Institute of History, Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa, Częstochowa, PL.
Computer Center, University of Zielona Góra, Zielona Góra, PL.
PLoS One. 2023 Oct 19;18(10):e0289771. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289771. eCollection 2023.
This paper discusses the use of "legacy data" in research on Roman Period iron smelting in the territory of the Przeworsk Culture in Magna Germania. The dataset includes results of 240 analyses of smelting slag and iron ores chemistry. A majority of these analyses were conducted in the 1950s-1980s. The quality of these data is far below present-day standards. Only major elements were reported, analytical methods were often not specified (although optical emission spectroscopy and wet chemical analyses can be assumed in such cases) and information on detection limits, precision and accuracy of the results is missing. In spite of this, a Principal Component Analysis-Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering treatment successfully isolated observations from the three main iron smelting regions of the Przeworsk Culture (the Holy Cross Mountains, Masovia and Silesia). These results to a degree confirm a theory proposed in the 1960s by J. Piaskowski, according to whom it was possible to distinguish iron produced in the Holy Cross Mountains from the iron produced elsewhere in the territory of what is now Poland on the basis of metal characteristics. These findings will pave the way to the ongoing research project on the Przeworsk Culture metallurgy. It is also argued that, apart from a search for new methods in iron provenance studies, more attention should be paid to results of earlier analyses and to a compilation of legacy databases. The other result is an open and flexible Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering R code to examine discrimination between production areas and to propose artefact provenance patterns in a convenient interactive way using the R development environment.
本文讨论了在大日耳曼地区普热沃斯克文化的罗马时期铁器研究中使用“遗留数据”的问题。该数据集包括 240 份关于冶炼炉渣和铁矿石化学分析的结果。这些分析大多是在 20 世纪 50 年代至 80 年代进行的。这些数据的质量远低于当今的标准。仅报告了主要元素，分析方法通常没有指定（尽管可以假设在这种情况下使用发射光谱和湿法化学分析），并且缺少有关检测限、结果的精密度和准确度的信息。尽管如此，主成分分析-凝聚层次聚类处理成功地将观察结果从普热沃斯克文化的三个主要炼铁区（圣十字山脉、马佐夫舍和西里西亚）中分离出来。这些结果在一定程度上证实了 J. Piaskowski 在上世纪 60 年代提出的理论，即根据金属特性，可以区分在圣十字山脉生产的铁与在当时波兰领土上其他地方生产的铁。这些发现将为正在进行的普热沃斯克文化冶金学研究项目铺平道路。此外，除了在铁器来源研究中寻找新方法外，还应更加重视早期分析的结果，并编制遗留数据库。另一个结果是一个开放且灵活的凝聚层次聚类 R 代码，可用于使用 R 开发环境以方便的交互方式检查生产区域之间的区分，并提出文物来源模式。
