Journal of Research on Archaeometry
Year:2018 | Volume:4 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:7

Nowadays, over time and increasing the awareness of the destructive effects of the use of chemical and toxic substances on the objects, the environment and users, the replacement or, minimum use of these harmful materials in the treatment and protection of valuable and rare objects is a priority. So throughout the world, researchers are seeking to develop and use safe and standard methods in this area...

The research is dedicated to recognize most effective attributes and main factors in locating anddistribution of Islamic settlements of Bostan Abad plain, East Azerbaijan. The data under study iscomposed of 226 sites containing archaeological remains of Islamic period, resulted from three seasonsof archaeological surveys covering 279km2 of the plain. The Geomatics is a culculatory, analyticapproach for making predictive geographical models about the interaction of archaeological sites withtheir surrounding environment, aimed at explaining characteristic environmental factors and attributescontributing in decision making of settlement location and distribution along a geographical zone...

Archaeologically, eastern Iran is poorly known compared to the other regions of Iranian Plateau. Hence, there are many unanswered questions regarding the prehistoric chronological table of this region. The present knowledge of prehistoric cultures and chronology of Southeastern Iran is mostly through based on the 1960s archaeological excavations. In particular, the common chronology of the Chalcolithic period in SE Iran is exclusively based on the dates from old excavations at two sites of Tepe Yahya in Soghun valley and Tal-I Iblis in Bardsir plain...

Frist Quran manuscripts remained from early centuries of Islam, have been written on skin in Quran script, and are considered as the most important works of that times. Due to the very small amount of organic matter left over the past years, the study of these works has been very limited, so the information about these works is based only on library studies, including the information contained in the old books and comparative-historical studies...

Investigation of scientific archaeological excavation reports in Iran indicated that these excavations yielded a large number of fragments of glass objects from many archaeological sites, but a very limited number of preliminary studies on elemental analysis of a few Iranian glass objects have been published. Also, a literature survey on pre-Islamic glass objects (especially from Parthian and Sasanian epoch) indicates that there are only a few studies on a limited number of Sasanian and Parthian glasses from Iraq, too...

The aim of this paper is to consider what constitutes agent-based modelling (ABM) and how this can relate to archaeological reasoning. The development and construction of ABM models is an essential prerequisite for most archaeological reasoning. Both directly and indirectly, archaeologists are making extensive use of ideas and methods in applications that derive from archaeological, anthropological as well as ecological and behavioural theories. Technically before the development and wide spread use of computer soft wares these applications run statistical methods and are almost as varied in kind as is their quality. In applications, archaeologists today are concerned with developing or applying a model through using ABM idioms as the means for expressing relationships thought to characterize the data in question as ABM thinking is concerned with the conceptual system for which the model is constructed. The notion of an ABM model as a means to draw out what must be true in a hypothetical system through using and manipulating symbols to convey and represent concepts and properties which has been most extensively developed in the axiomatic method. Since the last decades of the twentieth century onwards there has been a rapidly growing interest in implementing agent-based modelling (ABM) in archaeological and anthropological studies. The biggest advantage of such model is creating an artificial ancient society and populating it with autonomous agents who live on spatial landscapes. In such models agents have been given certain rules of behaviour that define their way of interacting with their environment and with each other. The rules and behaviour of the agents are described by the modeller and most of the time they are stochastic. But they can also be defined based on real archaeological data and certain factors can be parameterised to test the authenticity of a hypothesis or to find out the reasons of an emergence. Emergence refers to the nonlinear relationship between multiple heterogeneous components and their interaction in their environment. Nowadays, emergence is an interesting topic to philosophy and science ranging from physics and chemistry to the social science and humanity. Our society is a good example of emergence. The creation of a society is the result of individuals’ interaction that in return influences the behaviour of those individuals. At first glance, it may seem very coherent and well integrated, but in fact it is made of a complex system in which each of us, as a component, interact with our environment through our acts and decisions. It might imply that knowing the laws of a society enable us to predict the behaviour of its components. However, even using the most scientific methodologies may not be resulted in a reliable prediction. In fact, in a complex system like a human society each component, depending on their authorities, may take decisions that result in completely different outcomes. Simulation technology is a powerful tool that enables us to predict human behaviour and decision making defined parameters. Two main potentials of ABM and simulation in archaeology are theory building and hypothesis testing. This paper is an introduction to the design and application of agent-based modelling and the analysing methods of such systems for archaeological purpose.

Special potentials of plaster, including low price comparing to other materials, optimal resistance to environmental conditions, fast hardening, ductility and good paintability, make it one of the most used materials in Iranian architecture during the various historical periods. These features results in using the plasters as the main material in the interior decoration of monuments in most historical periods. On the other hand, easy ductility and fast hardening encourage the Iranian architects to use plaster in the various faç ade decorations of monuments. However, vulnerability to moisture and rapid climate changes in the mountainous regions reduce the life expectancy of plaster, where it becomes vulnerable in the exterior decorations of monuments. These drawbacks make the restoration and reconstruction of exterior facade adornments of historical monuments to be established in the short-term periods. The complex of Sadaghiani House of Tabriz is one of the monuments adapted on List of National Sites by No. 7498 on February 1, 2003. The house has plenty of plaster works in decoration of monument facade and capitals. This complex was built in mid of Qajar Era and a vast section of house had been demolished for different reasons, where the plaster capitals had also been fully damaged. Following the retrofitting, the restoration of complex commenced in 2012 submitting to Tabriz Islamic Art University. After reconstruction of various sections of monument and as a practical examples of plaster artworks restoration, some of the remaining capitals restored and reconstructed. These capitals possesses complex form elements and details, and consequently, their reconstruction is costly and time-consuming process. Hence, using alternative methods and the potential of techniques in relevant domains stands necessary. To duplicate the reconstructed capitals while maintaining the form features and structural details of samples, the method of hard-shell molding was employed which is appropriate for molding of artistic and industrial works that have complex form elements and negative spaces in their structure. This method entails a good robustness because of having a hard shell that is usually made of FRP polymer matrix composites. In casting, assembly and installing mold on the determined site and using a flexible core, usually made of silicon resin, reduce the number of mold pieces and creates form details and negative spaces with an optimum quality. In this regard, one of the remaining capitals with more complete form details was selected as the reference, then the stages of restoration implemented and, finally the stages of molding and duplication of original sample carried out. Using this method of molding and reconstruction of demolished samples causes the improvement in the quality, robustness, where the process of restoration and reconstruction has been briefly reported in the present report.