Exploring the relationship between metalwork, ceramic material and historic human activity.

“便携式文物计划”是大英博物馆开展的一个项目，它记录了金属探测器发现的文物。这个项目的结果是大量日期相近、位置准确的发现，这些发现可以塑造我们对铁器时代以来景观的理解。然而，这些数据目前在历史景观研究中未得到充分利用，部分原因是解释问题；与定居、农业和其他活动有关的发现分布如何？我的博士研究将比较“田野行走”产生的陶瓷材料的分布与回收的金属制品的分布，通过检测来识别定居、施肥和其他人类活动的特征，在回收的小金属发现的模式中。由此，一种利用金属制品和过去景观之间关系的方法将被开发出来，这种方法可以应用于PAS的数据，以改变我们对罗马和中世纪时期定居的理解。通过在东萨福克郡使用测试金属探测和田野行走，在传统形式的考古研究提供的目标上，可以确定从已知日期和大小的考古遗址中恢复的典型组合，从而使陶瓷，耕种土壤中的金属制品和过去人类活动之间的关系得以理解。然后可以推断出这种关系，以帮助识别PAS数据中的定居点和过去的人类活动，说明在犁土中沉积物体的方法固有的偏差以及金属探测器的搜索模式。

The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a project run by the British Museum which records finds made by metal detectorists. The result of this project is a vast quantity of closely dated and accurately located finds which can shape our understanding of the landscape since the Iron Age. This data is, however, currently underutilised within studies of the historic landscape, in part due to issues of interpretation; how are the distribution of finds related to settlement, agriculture and other activities? My PhD research will compare the distribution of ceramic material produced by 'fieldwalking' with metalwork recovered by detecting to identify the signatures of settlement, manuring and other human activity in the pattern of small metal finds recovered. From this, a method to utilise the relationship between metalwork and past landscapes will be developed, something that can be applied to data from the PAS to change our understanding of settlement in the Roman and medieval periods.Through the use of test metal detecting and fieldwalking in East Suffolk, on targets provided by traditional forms of archaeological study, typical assemblages recovered from archaeological sites of a known date and size can be ascertained, enabling the relationship between ceramics, metalwork from the plough soil and past human activity to be understood. This relationship can then be extrapolated to aid in the identification of settlement and past human activity in PAS data, accounting for biases inherent in the method of deposition of objects in the plough soil as well as the patterns of searching by metal detectorists.