1,720,981 research outputs found
Chapter 10: Fires over England—Sources for and Functions of Viking Age Signalling
No full textBeacons and lookouts played a key role in the networks of local and regional communications of Anglo-Saxon England during the Viking Age (A.D. 800–1100). While the large fortified centres of the period are well known, the nature of interconnections between them and smaller-scale local arrangements have only recently received attention. Place-names, written evidence and landscape archaeology together allow for the reconstruction of elements of signalling and sighting systems. This contribution presents the historical context within which beacons and lookouts developed, and draws upon a series of case studies to reveal local systems of communication in the landscape of Anglo-Saxon England
Chapter 1: Signalling Intent: Beacons and Military Communications from Antiquity to Early Modern Times—Introduction
No full textThis introductory chapter summarises the main themes around non-verbal long distance signalling—especially beacon systems—from Antiquity to Early Modern times. An overview of documentary sources and ethnography makes clear that such systems were important across many periods and places; they were central to territorial control, communication, surveillance, and regional defence. Despite this importance, their study by archaeological means has often been hampered by a lack of direct evidence, and scholars have had to reconstruct systems drawing together diverse traces, including monuments, deposits, toponyms and archival records. The chapter also introduces some general issues related to the functions and impacts of long-distance communication on past societies, highlighting their uses in early warning and mobilisation, and the psychological effects such surveillance had on contemporary communities. Some of the debates about the signal range, message complexity, manning costs, and societal impacts, are introduced, as are some of the ways in which scholars have attempted to interpret these systems in landscape terms by deploying for example experimental intervisibility tests and GIS-enabled modelling. The chapter concludes by arguing the study of beacons offers a powerful lens on past strategic thinking, cooperation, and the material practice of power across landscapes
Lordship and Landscape in East Anglia AD400-800: The royal centre at Rendlesham, Suffolk, and its contexts
Full text linkChapter 18: Stamping on the Embers: Concluding Thoughts
No full textThe volume’s concluding chapter synthesizes studies of non-verbal long distance signalling—especially beacon systems—demonstrating their centrality to territorial control, surveillance, and regional defence across diverse chronological and geographic contexts. Beacon networks are shown to operate at multiple scales: as localized watchposts integrated into communities and logistics, nested regional systems for mustering forces, and supra-regional chains enabling rapid warning and control. Archaeological, historical, toponymic and GIS-based visibility analyses together reveal patterns of placement, intervisibility, and multifunctionality (military, ritual, economic). The contributors emphasize how beacons both reflect and shape political authority—promoting state formation, enforcing border control, and producing psychological effects of surveillance—while also accommodating bottom-up, community participation. Key methodological advances include experimental archaeology (signal tests), GIS-modelling, palaeoecological sampling, and targeted excavation for dating. Remaining debates concern signal range, message complexity, resource costs, and the social labour required to man networks. The chapter recommends intensified micro-site investigation, multi-proxy dating, further experimental and computer-aided research and collaboration with military strategic analysis to assess tactical effectiveness. Overall, the study of beacons opens a rare window onto past strategic thinking and collective responses to threat, linking landscape, technology, and social organisation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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