The goal of this year's targeted investigation was to bring greater clarity to the building dated to the early Iron Age, which was identified in previous investigations. The building in question has stood on a rocky hill just east of Västra Vångs village, a hill surrounded by Iron Age settlements with long continuity.
The investigations in Västra Vång are also part of the research projects DIAD (Digital Integration across disciplines),and TETrARCHs (Telling Stories with Archaeological Data) in which communication and interpretation processes in field archaeology are studied. By documenting the investigation itself and its participants during the work in sound and image and then linking these data with the archaeological field documentation, new and interesting opportunities are created for reflexive analysis of the field archaeological process. In this way, we can follow how interpretations change as the investigations proceed.
The archaeological environment on the hill in Västra Vång offers both great opportunities and challenges. The surveys have been undertaken during a number of smaller campaigns spread over several years. It is therefore particularly important to be able to evaluate the results continuously during the course of the survey. This is made possible by the system for archaeological field documentation developed at Lund University in recent years. The system, called AIR (Archaeological Interactive Reports), consists of a complete survey archive where all survey data is available for evaluation and analysis in real-time. The core of the system is based on geo-referenced 3D models to which other data is linked. The system is also available via an online platform, which facilitates fast and secure data sharing and ensures accessibility for all project participants before, during, and after the fieldwork.
Now comes the exciting task of analysing the results of all the investigations on the hill in Västra Vång and evaluating our hypotheses about both the building on the hill and its surrounding ancient environment.
Read more about the AIR system:
Derudas, P., Nurra, F. & Svensson, A. 2023. New AIR for the Archaeological Process? The use of 3D web Semantic for Publishing Archaeological Reports. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3594722
Read more about Västra Vång and the different research projects in the links below:
https://www.blekingemuseum.se/arkeologi/vastra-vang/