Editorial

Abstract

This issue of the Journal is slightly thematic: two LiDAR-based papers and one using KOKOA (which uses some insights derived from LiDAR data). Effectively, we have three papers that are looking at different ways to investigate and understand conflict landscapes. All three papers provide an exciting introduction to what can be done, applying new ways of looking and thinking about conflict and the landscapes in which conflicts take place. The paper by Nico Roymans, Bart Beex and Jan Roymans looks at a conflict that rarely produces much archaeological research, the conflict that resulted in the separation of the Netherlands and Belgium into independent kingdoms between 1830 and 1839. The study is also of conflict-related archaeology rather than a battlefield, as it looks at the camps of the Dutch army and compares them to Napoleonic French army camps. This is a clear example of the power of LiDAR, where large areas can be covered rapidly, and at a very high resolution that records the very subtle traces left by the features of the camp. Terrestrial survey would miss much of this, and an effective survey would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. The LiDAR data provide beautiful images with stunning clarity, which can then be matched against the contemporary plans of the camps. The second paper is also on the subject of LiDAR imaging, and is by Max van der Schriek and Willem Beex. The focus of this paper is the traces of fuel dumps, ammunition stores, foxholes and so forth from the German occupation in the Second World War; these are features similar to those that have been discussed in papers in previous issues, most recently in issue 12.1 by Passmore et al. (2017). Van der Schriek and Beek look at the LiDAR images of the German features, with earlier features also visible. The paper also goes into detail about the way in which LiDAR data is gathered, and the potential issues that there might be with the images that result. The images are again very striking and show what can be done with LiDAR in the best conditions. The final paper is from Craig Brown, Jesús Torres-Martínez, Manuel Fernández-Götz and Antxoka Martínez-Velasco. Rather than focusing on LiDAR, this paper uses data from excavations, surveys and LiDAR to inform a KOKOA analysis of the fighting around Bergida in the Roman period. This is a very welcome paper for the journal: we rarely get papers from Classical sites, but it is also a paper that puts KOKOA into practice. The conflict landscape is analysed through this US Army approach, allowing the archaeologists to develop a deeper understanding of the nature and course of the fighting than the artefact distributions and texts could provide on their own. It could be argued that KOKOA just provides a justification for the instincts of the archaeologists, but it does provide a framework for asking questions and developing answers about that landscape. These papers give a strong indication of the potential for conflict archaeology of these techniques. At the time of writing this editorial, there is a great deal of interest in LiDAR, with the publicising of results from the rain forest of Guatemala showing Mayan cities to be far larger than previously believed. The story has been all over the media, and there have been TV documentaries on the subject. However, as the Van der Schriek and Beek paper reveals, the LiDAR story is not entirely straightforward. While the technique can remove tree cover from the ground because some of the light signal will reach the ground, it can be problematic. The denser the tree coverage, the fewer points of measurement result. To fill the gaps in the data, the processing will interpolate values into the gaps. Where there are few gaps and a lot of real data that is reasonably uncontroversial. Where there are a lot of gaps and little real data, then it is easy to overprocess the