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Archaeological science and computing, Page 8

Late Bronze Age Stelae, Craftspeople and Digital Technologies: Some Recent Explorations

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is revealing itself as a very powerful tool to examine prehistoric rock art. Through the application of different filters and the manipulation of the incidence of light, RTI provides an enhanced visual experience of the micro-topography of engraved stones, enabling the detection of subtle details that are difficult, at times impossible, to be seen through other recording techniques. Continue reading →

Digitally Recording A 3rd Century BC Underwater Battlefield

One of the most exciting archaeological discoveries of the last decade has been an ancient naval battlefield off the Egadi Islands in Italy. Located in over 100 metres depth and requiring robots to survey and record the artefacts, the site dates to the decisive climax of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage in 241 BC. Previously, only two waterline warship rams had ever been discovered, but ten have been found at the battle site together with thousands of other artefacts. Continue reading →

Alasdair Whittle’s ā€œTimes of their Livesā€ project in Seville

I have just spent an intense but immensely rewarding few days with the Alasdair Whittle’s ā€œTimes of their Livesā€ project in Seville, Andalucia, where a new dating programme for the fantastic Copper Age site of Valencina de la Conception is starting to take shape. Valencina is a site I’ve been interested in for some time with my long term collaborator and friend Leo Garcia (Seville University) and it’s an exceptional site in many ways. Continue reading →

RTI at the Urban Variation Conference, Gothenburg

Last week Gareth and I travelled to Gothenburg in Sweden to present at the Urban Variation conference.Ā  The conference website is here: http://conference.earlymoderntown.com/urban-variation/.Ā  The conference was organised by the Early Modern Town Project team (find the University of Gothenburg project website, here; http://www.earlymoderntown.com/) and was attended by a multidisciplinary crowd of academics and professionals. Continue reading →

#bttowerview

I love this digital stuff. Following a tweet and some exchanges of emails the inimitable @cgutteridge has created a great mashup of the BT tower view panorama, wikipedia (including use of RDF) and lat long locations e.g. from google maps. Have a look at the BTtowerview mashup. It would be great to identify some archaeological and architectural history locations as RDF to feed into the view. Has anyone hacked a way of turning a long lat location to #bttowerview bookmark? e.g. btlondon2012.co. Continue reading →

Transmitted RTI

Following our successful experimentation with microscopic RTI and multispectral RTI, we develop a transmitted RTI methodology, inspired by transmitted photography, a set-up proposed for conservation documentation of translucent materials, canvas paintings, mounded papyri, photographic material, and works of art on paper or archival material. The transmitted RTI provides an enhanced RTI visualisation, complementary to reflected visible and infrared RTI. Continue reading →