OCGU EIGG 2008 Poster

OCGU have just returned from the 2008 EIGG meeting entitled ‘Recent work in Archaeological Geophysics’ held at the Geological Society.

There were plenty of old faces and new, making up an impressive turn out of delegates and a great and interesting selection of research presented.

Papers covered topics as diverse as radar and ultrasonic surveys on the chimneys at Battersea power station to magnetic work on Easter Island. There was also a fine selection of posters from researchers, students and commercial groups. OCGU presented a poster on geophysical survey over broch type sites on Orkney.

A link to the EIGG programme can be found here.

Synth Skara Brae

Having heard about Photosynth at the DHNKE conference in Athens, I couldn’t wait to give it a go when I got home.  It strikes me as a very useful tool for archaeologists (who never have the finances to do the work they would like to) – being able to generate point clouds and thus 3D models of extant structures at virtually no cost is something that can only be useful to researchers.

As an experiment, I trawled Flickr for Skara Brae images (with CC licence) using Dowloadr and synthed them into this. (Press ‘p’ to hide the photos and see the point cloud).

Maybe it’s not perfect, but the potential is definitely there.  Apparently, plans are afoot to include an offical exporter for the point cloud data, but there are some clever unofficial tools already able to do this. More here.

I shall watch for new Photosynth developments with keen interest.

Setting out grids with DGPS. Skara Brae can be seen in the background

For the past decade, OCGU and previously, GSB Prospection Ltd, have been involved in a large scale geophysical survey across the ‘Heart of Neolithic Orkney’ World Heritage Area. Currently we are working on Phase XI concentrating on the area around the neolithic village of Skara Brae. At approximately 5000 years old, this is arguably one of the most important archaeological sites in the United Kingdom.

Gradiometry survey near Skara Brae

Primarily our work involves undertaking large scale gradiometry survey, although other techniques such as earth resistance survey, resistivity imaging and ground penetrating radar, are applied when appropriate. The current season of work has yielded some very interesting results, including what may be a small neolithic settlement and a large Iron Age broch, all indicating that there has been occupation around Skara Brae for many centuries.

A visit to the Acropolis

Last weekend (31st October to 2nd November) saw OCGU attend a conference in Athens.  Entitled ‘Digital Heritage in the New Knowledge Environment: shared spaces and open paths to cultural content’, it was hosted by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

The three day event covered all aspects of digital heritage, from  digitising artefacts and information, managing such material, questions surrounding dissemination, to more specialist papers on the nuts on bolts of bringing datasets together using semantic web.  The Anglo-hellenic mix brought a fantastic perspective to the proceedings, greatly enriching the experience of the attending delegates.

I don’t think I can possibly do justice to this event in one post and will have to sit down and write a proper summary soon.  Needless to say, many methodologies, techniques and software were outlined and discussed, all of benefit to everyone in the archaeological profession, irrespective of geographical location.

OCGU were particualarly interested in new ways of digital data dissemination and presented a poster outlining their proposal for such a scheme involving such data from our own ‘Heart of Neolithic Orkney’ WHA.

Other delegates have also documented their experiences: Eric Kansa, Leif Isaksen

Mrs M. Tsipopoulou, Director of the National Archive of Monuments, should be thanked for organising such an enjoyable event, as should her assistant Ms Evangelia Kappa, who ensured that all delegates were kept in order and that all ran smoothly.

Dave Cowley, RCAHMS, talks at SIAM

Over the 17th to 19th October, the Archaeology Department of Orkney College organised a seminar entitled ‘Scottish Iron Age Matters’.  This was held at the college and attended by a group of enthusiastic indviduals, from the well known researcher, to the energetic student. 

A link to the SIAM website can be found here, together with the conference abstracts.

OCGU contributed by submitting a poster about its geophysical survey work on Iron Age broch sites throughout Orkney.

We hope to be able to use this blog to bring some of our research and other activities to users throughout the world.

Here we go!