This project will increase the knowledge about, and build transferable expertise in, the remote sensing (RS) of archaeological residues (AR). Current archaeological RS techniques have evolved with variable understanding of the physical, chemical, biological and environmental processes involved. Thus current detection strategies do not allow systematic AR assessment leading to sub-optimal heritage management and development control. This project will focus on analysing the physical and environmental factors that influence AR contrast dynamics with the overall aim of improving site and feature detection.\n\nArchaeological RS techniques rely on the ability of a sensor to detect the contrast between an AR and its immediate surroundings or matrix. AR detection is influenced by many factors - changes in precipitation, temperature, crop stress/type, soil type and structure and land management techniques. These factors vary seasonally and diurnally, meaning that the ability to detect an AR with a specific sensor changes over time.\n\nWithout understanding the processes that affect the visibility and detection of ARs (directly and by proxy), prospection techniques will remain somewhat ad-hoc and opportunistic. Enhanced knowledge of ARs is important in the long-term curation of a diminishing heritage and will provide cost savings to operational works (through more effective mitigation). This is important in environments where traditional optical aerial photography has been unresponsive (e.g pasture and clay soils).\n\nThe project is timely considering the recent development of high spatial and spectral resolution ground, air and satellite sensors.\nThe project involves 4 stages:\n1 Identifying appropriate candidate sites and sampling methodology\n2 Field measurements and collecting and analysing field samples from sites under different conditions\n3 Physical modelling, feedback, knowledge articulation\n4 Evaluation\nSites will be chosen on the basis of contrasting ARs, soil and land management conditions etc. Close liaison with curatorial agencies (with excavation data) is necessary to ensure a representative range of AR types is identified. It will be important to include sites with varying environmental conditions and AR types (buried soils, 'negative' features such as ditches, buried masonry and surface materials).\n\nTo determine contrast factors strategic samples and measurements will be taken on and around the AR at different times of the day and year to ensure that a representative range of conditions is covered. Field measurements will include geophysical and hyperspectral surveys, thermal profiling, soil moisture and spectral reflectance. Laboratory analysis of samples will include geochemistry and particle size.\n\nModels will be developed that translate these physical values into spectral, magnetic, electrical and acoustic measures in order to determine contrast parameters. Data fusion and knowledge reasoning techniques will be used to develop management tools to improve the programming of surveys. These tools will be used to deploy sensors, including aerial hyperspectral devices, for evaluation purposes.\n\nIn summary, this project will impact on and develop:\n1 Baseline understanding and knowledge about AR contrast processes and preservation dynamics:\n a. leading to better management and curation\n b. providing data to model environmental impact on ARs\n c. enhancing the understanding of the resource base\n2 The identification of suitable sensors and conditions for their use (and feedback to improve sensor design)\n3 Data fusion techniques (physical models, multi-sensor data and domain knowledge) to improve AR identification\n4 An Interdisciplinary network between remote sensing, soil science, computing and heritage professionals\n5 Techniques for researchers to access data archives more effectively\n\nWe believe that the results will have national impact and have the potential for transfer throughout the world.

For centuries the north coast of Ireland and Western Scotland were intrinsically linked by a common set of cultural traditions, language and political structures. This was a maritime province connected by short and easily navigable sea routes that had its high-water mark with the fifteenth-century Century Lordship of the Isles. The shifting political landscape and other socio-economic changes have meant that the shared identities and connections between these communities have all but vanished, and the Scottish Island communities that were once at the centre of this kingdom now experience geographical and social peripherality and the many problems this brings. With the onset of the Troubles Northern Ireland became increasingly isolated as the extended period of conflict closed the country and paralysed economic growth. As Ulster stutters out of conflict sections of the community are looking increasingly to the past to reaffirm and reposition themselves in contemporary society. Large sections of the unionist tradition look towards Scotland to define their identities and histories in an emerging Ulster Scots tradition. The nationalist community remains firmly embedded in a Gaelic Irish tradition that looks southwards for its cultural identities. Simultaneously, a new sense of nationhood is being developed in Scotland as politicians embrace a selective view of the past that sidelines the role the peoples of the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and others. Yet increasingly, archaeology is demonstrating the depth of connections between these communities and recent excavations of the seventeenth-century town at Dunluce Castle, for example, have confirmed vividly that the shared heritage of this region extended well into the early modern period through a linked economy, familial connections and cultural traditions. We propose a project to develop a researcher network across Ulster and Western Scotland (University of Ulster, Queen's University Belfast, Glasgow University, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Historic Scotland and the Kilmartin House Trust and co-produce this historic resource working with three communities in the project area (Colonsay Heritage Trust and Kilchattan Primary School, Colonsay Bushmills Heritage Group, Ballintoy Community Group and Millstrand Integrated Primary School in Antrim and Tavvallich Village Commnity Group and Tayvallich Primary School in Mid Argyll. This will build an awareness of a shared past and challenge and question contemporary versions of identity and place. It will play a part in economic regeneration and enhanced community well-being by contributing to current proposals to develop a heritage centre on Colonsay. We will build on established institutional and community links to create a researcher-community partnership between HE institutions, community groups, schools and heritage organisations within the region. We will bring together existing archaeological research and resources within the project area and findings from an initial programme of archaeological survey and investigation to deliver three open days in May/June 2011 (one each in Colonsay, Kilmartin museum and Kinbane, Antrim), a social networking programme for three schools (one each from Colonsay, Mid Argyll and Antrim) and a web site and online blog to support community-researcher interaction, hosted by the University of Ulster. This will stimulate researcher-community dialogue, support future community-led applications for HLF funding and potential applications for co-produced heritage research projects. A round of follow up meetings and workshops with community and research partners in September/October 2012 will further support this process. The project will culminate in the design and production of a poster, artefact and digital exhibit, displayed in each project area before being permanently housed initially at the village hall on Colonsay to directly support the Colonsay Heritage Trust.

It is widely recognized that the historic environment provides a source of cultural enrichment, and enhances people's quality of life and well-being. However, it also undergoes cycles of material transformation, of decay and renewal, which inform the meanings and values associated with it. Indeed, these changes contribute to the experience of authenticity. Decay acts as a tangible mark of age, and the patina produced by everyday weathering and wear provides a sense of connection across generations. At the same time processes of decay and degradation are assessed and arrested by organisations charged with conserving the historic environment for future generations. Much of this work relies on scientific methods and techniques, which have been developed for use in conserving the historic environment. However, by intervening to modify processes of transformation and decay, these techniques can have a powerful impact on the fabric of historic buildings. They can alter their appearance and introduce new materials, as well as affect the cultural meanings and values attached to them by various groups of people. In this project we use methods from the arts and humanities, including interviews and forms of participant observation, to examine the kinds of value attached to deterioration and decay in historic buildings. We investigate how decisions about the conservation of materials are informed by these values and related ideas of authenticity. We also explore how science-based interventions alter these meanings and values, and impact on perceptions of 'the real' and the 'authentic'. Our partners include the National Trust for Scotland and Historic Scotland, organisations that are involved in conserving and managing some of Scotland's most important historic sites. They provide case studies involving particular historic buildings or monuments that are currently the subject of active conservation. This provides us with the opportunity to study how the science-based techniques they use both inform, and are informed by, cultural values and ideas of authenticity. Our project brings together researchers from the humanities and the sciences in a cross-disciplinary collaboration. We are also in partnership with the leaders of a European research project (HEROMAT), which allows us to study the values attached to the latest developments in scientific conservation methods. The research will be of benefit to a wide range of academic researchers and professionals involved in conserving the historic environment. The results are intended to inform future conservation policy and practice, ensuring that science-based techniques are used in a culturally sensitive way in conserving the historic environment.

The proposal develops an interdisciplinary system to quantify risk of historic buildings and archaeological sites to driving rain and flooding as caused by climate change; it will evaluate structural vulnerability by defining adequate impact indicators and propose adaptation strategies classified by increased resilience against loss of significance. Project activities are set within the framework of risk management and uncertainty methods.\nThe proposal addresses how the causes of damage or material change to cultural heritage can be better understood, and when is material change acceptable and damage unacceptable. \nThis requires investigation of the nature of changes and transformation in materials and of the resilience and adaptation capacity of the built heritage. The objectives of the proposal are:\n- Definition of criteria and protocols to identify acceptable limits of damage; define consistent protocols for modelling material change; use of risk, monitoring and simulation to inform life-cycle and cost/benefits studies and new or improved conservation interventions.\n- Impact of flooding, rising water level, driving rain and thermal cycles on structural integrity of historic buildings and archaeological sites\n- Assessment of novel adaptation techniques to be implemented to enhance resilience of historic buildings and sites to climate change impacts. \nThe collaboration of structural and environmental modellers and specialists in cultural heritage, working on specific case studies and supported by professional practitioners and the heritage institutional bodies, ensures robust results applicable in practice.\nRoughly dressed, rubble masonry, earth structures, infilled in timber frames, are the chosen constitutive materials as they are particularly vulnerable at joint and footing level to driving rain and flood. Hence effects of exacerbated structural damage caused by environmental agents can be successfully measured within the project timeframe. An overall approach based on extreme events statistical analysis and quantification of uncertainty will inform all aspects of the research, so that reliability will be in-built in the evaluation of the risk and adaptation measures The research will be case study based to facilitate direct feedback of results into practice. On-site monitoring and laboratory tests will be conducted, considering the combined effects of driving rain and flooding. \nThe proposed case studies areas are: Tewkesbury, scheduled area at south end of town near the Abbey; Deerhurst, archaeological sites and significant historic buildings; Cottown, Perthshire, cob walls compromised by flooding; Winchester cathedral crypt and Winchester College; York, Lendal Bridge towers and buildings on the Eastern riverbank; Bodiam Castle. The case studies have been chosen according to flooding hazard and to the diversity of age, materials, construction techniques, significance and historical documentation of the heritage buildings and archeological remains in the six areas. Their continued occupation through time allows to: gain historical perspective by looking at past adaptations to documented climate changes; investigate effects on current risk; define urgency of adaptation. Research tasks cover:\n-Survey of buildings and stakeholders of study area to identify selected buildings for in depth study\n-Study of secondary literature to identify significance of historic climate change\n-Flood and driving rain probability analysis and scenarios\n- Laser scanning and restitution of the building at different scales \n-On site monitoring and lab testing to define damage thresholds\n-Hydraulic an structural modelling\n-Assessment of resilience and validation of adaptation measures. \n-Generalisation and dissemination of results through drafting of guidelines.

This project seeks to investigate the value of design and innovation through a set of managed dialogues between three key sets of stakeholders who together influence the use and value of design in the context of built environment heritage. These conversations between academics, design SMEs and the national heritage agencies will provide opportunities to narrate accounts of how design focussed SMEs have been able or inhibited from engaging with innovation in relation to heritage, how those agencies which influence regulation and governance are engaging with design sector, and how together they understand the role and value of design in relation to heritage. Our starting point is that while design is widely recognised in novel urban forms (buildings, public spaces etc) that meet future needs, it is less well recognised in conserving selected heritage that integrates with new and extended places. Still less attention has been given to opportunities for innovation to make the vast majority of the existing urban fabric smarter for the future. By bringing together those involved in valuing heritage and design into directed conversation, this project will not only highlight stories of success where design SMEs have been able to create value but also provide a deeper understanding of some of the constraints which hold back others from achieving such success.