an excavation gives the opportunity to see the plan of structures, their relationships with each and alignments which are not visible at ground level. Continue reading →

Data mining and image processing experiments on photographs from Portus

As large-scale data processing becomes easier and more affordable to everyone, so too increases the temptation to try and use new technologies and methods to reduce the amount of manual labor that usually comes with classifying and categorising big data collections. With textual data, the techniques of extracting useful information from unstructured data have already been more or less established. Continue reading →

Portus: Opera in natura

The Portus Project, comprising the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, the British School at Rome and the University of Southampton, has commissioned Franco Mapelli to give a visual interpretation of the Archaeological Park of the Trajanic Port. This exhibition is made up of 30 large-scale photographs through which the photographer focuses on the relationship between archaeological remains and nature. Continue reading →

Portus Summer Blog Round-Up

Between May and December last year I found myself working for quite a period of time on the Portus survey and excavations. The research and practical elements of the project were, as ever, thrilling, involving a large team of individuals from different backgrounds interested in different aspects of the archaeology of the site and surrounding landscape, and on the different approaches and methods applied as part of the project. Continue reading →

Portus in National Geographic Espana

It was very heartening to see that the National Geographic Espana, which is celebrating its 125th Anniversary, voted the results of our 2013 Portus Field School excavations, which were presented at a public lecture at Rome in November, as one of the ten principal archaeological finds of 2013. This is a great tribute to all the staff and students who were involved in the project. You can read a blog post about this on the National Geographic Espana website. Continue reading →

Portus and its Hinterland

As we enter a new year of research and education focused on Portus I thought I would flag up some wider activities from last year relating to the site, its hinterland and wider networks. The first of these is our new ERC funded project. In October 2013 the European Research Council announced that a bid that I had submitted to the Advanced Grant scheme for a project to the value of €2.49 million (£2.1 million) had been successful. Continue reading →