• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• ES close
• Mémoires en Sciences de l'Informati... close

International audience; The National Library of Spain (NLS, Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE]) for the target audience of digital humanities (DH), within the last two decades, has taken up major challenges to be into line with other main national libraries (France, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Library of Congress). The chapter presents NLS's success in the emerging digital scholarship and BNElab Digital Humanities (DH) projects and digital editions (e.g., the Leonardo da Vinci Madrid I & II Codices or Quixote), demonstrating the most necessary steps of libraries to take in the digital age, especially when DH is forming the mainstream and obtaining momentum. The importance of the NLS and its patrimony is in line with its commendatory policy of collaborating with a wide variety of DH projects, and with that of making its digital patrimony freely available. Through a case study of the opening up of cultural heritage data for the arts and humanities (A&H), NLS is challenged from its Semantic Web vision to find the expertise required by the key issues of contemporary digital humanities.; La Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) para el público objetivo de las humanidades digitales (HD), en las últimas dos décadas ha asumido grandes retos para estar a la altura de otras grandes bibliotecas nacionales (Francia, Países Bajos, Reino Unido, Alemania y la Biblioteca del Congreso). El capítulo presenta el éxito de la BNE en los proyectos de cultura digital, BNElab y ediciones digitales (por ejemplo, los Códices Leonardo da Vinci Madrid I y II o el Quijote), presentando los pasos necesarios que las bibliotecas deben tomar en la era digital, especialmente cuando las HD están convirtiéndose en la corriente principal y ganando impulso. La importancia de la BNE y su patrimonio está en línea con su política de colaborar con una amplia variedad de proyectos de HD, y con la de hacer que su patrimonio digital esté disponible gratuitamente. A través de un estudio de caso de la apertura de los datos del patrimonio cultural para las artes y las humanidades (A&H), la BNE se enfrenta al desafío de su visión de la Web Semántica para encontrar la experiencia requerida por los temas clave de las humanidades digitales contemporáneas.; La Bibliothèque nationale d'Espagne (Biblioteca Nacional de España [BNE]) pour le public cible des humanités numériques (HN), au cours des deux dernières décennies, a relevé des défis majeurs pour s'aligner sur les autres grandes bibliothèques nationales (France, Pays-Bas, Royaume-Uni, Allemagne et Bibliothèque du Congrès). Le chapitre présente le succès de la BNE dans les projets émergents de culture numérique et de BNElab et les éditions numériques (par exemple, les codex Leonardo da Vinci Madrid I & II ou le Quichotte), montrant les étapes les plus nécessaires pour les bibliothèques à suivre à l'ère numérique, en particulier lorsque les HN forment le courant dominant et prennent de l'ampleur. L'importance de la BNE et de son patrimoine s'inscrit dans sa politique de collaboration avec une grande variété de projets HN, et dans celle de mise à disposition gratuite de son patrimoine numérique. À travers une étude de cas sur l'ouverture des données du patrimoine culturel pour les arts et les humanités (A&H), la une analyse atentive de la BNE révèle sa vision du Web sémantique pour trouver l'expertise requise par les enjeux clés des humanités numériques contemporaines.

Cal Sitjo is a new archaeological sequence located in a chert-rich region of the NE Iberian Peninsula, in the town of Sant Martí de Tous (Anoia, Barcelona). The area has undergone significant anthropisation and several archaeological sites (e.g., Vilars de Tous), quarries and workshops for the exploitation of chert (e.g., La Guinardera) have been documented, corresponding to different periods. The abundance of chert made this region an almost obligatory passageway for hunter-gatherer communities such as those occupying the nearby cliffs of Cinglera del Capelló (Capellades), located at a direct distance of 15 km, as well as an ideal settlement for later farming communities. Discovered in 2019, the first excavation campaign was carried out in the fall of 2020. Dates have been obtained from a known sequence of around 8 m, providing a chronological framework that ranges from the Mesolithic to the Middle Neolithic. The preliminary results of this excavation have brought to light lithics, ceramics and charcoals from the Neolithic levels (Levels 3 and 4), and faunal, lithic and charcoal remains from the Mesolithic levels (cleaning section). Our preliminary results confirm that this sequence is an ideal location for a diachronic study of the evolution from the last hunter-gatherers to the first farmers, from a paleoenvironmental and technological perspective, as well as in terms of chert management and distribution in a territory with a great abundance of this raw material.

This article builds on work conducted and lessons learned within SILKNOW, a research project that aimed at enhancing the preservation and digital dissemination of silk heritage. Taking the project and this heritage typology as a case study in the digital transformation of cultural heritage institutions, it illustrates specific challenges that these institutions must face and demonstrates a few innovative answers to meet those challenges. The methodology combines approaches typical of the humanities and others usual in ICT, being inductive regarding materials and methods (consisting of a detailed review of existing online repositories and research projects devoted to textile heritage) and descriptive for the results and discussion (which explain at length the development of some tools and resources that responded to the needs detected in the previous analysis). The article reports on the state of the art and recent developments in the field of textile heritage, the tools implemented to allow the semantic access and text analysis of descriptive records associated with silk fabrics, and the spatiotemporal visualization of that information. Finally, it argues that institutional policies, namely the creation and free dissemination of open data related to cultural heritage are just as important as technical developments, showing why any future effort in these areas should take data sustainability, both in its technical and in institutional aspects, into account, since it is the most responsible and reasonable approach in terms of efficient resource allocation. Research leading to these results has taken place within the research project “SILKNOW. Silk heritage in the Knowledge Society: from punched cards to big data, deep learning and vi- sual/tangible simulations”, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 769504; as well as within “ClioViz. Visualización avanzada de datos históricos a través de mapas multidimensionales y gráficos interactivos” (ref. no. PID2021- 126777NB-I00), a research project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER-UE. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación European Union’s Horizon 2020

Este trabajo presenta el descubrimiento de una cabaña con zócalo de piedra prerromana localizada en la ciudad de Baelo Claudia (Tarifa, Cádiz) a raíz de unas excavaciones arqueológicas realizadas en 2019, circunstancia que ha permitido establecer una nueva fase de ocupación de la misma. Se realiza un estudio arquitectónico de la estructura de habitación y su comparación con otras similares en el Suroeste de la península ibérica, lo que nos permite asociarla a un momento histórico protohistórico y aumentar nuestro conocimiento sobre el poblamiento durante esta época en el ámbito del estrecho de Gibraltar. This work presents the discovery of a hut with a pre-Roman stone plinth located in the city of Baelo Claudia (Tarifa, Cádiz) as a result of archaeological excavations carried out in 2019, a circumstance that has allowed establishing a new phase of occupation of it. An architectural study of the housing structure is carried out and its comparison with similar ones in the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, which allows us to associate it with a protohistoric historical moment and increase our knowledge about the settlement during this time in the area of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Comparative macro-archaeological investigations of the human deep past rely on the availability of unified, quality-checked datasets integrating different layers of observation. Information on the durable and ubiquitous record of Paleolithic stone artefacts and technological choices are especially pertinent to this endeavour. We here present a large expert-sourced collaborative dataset for the study of stone tool technology and artefact shape evolution across Europe between ~15.000 and 11.000 years before present. The dataset contains a compendium of key sites from the study period, and data on lithic technology and toolkit composition at the level of the cultural taxa represented by those sites. The dataset further encompasses 2D shapes of selected lithic artefact groups (armatures, endscrapers, and borers/perforators) shared between cultural taxa. These data offer novel possibilities to explore between-regional patterns of material culture change to reveal scale-dependent processes of long-term technological evolution in mobile hunter-gatherer societies at the end of the Pleistocene. Our dataset facilitates state-of-the-art quantitative analyses and showcases the benefits of collaborative data collation and synthesis. International audience

Based on an idea by Carlo Rubbia, the n_TOF facility at CERN has been operating for over 20 years. It is a neutron spallation source, driven by the 20 GeV/c proton beam from the CERN PS accelerator. Neutrons in a very wide energy range (from GeV, down to sub-eV kinetic energy) are generated by a massive Lead spallation target feeding two experimental areas. EAR1, horizonal with respect to the proton beam direction is set at 185 meters from the spallation target. EAR2, on the vertical line from the spallation source, is placed at 20 m. Neutron energies for experiments are selected by the time-of-flight technique (hence the name n_TOF), while the long flight paths ensure a very good energy resolution. Over one hundred experiments have been performed by the n_TOF Collaboration at CERN, with applications ranging from nuclear astrophysics (synthesis of the heavy elements in stars, big bang nucleosynthesis, nuclear cosmo-chronology), to advanced nuclear technologies (nuclear data for applications, nuclear safety), as well as for basic nuclear science (reaction mechanisms, structure and decay of highly excited compound states). During the planned shutdown of the CERN accelerator complex between 2019 and 2021, the facility went through a substantial upgrade with a new target-moderator assembly, refurbishing of the neutron beam lines and experimental areas. An additional measuring and irradiation station (the NEAR Station) has been envisaged and its capabilities for performing material test studies and new physics opportunities are presently explored. An overview of the facility and of the activities performed at CERN is presented in this contribution, with a particular emphasis on the most relevant experiments for nuclear astrophysics. Part of this work has been carried out in the framework of a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ERC Consolidator Grant project HYMNS, with grant agreement No. 681740). The authors acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovaci´on under grants PID2019-104714GB-C21, FPA2017-83946-C2-1-P and FIS2015-71688-ERC. In line with the principles that apply to scientific publishing and the CERN policy in matters of scientific publications, the n TOF Collaboration recognises the work of V. Furman and Y. Kopatch (JINR, Russia), who have contributed to the experiment used to obtain the results described in this paper. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ERC Consolidator Grant project HYMNS, with grant agreement No. 681740) Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under grants PID2019-104714GB-C21, FPA2017-83946-C2-1-P and FIS2015-71688-ERC.

Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq is the only Neolithic site in Northeastern Iran, characterised by aceramic and ceramic levels corresponding to an occupation of 1500 years from the eighth to the end of the sixth millennium BCE. The Western and Eastern Mounds represent the oldest and longest occupation among the sites identified East of the Zagros, providing a unique context to explore the origin and spread of farming outside the core area of the Eastern Fertile Crescent. We present data about the first harvesting activities in the Northeastern Iranian Central Plateau by applying usewear and microtexture analysis through confocal microscopy on sickle gloss blades. Our results indicate a community of pioneer farmers who settled down in the area carrying with them both domestic cereals as well as advanced techniques of cereal cultivation. We demonstrate that most of the tools were used for harvesting cereals in a fully ripened state collected near the ground, indicating a well-established cereal cultivation strategy. The use of straight shafts with parallel inserts in Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq, as known in some sites in the Zagros, suggests the dispersal of farming practices and technologies from the Eastern Fertile Crescent north-eastward across Iran. We observe an evolution in the degree of ripeness of harvested cereals along the first four levels of occupation of the Western Mound, where semi-ripe harvesting is relatively important, suggesting that domestic cereals to be harvested before full maturity were introduced into the village. From the topmost of the Western Mound and along the occupation of the Eastern Mound, ripe harvesting is dominant, showing a well-established cultivation strategy of fully mature cereal. This shift could indicate an in-situ evolution towards a better-established agricultural technology, including harvesting riper crops, that would have resulted in higher yields, as cereals were collected when the grain was fully formed. The use-wear analysis was conducted under the supervision of Prof. A. Tsunaki at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba in the framework of the post-doctoral project “From Tools to People: Early Neolithic Farming Societies in Southwest Asia (8th-6th mill. cal BC”, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship – Standard 2019 to FP) and a financial support of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR 5133-CNRS, internal funding to FP). The confocal analysis was carried out at the Milá y Fontanals Institute (CSIC) in Barcelona (Spain) in the framework of the EU-funded ObsTrade project (H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, 101032910 to FP). We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Peer reviewed