Sustainable Archaeology is a digital archaeological research facility and repository making Ontario’s archaeological heritage accessible to all. Dedicated to ensuring a sustainable future for Ontario's archaeological heritage.
On May 15th Sustainable Archaeology: Western, along with our neighbours at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, welcomed attendees of the 2014 Canadian Archaeological Association conference for an evening open house.
Tours of the repository and laboratories were conducted by Dr. Neal Ferris, Dr. Rhonda Bathurst, and Kira Westby, with Dr. Andrew Nelson exhibiting examples of scanning projects at the micro-CT station in the Ancient Images Laboratory.
Checking out the micro-CT
Repository tour with Dr. Rhonda Bathurst
It was exciting for us to engage with fellow archaeologists from across the country on issues related to collections management, database development, and integrating digital technologies, to hear their feedback on the facility, and to hear their questions. Garnering particular interest amongst some of the attendees was SA's use of barcoding technologies and inventory management tools, as well as our 3D scanning and 3D printing equipment. And of course the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, showcasing the re-creation of the Lawson site, is always a big hit, both for those trying it out, and for the crowd watching!
Thank you again to everyone who attended, it was a great evening! We hope to hear from many of you again soon!
This past weekend staff from both Sustainable Archaeology Western and McMaster attended the annual Ontario Archaeology Society Symposium in Niagara Falls.
View of both the American and Canadian falls from the conference venue
In addition to our workshop at the end of the day, we were in the book room for the day Saturday, and were able to have some great conversations with a number of professional archaeologists, students, and representatives of other organizations such as the Canadian Conservation Institute and the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Book room table setup
We received some great feedback on our use of digital tools and inventory management logic for labeling and cataloguing of artifacts at Sustainable Archaeology, and enjoyed introducing people to the "immersive archaeological experience" using the Oculus Rift - a virtual reality headset that is designed for the gaming industry. The Oculus at SA is used to immerse users in a reconstruction of the Lawson village site (located next door to SA: Western at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology) created in summer 2012 by the Sustainable Archaeology Animation Unit internship, using the Unreal game engine.
Trying out the Oculus
We look forward to continuing conversations from the weekend, and continue to welcome feedback on our draft Procedures and Practices document, available on our website. Thanks to the OAS for a great weekend!
In the summer of 2012, Sustainable Archaeology worked with Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) conservator Lisa Ellis and curator Sasha Suda to micro-CT scan 16th century prayer beads, in order to understand how these complex and intricately carved beads were constructed. Their work is the subject of recent AGO Art Matters blog, titled "Conservation Notes: A very fine resolution". The project was also featured in the Spring 2013 CODART e-zine. The video below (posted on the AGO's Youtube channel) shows a surface rendered model of one of the prayer beads.
Today the Museum of Ontario Archaeology, next door, installed a set of touch-screen kiosks in their gallery. The kiosks will display the interactive reconstruction of the Lawson Village that the Loyalist College interns of the Sustainable Archaeology Animation Unit developed while working at Sustainable Archaeology in the summer of 2012.
One of these items is the real thing - the other has been printed on a ZPrinter (450 model) from Zcorp. Can you tell which is which? The bottle, complete with threads (and fitted cap) and colour label is the printed object.
This week we attended vendor demonstrations by Cimetrix Solutions and Agile Manufacturing for 3D printers as we prepare to purchase this equipment for SA Western. The equipment will be used to print a variety of archaeological materials in 3D, including artifacts scanned using SA's 3D digitizers. 3D printers are widely used in the worlds of manufacturing and prototyping, for everything from machine components to jewellery, to chocolate - even GIS data can be used to print 3D models of landscapes.
The video below features the paper "Digital Artifact Ecosystems: The "Internet of Things" in Archaeology" (Namir Ahmed, Michael Carter, Neal Ferris) presented by Western University MA student Namir Ahmed at the Digital Engagement in Archaeology conference this past week. The conference ran November 8th and 9th at the UCL Institute of Archaeology in London, England.
Other videos from the conference can be viewed at Doug's Archaeology blog. Thanks to Doug for posting these! To see conversations and chatter from the conference, check out the hashtag #digipubarch on Twitter.
Our second guest blog features the experiences of Colin Creamer during his participation in the Sustainable Archaeology Animation Unit internship this summer. Colin is a recent graduate of the Loyalist College Animation and New Media program, and was recently hired by Sustainable Archaeology.
Animating the Past
By Colin Creamer
As animators we come from an artistic and tech-savvy background and look at the world much differently than archaeologists might. We had very little knowledge of the world of archaeology. When we discovered we could come all the way down to London from Loyalist College in Belleville, to work at a museum, it wasn’t so much the history and knowledge of the past that caught our attention, but more so the opportunity to get hands-on experience with new technologies. At Loyalist College this past year, we were just beginning to get into some of the freeware scanning solutions such as Autodesk’s 123D Catch, an image driven 3D reconstruction platform. It was really cool to see real-life objects come into digital existence. However with this platform, being a beta, you got whatever it gave you and had no real control over the results. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time you would get some deformity that resembles nothing of the original object being scanned. This made the idea of working with the-real-deal industrial grade scanners all the more appealing.
Colin Creamer sets up an artifact scan
After jumping the fence and zipping down to London, we started our work term with the Sustainable Archaeology Animation Unit (SAAU). May 7th 2012 was our first day. We got the tour of the facility, and were in awe as we saw the massive mechanical aisles of the artifact repository sliding across the floor. To think, these shelving units would soon be the home of hundreds of thousands of artifacts in the near future. We would be a part of that process, scanning a variety of artifacts for digital archiving. Unfortunately… there was one problem. Things were only just starting to come together. The scanners would not be arriving for at least another three weeks. So now there’s a room full of animators, but nothing to do. We needed a project to keep us occupied and seeing as we are animators after all, the idea sprouted to create a recreation animation of the Lawson Village site, a 16th century Neutral Iroquoian site, located just outside the facility, next door at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.
The animation of the village would give an understanding to interested onlookers. However seeing as none of us animators are archaeologists; in order to pursue this new project, we needed to develop an understanding of what archaeology is and learn as much as we could about the Lawson site. The animation had to appeal to people that have little or no understanding of archaeological findings. Also on the other hand, each archaeologist has their own interpretation of what a village site would look like, and we had to show something that was accurate. Throughout the term we were learning new things little by little. At first, we went out to do some concept art in the site, and draw anything and everything we saw. We also obtained archaeological maps which illustrated the shape of the land as well as features that showed exactly where the long houses and palisade posts resided. This allowed us to build an accurate representation of the site layout. We also went on a field trip to the Ska-Nah-Doht Village and Museum site, to get a better general understanding of how things were thought to have been at the time that the Lawson Site was occupied. All of this research informed how we designed and created the animation.
Having started with no insight or real knowledge of archaeology, working at the museum on related projects has bridged the gap between two, normally unrelated fields. The experience is continually exposing us to the terminologies and ways of archaeology. This unique mix has allowed us to successfully achieve projects such as the Lawson animation, that both people from inside and out of archaeology can appreciate and enjoy.
