Gnewarchaeology, a successful workshop

Just a fast report from the workshop "Gnewarchaeology" in Ferrara (see the previous post): the meeting was a success, both for the quality of the presentations and for the discussion. It was a good chance to share ideas and remark the importance to use FLOSS in archaeological research. Soon we will upload our slides. In the meantime we want to thank the organizers (especially Domenico Giusti) for the great job they did.

3D PDF for archaeology

Today I am preparing the presentation for the meeting in Ferrara (see the previous post), so I did some experiments with 3D PDF. I think this kind of documentation has good potentialities in archaeology. To test them I took some old data (the 3D skull done with Sfm and IBM techniques), I build the surface in Meshlab and with the same software I saved an u3d file. Then, with the help of Kyle, I wrote a (very) simple 3d document. The result is the image below. As you can see, to visualize my 3d PDF I had to virtualize Windows inside my VritualBox and run Adobe Reader. Up to now I did not find a pdf reader for Linux which is able to visualize u3d, so if you know one, please let me know...

Anyway, if you want to visualize the result, you can download the file here.

Voxel for archaeology

This video regards a pretty old experiment we did in 2006 to understand the possibility of volumetric graphic (voxel) in archaeology. The data came from my thesis (University of Padua, professor G. Leonardi) and were elaborated inside GRASS. The 3d surfaces of top and bottom interfaces of one layer were imported into the GIS to produce a volumetric representation. This was possible thanks to the effort of Soeren Gebbert, who wrote a script to export the voxel from GRASS into a VTK file (which we loaded in ParaView). At the and of the experiment we had a complete virtual representation of the archaeological record (a destroyed burial connected with incineration practices). This "digital copy" was composed by two 3d raster surfaces (top and bottom), one volumetric reconstruction of the layer (voxel) and a lot of 3d vector levels of the finds (fragment of burned human bones, pottery and bronze). Below you can see a picture of the situation before a started to dig.

Which GIS? gvSIG

To tell the truth, i don't use very often gvSIG. Anyway it is for sure one of the software which has evolved faster since its first inclusion in ArcheOS. Moreover the program is pretty similar to ESRI GIS, so it is perfect to help new users of FLOSS (people for whom a direct migration form ArcGIS to GRASS could be traumatic). An other important aspect is that gvSIG is maybe the GIS in ArcheOS which has the easiest (and most functional) tool to get direct layouts, so if you settle for basic maps (without to many complications) this is probably your software. In the image below you can see an example of layout model, done with an old version of gvSIG.

Which GIS? OpenJUMP

We are often asked why there are so many GIS inside ArcheOS (GRASS, gvSIG, OpenJUMP, Quantum GIS, SAGA GIS, Udig). Today I start answering with OpenJUMP. This is my favorite software for an excavation GIS, due to its fantastic drawing tools (that make it similar to a CAD). So, from my point of view, OpenJUMP is the best GIS to draw vector layers from georeferenced photomosaics, like in the image you see below...

... but of course there are also many other tools, which sometime are usefull to handle excavation data (below you see the "warping" utility). Moreover the database integration in the program is pretty enought for this kind of small projects.

Metodo Aramus

In 2006 we joined the Aramus Excavations and Field School. That one was our first year in the project as a society. Our primary goal was to help in software migration from closed source softwares to FLOSS. The migration ended without problems, thanks to ArcheOS, but it caused some minor changes in the archaeological workflow. One of most important was the new methodology we had to develop in order to performe a fast photomapping technique of the excavation (at least as fast as the system they used before). We called this new methodology "metodo Aramus" and, untill now, we are still using it. The main reason is the quality we reached with the georeferenced photomosaics: compared with other traditional techniques, every single photo in the final image is equlized in brighteness and contrast. The result is a composite picture in which is more or less impossible to recognize the borders between the single photos.  

Comparison between traditional methodology and Metodo Aramus

Archaeological drawing from photomapping

IMHO one of the main benefits of photomapping is the fact that everybody is able to do good archaeological drawing. In this way it is not necessary to divide archaeologists between "diggers" (who simply excavate layer by layer)  and "drawers" (who just document). In our (Arc-Team) experience it is never a good solution when someone has to document a situation he does not know (because was exposed by someone else).
In other words, photomapping techniques and GIS allow also normal archaeologists to reach the same quality level of professionals in drawing layers or finds. As an example, the picture below shows the skeleton of a young goat found in Aramus (AM): the georeferenced photomosaic is done with photomapping techniques ("metodo Aramus") and the drawing is done by me (i am not a professional in drawing) using the GIS OpenJUMP (inside ArcheOS).

Georeferenced photomosaic and vector drawing with OpenJUMP