Conservation record of
Palace walls

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Introduction

When monitoring first started in 2001, I introduced a sequential labeling of views for the entire site, without attributing them to a specific book. As the work progressed, a fuller systematization became necessary. I describe here the different stages that led to the system as finalized in 2010.

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2007: The X books

     In 2007, I carried out, with Beatrice Landini and Marta Lorenzon, a general re-organization of the monitoring system, and in the process I decided to start a separate set of digital books for the monitoring project. The prefix was “X” and the numeric suffix referred to distinct architectural units. Thus “X8” referred to room C1 in the service wing of the Palace.

The main reason for this system was to retain a special identity for the monitoring process: the prefix “X” would immediately call attention to the fact that the book dealt with wall conservation issues.

Another reason was to provide sufficient flexibility in the future for additional areas where one may wish to introduce similar monitoring procedures.

The X labeling system is shown in the plan below.

But two main disadvantage emerged. The first was acertain opacity in the system. There was no intuitive correlation between “X8” and room C1 of the Palace, and the problem was compounded by the fact that the views had also been labeled with the infix “x,” reserved for conservation images.

The second disadvantage was the unnecessary dichotomy between the typological identity of the unit (room C1) and the monitoring system (X8). It seems betetr instead to retain all observations about monitoring within the full context of the unit itself.

In addition, there was one more source of confusion in that I had already assigned the labels X1, X2 and X3 to the sacral area south of the Palace. While these were not book labels, and while they were not in any case in common use, there was nevertheless sufficient overlap to cause some undesirable ambiguity.

This led to two successive revisions of the system.

The view sequence has been abandoned in 2010, in favor of a labeling applied to wall faces. The explanations given here apply therefore only to the older data.

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2009: The Z11 book

In 2009, working with Geveen al-Hassan, I introduced a single book label, “Z11”, for the entire monitoring project. This was motivated by the fact that the view numbers belong to a single sequence, thus justifying the use of a single book label.

No confusion derives from this, because the labels have been used only in the names of the photographs of the monitoring system. The concordance that follows is thus needed only for clarification purposes.

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Concordance among book labels

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View map

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The initial sequence

The views were set up originally in 2001, and the sequence has been followed regularly ever since.

The concept of view is applied, in the case of the monitoring system, in a slightly different way from the norm. The view number remains the same over the years, and only the photo number changes.

The photographs are included in the pertinent V book, for any given season (thus V14 was the book for the first monitoring season).

The internal infix for the monitoring system is “x.” Thus V14x is the identifier for the monitoring system photographs of season 14 (2001).

The number that follows identifies the sector of the Palace, as shown in the table below:

The individual photographs are then numbered sequentially, retaining the same number each year, to facilitate the comparison, as shown, for instance, for wall AP^C5-7 (Palace AP, sector C, room 5, wall 7). Here the sequence is as follows:
V14x0315
V15x0315
V16x0315
V17x0315
and so on indefinitely for any successive season.

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The view sequence

The views are numbered sequentially within AP, and they, too. The prefix for the views changed (using the example of wall AP^C5-7) from X12v19 to Z11v19 to APv19. Thus the view numbers shown in the map remain the same, and only the prefix is different (AP) as of 2010. This change does not affect any other part of the UGR system, since no cross-reference has been used so far.

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Additions and changes

Additions have been made over the years, and will continue, as the level of accuracy in the monitoring system increases and as excavations continue. It may also be that a thorough re-numbering may take place to account for the new system of wall numbering. But the system is flexible enough, in its seeming complexity, to allow for consistency with the existing record.