In 2007, an excavation was undertaken in the supposed place of deposit of the Roman hoard of denarii in the village of Podzamcze (central Poland). In the older literature, the find used to be located in nearby Maciejowice. Coins found in Podzamcze in recent years, and the analysis of the information obtained so far concerning this discovery, allow the assumption that it was Podzamcze where the hoard of denarii discovered in 1875 was found. During the excavation three denarii were recovered below the humus layer: one each of Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. On 9 February 2008, the researchers undertook field prospecting again using metal detectors in the area of excavations conducted before, which resulted in recovering a quarter of another denarius of Commodus. The region of the confluence of the Okrzejka and Vistula rivers is relatively abundant in sites from the period of Roman influence. Sites of the Przeworsk culture are represented here, as well as those of the Wielbark culture, which at stage B2/C1a expanded into west Mazovia. Within this small area we find settlements, burial grounds, and also single items, including Roman coins. The coins are represented mostly by denarii from the second century, typical of Poland. However we also find earlier coins here, i.e. from the first century with an undated Republican denarius, as well as later ones, dating from the third century, represented by a follis of Maximianus Herculius (c 296–297?). In the light of the finds made in this area, the region of the confluence of the Okrzejka and Vistula rivers appears as a rather important local settlement center, which was probably connected with the outside world through various kinds of contacts.
Surface prospection at site 5 in Nieprowice, Pińczów county, Świętokrzyskie voivodship, revealed a quite large series of Roman coins (33 specimens), accompanied by numerous and differentiated artefacts of the Przeworsk culture. Many of the artefacts are metal decorations and elements of dress that usually provide precise dating of archaeological sites. Site 5 at Nieprowice was occupied by people of the Przeworsk culture beginning with phase A2 of the younger Pre-Roman Period to the beginning of the Migration Period. The coins are exceptionally abundant and they are more differentiated than it is usual in surface prospection on the sites of the Przeworsk culture settlements, hence this place could be a central settlement in the region.
A new approach to solve the inverse problem in electrical capacitance tomography is presented. The proposed method is based on an artificial neural network to estimate three different parameters of a circular object present inside a pipeline, i.e. radius and 2D position coordinates. This information allows the estimation of the distribution of material inside a pipe and determination of the characteristic parameters of a range of flows, which are characterised by a circular objects emerging within a cross section such as funnel flow in a silo gravitational discharging process. The main advantages of the proposed approach are explicitly: the desired characteristic flow parameters are estimated directly from the measured capacitances and rapidity, which in turn is crucial for online flow monitoring. In a classic approach in order to obtain these parameters in the first step the image is reconstructed and then the parameters are estimated with the use of image processing methods. The obtained results showed significant reduction of computations time in comparison to the iterative LBP or Levenberg-Marquard algorithms.