Getting Started

Getting Started

This page includes important information to help you get the most from your visits to this site. If you have a printer available, you may wish to print it out for future reference.

Site Navigation

The following conventions are used throughout this site:

The YAT "head" logo at the top of the blue band at the left edge of each main page (including this page) forms a link back to the home page of the site.
Up to three arrows at the bottom right of each main page are links to other related pages. The "up" arrow links to the next page up in the site structure. For example the Up arrow at the bottom of the page on Phase 6.1 leads to the Phase 6 page. The left and right arrows link to adjacent pages at the same level in the site structure. For example, from the Phase 4 page, the left and right arrows lead to the Phase 3 and Phase 5 pages respectively.
Links within the text are of the following types:
- Links to other pages follow the common web convention and are shown in a blue boldface font.
- Gateway links to items in the project archive database are highlighted in purple. See below for hints on how to use the project archive.
- Links to bibliographic references are highlighted in green. Hover the mouse pointer over one of these links to see the bibliographic record. The full project bibliography can be accessed from the Home page of this publication.
Clicking on the small images in many pages will display the full-sized image in a popup window.
Clicking on a feature in one of the phase plans or a Context in one of the stratigraphic matrix diagrams will display the associated record from the underlying project archive database in a popup window (see below).
Small red arrow heads in stratigraphic matrix diagrams indicate links to Contexts in other matrix diagrams. Click on the arrow to follow the link.

Exploring the Site Archive

Many links in this site take you into the heart of the YAT Integrated Archaeological Database (IADB) archive for the Walmgate excavations. Each of these links is in effect a gateway - once in the IADB, you can explore freely the complete project archive. To help you make the most of this, this section explains briefly the structure of the IADB archive.

There are five principal hierarchical data types within the IADB: Finds, Contexts, Sets, Groups and Phases. Each Find is a member of a single Context, each Context is a member of a single Set, and so on.
The Finds data type includes Small Finds (SF), Bulk Finds (BF), Samples (SA), Architectural Fragments (AF), Skeletons (SK) and Structural Timbers (ST).
The Context data type includes Deposits, Cuts and Fills.
A sixth data type, called Objects, is non-hierarchical and can include any combination of Finds, Contexts, Sets, Groups, Phases and other Objects. For example, in the Walmgate archive, Object 712 represents metalworking in Phase 7 and includes all the Finds and the Contexts from which they came.