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Archaeological excavation near Maastricht (the Netherlands) in the town of Lanaken (Belgium) revealed a previously unknown wooden‐and‐earth fortified site dating back to c.650–800. The fortification's construction, layout and dimensions are indicative of Roman military practice, suggesting active application of this practice during the early medieval period. This research delves into the implications of this discovery, shedding light on early medieval military strategies in the region and providing insights into potential historical contexts surrounding the fortified sitecation's construction and use. In so doing, it makes an important contribution to ongoing discussions regarding the nature of early medieval military organization and elite society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The region of Bruges (Flanders, Belgium) was an economic and cultural centre during the Late Middle Ages because it was connected to the North Sea via a large tidal inlet called the Zwin, along which smaller towns developed. One of these towns was Aardenburg (Zeeland, The Netherlands), which developed from a Roman castellum to become one of the important medieval towns in the hinterland of Bruges. Unfortunately, archaeological, historical and (palaeo)environmental data about the Roman to medieval evolution of the Zwin area are scarce. However, the continuous occupation of Aardenburg during the first millennium AD and its location on a Pleistocene sand ridge bordering the coastal plain provide a unique opportunity to investigate the natural dynamics of the coastal evolution and the interplay with the human impact that shaped the Zwin region before its heyday. The variable character of the depositional environments on the dynamic coastal plain makes local environmental studies essential for understanding larger patterns, which were previously reduced to a simplistic outdated model over the entire region. Palynological and diatom assemblages of two sequences in Aardenburg allow the reconstruction of the terrestrial and aquatic palaeoenvironments from the Middle Holocene to the high Middle Ages. The results reveal landscape evolution in relation to woodlands, peat bogs, coastal environments and human presence, consistent with previous regional landscape evolution. A distinct increase in marine influence during the Roman and early medieval periods, when human activities played a significant role, was followed by an increase in inland indicators from the high medieval period onwards. This evolution is in accordance with the expansion of the town and the reclamation of the coastal landscape as it evolved to become a cultural centre in the Late Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological research at Hoeke, a Late Medieval outer harbour of Bruges (Belgium), has revealed large quantities of iron slags, fuel and other remains of iron working. Archaeometrical study has provided an enhanced insight into the historic iron working process, a craft activity which had up till now remained completely unknown in one of the largest economic hubs of medieval Europe. Several petrological, mineralogical and geochemical analytical methods have been applied for this purpose. The metallographic analysis was performed using reflected light optical microscopy, while the mineralogical composition of the slags was characterized X-ray Diffraction (XRD) Spectrometry. Macroscopic identification of plano-convex bottom slag and hammerscales, combined with the geochemical data pointed out that the examined slag is indicating smithing activity, while no traces for iron ore melting were discovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is often contaminated by muscle artifacts. In this paper, a new method for muscle artifact removal in EEG is presented, based on canonical correlation analysis (CCA) as a blind source separation (BSS) technique. This method is demonstrated on a synthetic data set. The method outperformed a low-pass filter with different cutoff frequencies and an independent component analysis (ICA)-based technique for muscle artifact removal. In addition, the method is applied on a real ictal EEG recording contaminated with muscle artifacts. The proposed method removed successfully the muscle artifact without altering the recorded underlying ictal activity. Index Terms--Blind source separation, canonical correlation analysis, EEG, muscle artifact removal.

Removing artifacts and background electroencephaloraphy (EEG) from multichannel interictal and ictal EEG has become a major research topic in EEG signal processing in recent years. We applied for this purpose a recently developed subspace-based method for modeling the common dynamics in multichannel signals. When the epileptiform activity is common in the majority of channels and the artifacts appear only in a few channels the proposed method can be used to remove the latter. The performance of the method was tested on simulated data for different noise levels. For high noise levels the method was still able to identify the common dynamics. In addition, the method was applied to real life EEG recordings containing interictal and ictal activity contaminated with muscle artifact. The muscle artifacts were removed successfully. For both the synthetic data and the analyzed real life data the results were compared with the results obtained with principal component analysis (PCA). In both cases, the proposed method performed better than PCA. Index Terms--Artifact removal, background EEG removal, common dynamics, exponentially damped sinusoids, ictal and interictal EEG, singular value decomposition, subspace based.