Season's Greetings

 

Wishing one and all a safe and happy holiday season and all the best in the new year. 2012 will see significant changes at Sustainable Archaeology, as we populate the new building at UWO with equipment and complete renovations at the McMaster facility.Our database will be fully functional by early next year and we'll start receiving collections by spring.

Object to Information Conversion & Wet Lab

 

The Object to Information Lab is a lonely place right now. But in a few months, this is where our data-input crew will be sitting, as they enter raw data about the artifacts submitted to the facility into the digital database. The room will house 3-5 workstations that we expect will be kept busy. The wet lab is for processing ceramic and petrographic thin sections of archaeological and geological material, and we anticipate our research associates at HD Analytical Solutions will be making good use of the space to process their microscopic slides.

Database development

Work has been steadily progressing on the digital relational database. The database developer has produced a beta version of the platform and data entry forms, which will be revised and polished over the next several months. The aim of the database is to provide a digital record for each of the artifacts that will be stored in the facilities. Some records will include 2D photographs, others 3D images. All diagnostic artifacts will have their own DM code that will be used for both tracing the artifact to its location with the SA facilities and accessing its file within the database from a hand-held scanning device.

Work Assist Vehicle

 

J.H. Ryder has delivered our new Work Assist Vehicle (Crown WAV 50 Series). The WAV fits perfectly down the aisles of the facility, allowing safe access to either side of the shelving aisle. The platform raises to a height of 125", over 10', allowing us to safely raise and store up to 4 boxes at a time on the highest shelves without having to carry the boxes manually up a ladder.

International Collaboration

Sustainable Archaeology is pleased to announce our partnership and support of the Archaeological Data Service (ADS, York, UK) for a pan-European proposal to create a cohesive digital research infrastructure under the acronym ARIADNE. The consortium incorporates 24 partners from across 16 European countries and 3 transnational partnerships, with SA representing Canada as the 4^th international partner. SA will collaborate with the consortium on the development of standards and interoperability of the digital archaeological record.

GPR work at Tecumseh Park

 

Belated post! This photo was taken 2 months ago (in September), when there were still leaves on the trees. Sustainable Archaeology's geophysic's unit was training Tom Porawski of Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants, Inc. how to use the Ground Penetrating Radar to search for burials associated with the War of 1812 in Tecumseh Park, Chatham, Ontario. You can check out the story in the London Free Press, here:

1812 Soldiers' Graves Sought

Autumn

 

The autumn colours have already started to fade, as this month marks a full year since major construction started at the new facility. A year ago there was a parking lot where the office in which this blog is now being written and published once was. While progress on the ground has seemed to drag, looking over the photos of the past year it is actually quite remarkable how much has been accomplished and how many people have been involved in the process. We've met and engaged with individuals from departments across campus and the London community on a daily basis - from UWO Research Services, Purchasing and Finance Departments, Facilities Management, ITS, Security, and the Faculty of Social Science, to the architects and engineers at Spriet Associates and Integrated Engineering, Tonda Construction, Brad Baker, Shamrock Mechanical, CHUBB security, JPW Systems, the City of London, and a host of sub-contractors who've done everything from install our doors to sprayed fire-retardant insulation, poured concrete and planted our trees. We spent months with Thames Office Systems and Spacesaver as our shelving was installed and tweaked. We've met a lot of wonderful people who have been patient, knowledgeable, professional and instrumental in the success of this first stage of our development - our thanks go out to them for the long hours they've put in, the hurdles they've helped us over, their patience and their good sense of humour. Thanks as well to the Museum of Ontario Archaeology - we've used and altered their space, ripped apart their walls, muddied their floors, and intruded on their peace and quiet. We look forward to making it worth the effort :)

Boxes have arrived

 

Our first shipment of 6000+ boxes from Enviropack have arrived at the facility.

Faxitron Digital X-ray

 

Now that construction of the Sustainable Archaeology Research Centre is complete at the University of Western Ontario, we have been busy purchasing our new equipment. This is the new digital x-ray machine - a Faxitron, model 43855F with CR scanner and N90 nanofocus from PharmMedSci. This unit is housed in the Ancient Images Laboratory and will be used for non-destructive 2D examination, identification and reconstruction of archaeological artifacts and organic remains. Examples of radiography applications include the biomechanical and morphometrical analysis of bone, the deposition patterns of enamel, cementum and dentin in teeth, identification of rusted or corroded artifacts, the material composition of earthenware ceramics and mineral inclusions and the characterization of source morphology and inclusions in stone tools.

 

Landscaping

 

It's a monumental week for the Sustainable Archaeology Research centre at UWO. We've completed all of the requirements for our Occupancy Permit and once the paperwork has been filed with the City of London, our doors will be open! The interior of the building is now complete - and the landscaping will be finished by Wednesday. This is a view of the west side of the Research centre - the view that faces Wonderland Road, a main thoroughfare through the City. The dirt will be sprayed with hydro seed, and given the cooler temperatures and increased precipitation from what we were experiencing earlier this summer, it is expected that the seed should take quite quickly. A year ago we were asking the General Contractor (Tonda) to please hold off on ground-breaking until after the Museum's Harvest Festival - this year we're asking them to please finish up before the Festival commences this weekend. So the construction process as been a full year in the works!

It's time for us to turn our attention towards the next phase of the project's development - the digital database. We have been working on policy documents over the summer and roughing out our collections guidelines. This process, along with the actual construction of the database itself, will be ongoing throughout the fall and winter months. By January, we aim to have a beta database set up for testing with a goal towards accepting our first collections by early spring.

Visualization Gallery

 

The new Octoterra wall has been installed in the Visualization room (that's a bunch of twigs in cross-section, though the detail is lost at this scale) - bringing all of the rooms in the new facility to completion. Landscaping begins on Tuesday after the Labour Day long weekend. Over the next couple of weeks the touch-ups will be made that will make the facility picture-perfect for its community debut during the Doors Open London event on the 17-18th of the month. If you're local, stop by and take a look at what we've been up to. Over the next few months we will be furnishing the facility with equipment and working on getting the digital database up and running.

Count down to occupancy

 

Construction is finally winding down. All that remains for the outside of the building is a rail for the wheelchair ramp and some landscaping, which will commence the first full week of September when summer temperatures have leveled off. There are still a few finishing touches to be done inside the facility - wall paneling to be installed, doors to be stained, baseboards finished. We are excited to start the installation of our RFID tracking system in the fall, supplied by OCR. During the weekend of September 16-18th, the Museum of Ontario Archaeology will be hosting their annual Harvest Festival. The event coincides with Doors Open London, in which both the museum and the Sustainable Archaeology Center will open their doors to the public during that weekend.

Boxes & shelves

 

This photo demonstrates how the boxes will be stored in the facility - single stacked, 2 deep. The boxes in the photo are the size and colour of those that will be used by the facility. Our first box shipment is expected by the end of October.

Floors sealed

 

Shelving complete - floors in  the facility sealed. We're down to the final stages of construction now as the general contractor works through their checklist to completion. We anticipate our occupancy permit by next week and look forward to moving into the facility. Now we can focus our attention to the development of the database and our collections policy.

GPR at work at Uncle Tom's Cabin

The facility's ground penetrating radar will be put to work in Dresden next week at Uncle Tom's Cabin historic site. The work was scheduled for Thursday, July 28th but had to be rescheduled due to inclement weather. The Sustainable Archaeology geophysics team will be on site Tuesday, August 2 and Wednesday, August 3rd, weather permitting. The project has been picked up by several media sources, including Western News, CTV and CP24.

Museum link

 

The flooring is down, the walls are up and painted and the link is complete between the museum and the Sustainable Archaeology facility. From museum you can see straight down the hallway into the shelving room. The entrance to the new facility is just to the right at the top of the ramp/stairs.

Yesterday, the Canadian Federal Minister of Health, Ms. Leona Aglukkaq, visited the museum to make a funding announcement (although not related to the facility). With all of the news media on site for the day for the high profile occasion, we were happy the facility was in an advanced stage of completion!

Access Ramp

 

It's been a very busy month! Most of the work is complete inside the new facility. Spacesaver is putting the final touches on the mobile shelving install, the floor is (mostly) down, the walls painted, the wood ceiling in the Visual Imaging lab is going up, the millwork is complete, the network/ethernet wiring has been installed. In other words - it's time to start shopping for furniture!

Earlier this month, Sustainable Archaeology hosted a workshop for end users and regulators in the Cultural Resource Management industry. The purpose of the workshop was to introduce the industry formally to the facility, and to generate discussion and feedback on collections management practices that would guide the facility in generating Best Practice policies for Ontario archaeological collections. Watch this space, our web page and ArchNotes for a summary of the day's discussions. We are interested in generating feedback - which we'll welcome on this Blog as well as over email or standard mail.

 

Magnetic Gradiometer

 

Learning how to operate the magnetic gradiometer (Bartington Instruments) on campus at the University of Western Ontario.

Boxes

 

Our boxes will be a standardized size of 12" wide, 15" deep and 10" high, supplied by Enviro-Pack Material Handling Inc. They will fit the dimensions you see in this photo, slightly smaller than a standard-issue banker's box, and will be green in colour in order to mask scuff marks and dirt and be distinguishable to the facility. The shelving of the facility was custom made to accommodate the box size and allows us to achieve maximum capacity. Boxes will not be double-stacked, so there is no risk of crushing or compression. They are comprised of an inert polypropylene blend for maximum strength and archival quality. Boxes are opaque to minimize light exposure to artifacts packed within.

Shelves up!

 

The Spacesaver shelving install is almost complete. All verticals all up (16' high!)- and here's the view from the mezzanine. Horizontals, wiring and final lights should all be installed by the end of next week. Shortly thereafter, Shane and his crew will be moving down the highway to see to the install of the shelving at the McMaster facility.

Let there be light

 

The lights work! And what a difference it makes. Here you're looking west from the museum into the Sustainable Archaeology facility. You can see clear through into the storage room with the high density mobile shelving in its final stages of installation. The walls in the 'bridge' are primed and will be painted first thing next week. The millwork is complete (with the exception of a few alternations). Major work is starting out in the parking lot next week as well. And once the lights are installed on the facade outside, I'll be able to share a photo of the completed exterior.

Other initiatives include a brainstorming workshop we're hosting on July 9th to discuss database and policy development, roughing out the plans for our Grand Opening in September, finalizing purchases of our RFID system, microCT scanner and digital x-ray and developing RFQ's for lab out-fittings, computers and other pieces of equipment we will be needing in the near future. Next week we will be receiving a very generous gift of 10 computer systems, a whole bunch of monitors and 5 tablets from Michael Carter at theskonkworks. Thank you so very much, Michael - and welcome aboard! Mike will be joining us in the UWO PhD program next year.

Boston Fan

 

Brad Baker Plumbing, Heating and Electrical have been wiring the new facility and integrating it with the existing wiring at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. We've seen this hard hat on one of their crew members since the beginning of this project last fall. Ed was one happy hockey fan last Wednesday!

New entrance

 

Here's a first look at the new entrance. The tile is down, the walls are painted and the doors are up.

Wheelchair ramp

 

The site is prepared for the new wheelchair ramp that will be filled in during the next few days. The front entrance to the museum has been dug up and visitors have been required to use the side entrance on occasion. The new flooring will be extended into the current museum gift-shop area next week and the lobby entrance repaired. Doors are being mounted onto the new facility and soon the climate inside the building will be able to be regulated so that mill work/cabinetry can progress.

This Thursday the University of Western Ontario hosts an open house for incoming graduate students. The Anthropology Department will be accepting several new students who will be spending a lot of time at the facility working with digital material culture. We're excited to welcome them, and look forward to the near future when the facility is officially open and buzzing with intellectual activity.

Museum entrance

 

The outdoor work has finally started on the museum site. Crews demolished and leveled the old landscaping around the museum entrance yesterday and have been preparing to repair the old entrance and lay in the new accessibility ramp. The shelving install is half complete on the inside of the building and the facade is prepared for the new siding installation on the outside. Staff have met with neighbors in the community to negotiate landscaping options and the project is excited about the prospect of donating to a Neighborhood application for the City of London SPARKS initiative. 

The summer will be spent purchasing equipment and setting up the new building. The Sustainable Archaeology facility will officially open its doors during the Museum of Ontario Archaeology's Harvest Festival on September 16-18, corresponding with the City of London's Doors Open Ontario event in which both facilities are participating.

Last of the red

 

It's been a while since we've shown the front of the Sustainable Archaeology facility. You can see the new entrance foyer (with the overhang) and the 'windows' that have been installed on the repository. The braces for the new siding are being installed and siding should start going up any day. Inside, the walls have been white-washed with primer in preparation for the new paint. Next week, the old entrance to the museum will be repaired, the new ramp will be constructed and the lobby/giftshop area of the museum will undergo some renovations in order to provide a consistent look between the two facilities.

Shelving progress

 

It isn't just the shelving that's moving along now, although there has been significant progress on that front. Windows and doors are up in the facility. The mezzanine floor has been poured and is cured so the  mechanical room is being framed in (the prelude to our phone and internet connections being wired in). The facade windows on the exterior of the building have been placed - siding should start going up next week. We have several items of equipment under consideration and some already on order. 

Next week we look forward to introducing the facility to some of the neighbors who have had to deal with this construction for the past seven months, and we'll be fortunate enough to have a local member of City Council in attendance. We're down to our last projected month of construction now and it's starting to feel like it - we look forward to finally opening our doors in July!

Mobile shelving base

 

Spacesaver has started to install the base of the mobile shelving units onto the embedded tracks. Here you can start to see how the shelving will take shape. Each carriage has two motors that will power it, hooked up to controls at the end of the carriage. At the press of a button, the carriage will move to the left or the right and the lighting above the open isle will be triggered to go on. What you see here is only half the full length of an isle - you can see the tracks in the floor where the base will be laid down just in front of where this picture was taken. 

The stairs to the mezzanine and the mezzanine floor have been poured. The ramp and stairs in the hall adjoining the Museum and the Sustainable Archaeology facility have been poured. The doors are up. There has been a flurry of tradesmen and contractors on site this past week working on everything from electric hook-up, fire safety and security, to HVAC, plumbing and insulation. With just a little over a month left to substantial completion, there is still a lot to accomplish, but we're full steam ahead!

2nd concrete pour

 

The second concrete pour has almost been completed. It had to be poured in stages as finishing along the shelving rails had to be carefully troweled by hand. There is one section that is left to be poured to complete the floor. Then the stairs to the mezzanine, the mezzanine floor, and the accessibility ramp that adjoins the two facilities will be poured. Next week, the folks from Spacesaver shelving will be back on site to install the mobile shelves. That will take about a month to complete. We've gone from snow on the ground just a few weeks ago straight into summer temperatures - so the ground has thawed and the mud has dried up and we can shortly turn our attention to finishing up the exterior of the building and landscaping.

Shelving track

 

The track has been laid for the shelving and the second pour of concrete will secure them in place. Shelving should start going up on the 15th.

The Mez

 

Here is your first peek at the mezzanine space above the image and data laboratories. It overlooks the storage space. This is where guests to the facilities, students and affiliated researchers will have some space to work on desks and layout tables. We'll have some book cases up here as well and some map and filing cabinets. 

The shelving company, SpaceSaver, is starting to lay out the track for the shelving. They'll fix it in place next week and a final concrete pour will set them on May 9th. Tonda, the general contractor, is seeing to some finishing touches to the HVAC and electrical systems and bricking in doorways and girders. The temperature has been slow to warm up this spring and it's been wet out there, but landscaping should start by next week.

Digital X-Ray

The Sustainable Archaeology facility at the University of Western Ontario is seeking bids from vendors for a Digital X-Ray Cabinet System for the Ancient Images Laboratory. The radiography system is required for non-destructive 2D examination, identification and reconstruction of archaeological artifacts and organic remains.  Examples of applications include the biomechanical and morphometrical analysis of bone, the deposition patterns of enamel, cementum and dentin in teeth, identification of rusted or corroded artifacts, the material composition of earthenware ceramics and mineral inclusions, and the characterization of source morphology and inclusions in stone tools. The Request for Proposals (RFP) has been published on the WEsternBUYs website,UWORFPAL-01105 and MERX. The Senior Buyer contact for this proposal is Andrew Lazarito - alazarit @ uwo.ca. Closing date for proposals is 13 May 2011.

Parking Lot Expanded

 

Looking east of the museum, towards the Lawson Village palisade, you can see where the parking lot is being expanded. This will provide several new parking spaces to accommodate the increased traffic at the new merged facilities (Sustainable Archaeology & the Museum of Ontario Archaeology).

Break through!

 

At last! There it is. We're looking west from within the Museum of Ontario Archaeology into the new Sustainable Archaeology Research and Curation facility (Roy, from Tonda Construction - who's spent the last day preparing the space for this event, is in the foreground).

Temperatures are rising slowly - it's been a cool spring with a lot of intermittent snow - but we're starting to move ahead with some of the landscaping. Tomorrow work gets started on the expansion of the parking lot.

Out with the old

 

Here's one last look at what was once a storage room on the west side of the Museum of Ontario Archaeology before it is transformed into the access hallway between the two facilities. On the other side of that insulated wall is the hallway that will access the Sustainable Archaeology research laboratories. Crews have started to take down the ceiling tiles and fixtures. Next week they'll take down the walls and prepare the access ramp.

In other news, we've received the last of our field equipment orders. We now have a brand new ground penetrating radar, a magnetic gradiometer and a resistivity meter ready for field season to begin. We are in the process of selecting a box vendor and a radio frequency identification tagging system. And we are fielding proposals for a microCT and digital x-ray scanner for the Ancient Images laboratory. We are also working with a Database Developer to design the digital relational database and are making arrangements for consultations with interested user-groups.

Museum facelift underway as well

 

This is no April Fool. There are some dramatic changes afoot in the Museum of Ontario Archaeology as well these days (the Sustainable Archaeology facility is being built adjacent to the Museum). In the back office area of the museum, two new offices have been partitioned off (seen on the left) and an old storage room has been converted into new laboratory space.

MicroCT scanner

The Sustainable Archaeology facility at the University of Western Ontario is seeking bids from vendors for a micro computed tomography scanner for the Ancient Images Laboratory. A microCT scanner is required for the non-destructive examination, 2D cross section and 3D volumetric reconstruction of archaeological artifacts and organic remains. Examples of applications include the examination of trabecular architecture in vertebrae, the distribution of enamel, cementum and dentin in teeth, the material composition and mineral inclusions of ceramics and the characterization of source morphology and inclusions in stone tools. The Request for Proposals (RFP) has been published on the WEsternBUYs website,UWORFPAL-01106 and MERX. The Senior Buyer contact for this proposal is Andrew Lazarito - alazarit @ uwo.ca. Proposals close at noon EDT on 15 April 2011. NOTE: the deadline for the posting has been extended to 29 April 2011.

Pouring the floor

 

Yesterday the snow had all but disappeared. But winter returned this morning, just in time for the cement flooring to arrive.  Here you see a cement truck feeding concrete into a pumper truck. The pumper is equipped with a long, flexible arm that directs the concrete into the facility where it is being poured onto the floor and leveled by the workmen inside. The floors will be poured for the entire facility - repository and lab space - but this is only the first pour for the repository. Once it has cured, the metal tracks will be laid for the mobile shelving and a second pour will set them in place.

Imagining Digital Imaging

 

It doesn't look as though much has changed on the outside of the building in the past couple of weeks, but there are some big changes afoot inside. This is the last look you'll have at a dirt floor in what will be the Digital Imaging laboratory. The ground is being thawed - with a little help from both Mother Nature and some heaters - in preparation for the concrete floor that will be poured next week.

Ontario Archaeological Collections

 

Not all archaeological collections are display-worthy. The vast majority of artifacts look like these items - broken, disassociated pieces of pottery, stone, bone, metal and glass. Archaeologists find tremendous interpretive value in this material. The Sustainable Archaeology facilities will provide centralized storage for thousands of archaeological collections from southern Ontario. The data from these collections will be digitized and entered into a database that will be available over the web - enabling access and facilitating research on an exciting new scale within the Province.

Site inspection

 

The project Principle Investigator, Dr. Neal Ferris, and Spriet Associates architectural Project Manager Amanda Bettridge, check out the progress on the new facility. They are standing on the east side of the artifact repository, the warehouse where collections will be stored on mobile shelving units. Picture 21carriages that extend the length of this room, 15 shelves high and full of standard sized boxes. 

Next week, the building will be fully enclosed. In March, the heaters will be brought out to thaw the ground in preparation for the first pour of concrete. While that is being done, the mechanical and electrical fittings will be installed and the interior will start to be finished. By April, the floor should be ready to start installing the shelving.

Muddy situation

 

Hints of spring are all around us! The temperatures this week have been warm, the birds are singing in the woods behind us, the snow is rapidly retreating - and unfortunately we've got a parking lot full of mud. As you can see in the latest progress photo, the roof is now on the facility and the walls are going up. It should be enclosed by the end of the month. To further fuel the excitement in the change of seasons, we're starting to talk landscaping details on site, as we envision what the museum and archaeology facility will look like with grass, bushes and trees.

Radio Frequency Identification Tags - Request for Proposals

The Sustainable Archaeology facilities at the University of Western Ontario and McMaster University are seeking bids from vendors for the supply and install of a RFID tracking system. The Request for Proposals has been published on the WEsternBUYs website, UWORFPAL-01103 and MERX. The Senior Buyer contact for this proposal is Andrew Lazarito - alazarit @ uwo.ca. Proposals close at noon EDT on 25 Feb 2011.

Colours

 

Considering the colour options for the stone veneer on the outside of the building (prefer the darker colour, closer to the photographer) and the mobile shelving (colour swatches) at the bi-weekly project meeting.

Archival storage boxes - Request for Proposals

The Sustainable Archaeology facilities at the University of Western Ontario and McMaster University are seeking bids from vendors for archival corrugated plastic storage boxes. The Request for Proposals has been published on the WEsternBUYs website, UWORFPSR-01053 and MERX. The Senior Buyer contact for this proposal is Scott Roth - sroth6 @ uwo.ca. Proposals close at noon EDT on 22 Feb 2011.

Enclosure

 

The Object Conversion and Digital Imaging laboratories have been enclosed. Half of the new facility's roof is now up. It's starting to look like a functional building.

New Equipment: Magnetic Gradiometer

A new piece of geophysical field equipment has arrived - a magnetic gradiometer from Bartington Instruments. It will be used in the field to locate underground archaeological features, such as foundation walls or fire hearths, and artifacts with magnetic properties.

Pre-cast slab delivery

 

The pre-cast slabs for the masonry walls were delivered today after a brief delay due to snow-fall. This month, the walls go up and the roof goes on.

Break through

 

A hole is punched through a supply room on the west side of the museum in preparation for the link between the museum and the new facility.

Cement pumper

 

A large and impressive machine - a 50' cement pumper - is on site today to place concrete into forms on the south side of the structure in preparation for the masonry walls that will be started next week.

Wanted: Relational database programmer/developer

The Sustainable Archaeology project is seeking the expertise of a relational database programmer/developer for a full-time, 2-3 month contract to assist the team in developing a relational database warehouse of digital archaeological artifacts and collections. The warehouse will be the backbone of an interactive database that will allow users to correlate, compare and analyze data in spatial and/or temporal frameworks. The backend will be developed in SQL. We are seeking a programmer who can help us define and organize our requirements and develop, test and modify the database architecture. Experience with GUI development in Visual Basic or similar program for data input/output is desirable to extend the terms of the contract. We prefer someone with experience in the temporal, spatial and semantic complexities of archaeological collections.

For more information/inquiries, please contact:
Dr. Rhonda Bathurst
Project Manager, Sustainable Archaeology
rhonda.bathurst AT uwo.ca
519-661-2111 x85059

Pre-engineered frame up

Frame

 

Look closely, and you'll see the frame of the new facility going up in the background of this photo. The new year has already seen significant progress on site. A few warm days melted much of the snow that had accumulated around the construction zone during December's record-breaking snowfalls. By the end of next week, the frame for the new facility should be complete.