Tagged: Archaeology RSS

  • Tom Goskar 9:18 pm on 23 February, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: analysis, Archaeology, illumination dome, imaging, PTM, RTI, surface detail   

    Polynomial Texture Mapping for Archaeologists 

    This month sees the publication of an article written by myself and Dr Graeme Earl from the University of Southampton’s Archaeological Computing Research Group entitled “Polynomial Texture Mapping for Archaeologists” in the March/April edition of British Archaeology magazine.

    Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) is a technique that uses ordinary digital photography equipment alongside directional lighting. It produces images that can be lit from any direction, as if you had the real object in front of you. It is an excellent technique for analysing fine details on surfaces, something that has particular utility in archaeology.

    Setting up the camera

    The full text will be available online after the next edition of BA comes out.

    The photo above is of the PTM illumination dome which I designed and built at Wessex Archaeology. You can see more details about the dome in my building a PTM illumination dome Flickr set. I have much more to say about PTM, so stay tuned.

    Find out more about the Wessex Archaeology PTM rig and see interactive examples.

     

  • Tom Goskar 2:55 pm on 22 April, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, archaeopix, , photographs,   

    Archaeopix: a Creative Commons archaeology photo search tool 

    Alun Salt and I have been working on a new website to help simplify the process of finding archaeology and heritage-related photos that have a Creative Commons license attached to them.

    Without further ado, introducing… Archaeopix!

    Archaeopix homepage

    The homepage features a photo of the day, which we hope to update daily. Clicking “Search” on the navigation bar takes you to the tool where you can look for CC licensed images which have been posted to a hand-picked series of groups and accounts on Flickr:

    Archaeopix search results

    This is what Alun has to say about the search tool:

    The clever bit is the search page.

    Searching Flickr can be hit ‘n’ miss. Generally if you want to use a photo for a blog or educational handout and you need it quickly, it needs to be licensed under a creative commons licence. You can search on Flickr for cc-licensed photos, but a search for “Rome” will bring up everything with Rome in it. Groups are handy because they’re themed. So you could search the Archaeology group for Rome. The problem then is that you’ll find a lot of ©opyright photos. You really need a group which is all cc-licensed. Chiron is a good example of that. However Chiron’s strength is that it focuses on the classical world, which means you won’t find prehistoric Europe in it, or anything Mayan. This is where Archaeopix search comes in.

    Head over to Alun’s Archaeoastronomy blog to read more about Archaeopix.

    Link: Archaeopix

     

  • Tom Goskar 10:33 am on 29 January, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, CBA, events, festival   

    Festival of British Archaeology 2009 

    Formerly “National Archaeology Week”, the newly named “Festival of British Archaeology 2009″ will take place between Saturday 18th July and Sunday 2nd August at venues and sites across the UK.

    The Festival of British Archaeology (formerly National Archaeology Week) is your unique chance to discover and explore the archaeological heritage of the United Kingdom. During this two-week archaeological extravaganza, which will run from Saturday 18th July to Sunday 2nd August, you can take part in excavation open days, hands-on activities, family fun days, guided tours, exhibitions, lectures, ancient art and craft workshops and much, much more.

    The aim of this annual event is to encourage everyone, including young people and their families to visit sites of archaeological/historical interest or museums, heritage and resource centres, to see archaeology in action and to take part in activities on-site.

    The Festival is a celebration of both British archaeology and of the presentation of archaeology from around the world in Britain. Events take place annually all over the UK.

    The Festival of British Archaeology is the new name for National Archaeology Week (which has been taking place since 2005, as an expansion of National Archaeology Days, which were established in 1990). The Festival retains the general format of National Archaeology Week but gives everyone even more opportunity to participate in a wide range of archaeology related activities and events across the UK, by spreading the events over a fortnight.

    More details can be found at the Festival of British Archaeology website.

     

  • Tom Goskar 8:34 am on 10 October, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Amesbury Archer, Archaeology, ,   


    Lasers and Light from Wessex Archaeology on Vimeo.

    This is an animation that I put together at Wessex Archaeology for the Society of Antiquaries‘ Making History exhibition at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.

    I posted some more information about the animation over at the Wessex Archaeology Computing Blog, so I won’t repeat myself here!

     

    • Elena 8:23 am on 11 November, 2008 Permalink

      Wow, a really intresting animation! I have too look more closely at it when I get to my own computer at home…

    • Stu Eve 10:14 am on 27 May, 2009 Permalink

      Tom, this looks really great – I love the LiDAR. How did you put the animation together? What software did you use?

    • Tom Goskar 1:07 pm on 27 May, 2009 Permalink

      Hi Stu,

      I used GlobalMapper, ArcGIS, and Vue 6 Infinite to produce it. I had to do some cunning things to make Vue accept the full (<1m) resolution DEM – involving a fractal-based terrain. I wanted to avoid interpolation/smoothing as much as possible. I also had to introduce primitives into the scene to mark out the key features in the landscape to aid the animation, but tell the camera not to render them. This is because the OpenGL system in Vue (and my video card) can’t display the whole scene in the viewport – only a simplified version (way too many polys). There was a bit of trial and error, but overall I’m pleased with the results. Had I more time, I’d make a far more impressive version using the filtered LiDAR dataset, and generating trees in the right places…

      Cheers,

      Tom

  • Tom Goskar 10:39 am on 17 July, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, Articles, British Archaeology, Making People Believe   

    Making People Believe text now online 

    Back in April, I blogged about a new article on archaeological computing written by myself and two colleagues. It is entitled “Making People Believe” and appeared in the 100th edition of the Council for British Archaeology’s British Archaeology magazine.

    I am happy to announce that the full text of Making People Believe is now online (without images due to restrictive copyright agreements).

    Feel free to discuss the article in a comment below.

     

  • Tom Goskar 11:18 am on 29 May, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, creativecommons, , Stansted   

    More Creative Commons Archaeology Data 

    Framework Archaeology (a joint venture between Wessex Archaeology and Oxford Archaeology) have just released data from the excavations at Stansted Airport from between 1999 and 2004.

    The data is released under an Attribution Non-Commercial Creative Commons license. This is good news for archaeologists and other interested parties to be able to reuse and share the data, and another step forward towards opening up data about our past.

    Framework Archaeology also distribute a (Windows-based) free data viewer, which provides basic GIS functionality for viewing the Stansted and Heathrow Terminal 5 data. The installation process is simple – download the Free Viewer (as it is called) and run the installer. Then download the dataset, run the dataset installer, launch the software, and explore away…

    For those that just want the raw Stansted data, the formats for download include csv, xml, gml, shp, data dictionary, photos (jpg), and sections (jpg).

    The excavation data for Heathrow Terminal 5 was released by Framework Archaeology in a similar way last August.

    Making data from such an important archaeological excavation is a great philosophical move, and I do hope that more organisations follow suit. The key will be to see what (if anything) people do with this data…

     

    • Mia 3:04 pm on 30 May, 2008 Permalink

      Nice one! I’d love to hear more about how it’s used as people discover it.

  • Tom Goskar 1:39 pm on 24 May, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, , sharing   

    Wessex Archaeology adopts Creative Commons license for photos 

    [Disclaimer: I work for Wessex Archaeology]
    Wessex Archaeology have just announced that they will be using a Creative Commons license for the 600+ photos that they have on Flickr and in their gallery.

    Let’s hope that other heritage organisations follow suit. The “All Rights Reserved” copyright model is very restrictive when you study and record the past, and want to share some of that work with others to aid and encourage further learning.

    By adopting the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0″ license, they are actively saying to people “we want you to use our photos”. Which for a heritage organisation, is fairly novel!

     

  • Tom Goskar 1:10 pm on 25 August, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, oxfordarchaeology, , wessexarchaeology   

    New look Oxford Archaeology website 

    Oxford Archaeology's new look websiteOxford Archaeology have recently given their website a complete facelift. In a bold move, visitors to their ‘old’ domain name http://www.oxfordarch.co.uk are redirected to http://www.thehumanjourney.net/ where the front page contains none of the usual blurb about the company, just a menu and a large showcase image, currently a “Study for the female heidelbergensis face based on the Broken Hill skull”. It’s a compelling and powerful image.

    They have moved much of their content over to a Joomla CMS, and employ some other open source projects such as Gallery. We are promised much more innovation as part of their “Open Archaeology” programme.
    (More …)

     

    • Chris Brayne 11:48 pm on 25 August, 2006 Permalink

      Vision, courage, commitment! Bravo, encoure, mas!

      Looks like the times just might be a change’in.

    • DP 11:40 am on 27 August, 2006 Permalink

      It is taking time for heritage organisations to take on board the potential of open source software; the incorporation of the os community joint projects can be extremely beneficial. Not sure about the semiology of their url. New client – do they say check out oxfordarch or a slightly avant garde human journey? I’d personally be slightly wary of saying the latter in a museum or council environment.
      Tighten up on their web standards and they’ll get a nice site (invalid code- but that’s probably the Joomla cms and the huge front image!) – I hope they maintain their commitment. Experimentation is the name of the game. Some things will stay, others won’t. Fudaces fortuna iuvat…..

    • Kate 12:39 pm on 27 August, 2006 Permalink

      I love the new look Oxford Archaeology Website, and plan to be a regular visitor there. Thank you for drawing our attention to it.
      Kate.
      http://journals.aol.co.uk/bobandkate/AnAnalysisofLife/

    • Chris Puttick 5:35 am on 7 September, 2006 Permalink

      Well, gee, we’re pleased to hear people like it! Internal reaction has been, well, mixed ;-). External reaction generally positive, but this is just rather nice. And note the preferred URL is even more avantgarde – no http://www...

      Interesting on the invalid code response – anything in particular reporting that? In the true spirit of openness the site was launched in stealth mode while we tinkered, so the site reviewed and visited was very much RC1 – as of Friday 1st September v1 was released on an unsuspecting public, with a few neat features and some tweaking, particularly around the front page.

      Check back often as the front page (image and explanation) in particular is destined to be changed often. Also the Open Archaeology section will just keep evolving, and yes, a blog is on the way as part of other developments.

      Cheers

      Chris Puttick

      PS CIO of Oxford Archaeology, not the webmaster, but definitely a big fan of “open”.

  • Tom Goskar 11:02 am on 11 August, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Archaeology, , , opensource, pas, treasure   

    Portable Antiquities Scheme Blog 

    Today, I’ve just discovered that the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales, have a blog and a whole slew of RSS feeds.

    The PAS blog covers pretty much everything done by the Scheme, from technical notes about the website the the information contained withing the PAS database, to spotlighting particular finds of note. It’s an interesting read for techies and non-techies alike.

    At the time of writing, the latest post covers the scheme’s usage of open source software. It’s nice to read something like this from a fellow heritage professional:

    It should be recognised that IE sucks by now.

    Yes!

    I’m reading the post as I write this, I confess, and it’s just mentioned me as a “guru”. Well I never! Moreimportantly, it’s mentioned that the PAS will be implementing geotagging later in the summer, which is heartening, as I’ve been very keen to see this applied to in a heritage context. Well done, guys!

    Link: Portable Antiquities Scheme blog

     

  • Tom Goskar 12:11 pm on 30 July, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: archaeolog, Archaeology, , participatory, theory   

    Archaeolog: a collaborative archaeology blog 

    Michael Shanks is a well known archaeologist who specialises in theoretical approaches within archaeology. He is one of the growing number of archaeologists who really ‘get it’ when it comes to social media and the internet. Through his blog and various experiments he has grasped the concepts of participatory media by the horns and seen the possibilities and realities that communicative technologies can provide. If you’re reading this because you like archaeology, or you are interested in ‘Web 2.0′, I’d recommend a visit to his site.

    To get to the point of this post, Michael and others have established Archaeolog:

    Archaeolog is a collective weblog dealing in all things archaeological. It is open to the wider archaeological community and cognate fields from academics to field practitioners, from professors to students. We are inclusive and have no agenda other than to foster debate. We are community driven and we wish to provide a place for archaeology at large to be visible to the widest possible audience.

    It’s great to see something like this. I’ve been promoting the use of blogs and social networking within archaeology for a few years now, and to be honest I’ve been a bit blind as to what has been happening in the USA. Expect a few more posts as I delve into some of the experiements in the wonderfully named “collaboratory” at Stanford University.

    Archaeolog is committed to accelerating the debate. With the ability to comment it facilitates immediate feedback and discussion from a broad range of inquirers interested in exploring the archaeological sensibility at large.

    And long may the debate continue, and may many be involved…

     

    • Kate 12:38 pm on 4 August, 2006 Permalink

      Hi,
      I have been searching Technorati’s pages for blogs interested in archaeology and found yours. It is excellent. I have been blogging about my historical and archaeological interests for a few months now and I have found it difficult to meet up with like-minded people. So I have added yours to my favourites today. I love history and my aim is to bring history to people who never really think about it. My blog is a large part of this effort. I am also writing historical novels, not published yet, but maybe one day. I am glad to see that there are other historians/archaeologists out there who realise the enormous potential of the internet and web to promote history and archaeology,
      Kate.
      http://journals.aol.co.uk/bobandkate/AnAnalysisofLife/

    • Henrik 7:15 pm on 23 September, 2006 Permalink

      Well I have read the entries on archaeolog for the past month or so.
      It might be, that Shanks has “grasped the concepts of participatory media by the horns and seen the possibilities and realities that communicative technologies can provide”, but I’m really not impressed with the blog. When you comment on the blog it takes several days for the comment to appear on the post and the author doesn’t always respond – although I have also witnessed some quite active participation from the ‘collaborators’. There are some nice posts, but the part about fostering a debate… well, it seems to be going at a rather slow pace.

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