Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 9 - Rebirth

After surveying, digging and historical research and virtual reconstruction, here is the final result:

Watch in the last chapter of Arc-Team's "Torre dei Sicconi" series our idea of how the castle looked like in the Middel Ages.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 9 - Rebirth

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Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 8 - Reconstruction

After surveying, digging and historical research, we have started to think about, how the castle was looking like in the Middle Ages. 
Photos from the beginning of the 20. century, archaeological finds, 3D models, the comparison with similar, preserved castles: This are the bases for the virtual reconstruction made by Cicero Moraes.
Watch in the next chapter of Arc-Team's "Torre dei Sicconi" series the single steps of 3D reconstruction with Blender

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 8 - Virtual Reconstruction

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Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 6 - Excavation

The archaeological excavation is still one of the most important steps during a research project like "Torre dei Sicconi". 
The main goal was to understand the construction phases, to get information about the composition and ornamentation of the interiors and the every day live of the inhabitants of the castle.  
Watch in the next chapter of our "Torre dei Sicconi" series Arc-Team excavating between the walls of the medieval castle ruin.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 6 - Excavation

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Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 5 - Drone

If we need a detailed view form above or a high resolution DTM/DSM it's time for our drone.
Watch in the next chapter of our "Torre dei Sicconi" series the UAV flying and working over the walls of the medieval castle ruin.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 4 - Drone

 

 

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Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 4 - Documentation

Working on archaeological documentation requires different types of equipment a techniques. Watch in this video some of them in action, while we are continuing to work on the picturesquely situated site of Torre dei Sicconi.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 4 - Documentation

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 3 - GPS

The third chapter of our video, talking about historical and archaeological research and virtual reconstruction of a medieval calstle.

This time we are surveying the castle hill by our DGPS system.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Caldonazzo - Monte Rive: Chapter 3 -GPS

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Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 2 - On the way to new discoveries

The second chapter of our video, talking about historical and archaeological research and virtual reconstruction of a medieval calstle.

This time we are locating the site and finally going to work.

Enjoy!

Torre dei Sicconi - Caldonazzo - Monte Rive: Chapter 2 - On the way to new discoveries

Torre dei Sicconi - Chapter 1 - A long time ago...

The Castle of Torre dei Sicconi (Tower of the Sicconi clan) was destroyed by troops from Verona and Vicenza in 1385.

For that reason we don't know how the building looked like in the Middle Ages.

One way to learn more about the original shape of the complex is reading historical sources which are speaking about the Torre dei Sicconi castle and it's single parts.

Some of them we would like to present in the first chapter of our film:

A long time ago...

Watch also the trailer of 

The rebirth of a lost castle

Torre dei Sicconi - The Trailer

The Castle of Torre dei Sicconi (Tower of the Sicconi clan) is situated on the foothills south of the village of Caldonazzo. It was founded in 1201. 

The castle was destroyed by troops from Verona and Vicenza in 1385. 
The Cultural Heritage Department of Trento (office of archaeological heritage) has conducted excavations and restoration works between 2006 and 2008. 

That data was used for a virtual reconstruction of how the castle may have looked like 600 years ago.

During the next weeks we will publish nine chapters of a movie we've made, explaining the long way from archaeological excavation to virtual reconstruction:

Torre dei Sicconi - Caldonazzo - Monte Rive - 

The rebirth of a lost castle.

We start today with an appetizer: The 90 seconds long trailer of the project.

The horizons of the exhibit “FACES”: anthropological context and applications in medicine

The exhibition FACES. The Many Visages of Human History is, in its own way, a landmark of the work that Arc Team, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua and Antrocom NPO are making together.

The reconstructions of the faces of hominins; of St. Anthony and of  the Blessed Luca Belludi; of Francesco Petrarca and of Giambattista Morgagni, are the evidence of a research that lasted for months and that continues nowadays; a research intended to be expanded to other areas of interest.

In fact, the exhibition offers to the visitors the opportunity to reflect on concepts meaningful to anthropology as diversity, self-perception and identity from the point of view both historical and  contemporary, but it is also a mirror of a continuous testing of technologies that open new perspectives in different areas of anthropological research.

Staying in the wake of the topics of the exhibition, there is no doubt that the perception of the self and diversity are important parameters in the assessments of medical anthropology, especially if the feedback on them are carried out in the light of the implementation of new technologies and 3D printing, in particular applied in medicine.

For example, the prostheses that can be constructed, even printed, in a relatively short time and custom-made for the patient. We have a lot of examples from this point of view:  the mandible custom-made for a 83 years old woman or the cranium completely replaced in a 22 years old Dutch patient; or the realization of live organs, such as liver, tracheal cartilage and ear directly using living cells.

More, forensic reconstruction is a valuable tool in reconstructive surgery: examples of implementation, in this context, are the reconstruction of the face of Albert of Trento via open source software, or of the face of a child mummy preserved at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

I shall focus in particular on an implementation made by Cicero Moraes in order to treat the developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH), a neonatal congenital malformation and treatable using Pavlik harness or making a particular plaster cast (hip spica cast). There may be, in severe cases, even a type of orthopedic surgery.

This treatment involves a continuous monitoring of the patient because of its complications: pain, increased temperature, lesions of the skin. Moraes, together with researchers Munhoz, Kunkel and Tanaka, has implemented an alternative method to the common orthosis consisting in a photogrammetric scanning of the hip in order to replicate the perfect geometry of the anatomical part, with reduction of costs and time and avoiding complications to the patient.

The aims of our research are gradually expanding and we know that we have to do still a lot of work. It's a good thing, however, that we stopped for a moment to take stock of the situation and to recognize that we are helping to improve the state of affairs. Not only in archeology and anthropology, but also in other fields thanks to the scope of what we are doing. A result achieved thanks to motivated individuals who, despite residing in geographic areas far apart, have joined efforts to reach a common goal by sharing data and projects.

Antrocom NPO patronises the exhibit "FACES. The Many Visages of Human History"

Antrocom nonprofit organization patronises the exhibit FACES. The Many Visages of Human History, which is held in the exhibition halls of the University Centre for Museums in Padua from February 14 to June 14, 2015.

The exhibition is the natural continuation of the Taung Project that, among other activities, also produced the reconstruction of the face of Saint Anthony, which has had great resonance among national and international media.

The faces tell our identity and our history: a personal story, but also the evolutionary history of our species. The face is anatomy, physics, physiology; but it is also a symbol, culture and interpretation.

The aim of the exhibition is to tell the various meanings that a face has and can acquire, thanks to finds and three-dimensional reconstructions of great visual impact. The scientific direction and supervision of the exposure are committed to Telmo Pievani and Nicola Carrara, while the three-dimensional and technological fulfilments are entrusted to Arc-Team and Cicero Moraes.

It is indeed a very special event that does not stop at mere display of artifacts, but it is a moment of reflection on forensic techniques used for the reconstruction of the face and on their scientific methodology. A moment that takes advantage of the most modern information technologies of modelling and sculptural development, with tests based on tomographies and original casts.

The exhibition seeks to reflect on the problems of management, usability and preservation of artifacts, especially if they are very fragile as the finds of biological origin.

Another peculiarity of the exhibition "FACES" is the will of the organizers to spread the potentialities offered by the open source world: not only using softwares with this kind of license, but by sharing the obtained three-dimensional models in an open and transparent way, with the opportunity to improve the realized work by other researchers scattered in different countries.

The exhibition is organized into five main themes:

1 - Let's face the human diversity: our origins through the casts of the main hominin fossils and their facial reconstructions, recreated with special forensic softwares and presented through augmented reality technologies. The exhibit also will present newly discovered species (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus sediba, Homo floresiensis) and, for the first time ever, the facial reconstructions of early hominins came out of Africa about 1.8 million years ago, discovered in Dmanisi site in Georgia (Homo georgicus).
The list of hominins on display:

• Sahelanthropus
• Ardipithecus ramidus
• Kenyanthropus platyops
• Australopithecus afarensis
• Australopithecus africanus (Mrs. Pless and Taung child)
• Australopithecus robustus (Paranthropus robustus)
• Paranthropus boisei
• Australopithecus sediba
• Homo habilis
• Homo ergaster (Turkana boy)
• Homo erectus (H. pekinensis)
• Homo neanderthalensis
• Homo rhodesiensis (H. heidelbergensis)
• Homo heidelbergensis (Bodo)
• Homo floresiensis
• Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon)
• Homo sapiens (Idautu)
• Homo georgicus 1 (classic cast, Zvedza)
• Homo georgicus 2 (old)
• Homo georgicus 3 (Mzia)
• Homo georgicus 5 (2005)

2 - One face, one race? Not really: the concept of "human race" is scientifically inconsistent. For example, the difference in DNA between an African pygmy and a European is only slightly higher than that the one we can observe between two pygmies or between two Europeans: we are all relatives and all different. Humanity is one!

3 - Faces from the past: five faces emerge from time. Five faces linked to, in different ways, the city of Padua. The oldest one belongs to an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic Period, whose mummy is preserved at the Museum of Anthropology. After the anticipation of June 10, 2014, the exhibit will propose again the reconstruction of the face of St. Anthony, along with the one of  Blessed Luca Belludi. The exhibition will give to the face of Francesco Petrarca, reconstructed for the first time, a voice to read the sonnet that opens the Canzoniere. The face of Giambattista Morgagni introduces the figure of another illustrious Paduan citizen, considered the father of contemporary pathological anatomy.

4 - The face as a mirror: famous people have dealt with physiognomy and phrenology: for a long time - as many popular sayings declare - it was considered that the moral qualities of a person were reflected in the external appearance, particularly in the visage. Removing the tinsels of old theories, the scientific study of the faces is continued over time because, undeniably, the face says a lot about us and our history, from both a personal and species point of view.

5 - From the face to the mask: the symbolic visage: covering the face is a gesture that distinguishes us from other animals. This is not a refined technique of mimicry because, although masked, we interact with others: the masks are rather fascinating symbolic territories. The masks on display are the most significant of the Museum of Anthropology, coming from different ethnographic collections around the world. Further, the contribution from the precious collaboration with the "Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask at Abano Terme (Padua) enriches the section.

Informations:

Website: FACES. The Many Visages of Human History (Italian language)
Facebook page: FACES. The Many Visages of Human History

Location and opening time
Exhibition halls of the University Centre for Museums
via Botanical Garden, 15 - Padua
February-March: Monday-Friday 9:00 to 13:00; Saturday and Sunday 9:00 to 17:00
April-June: Monday-Friday 9:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 19:00; Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10.00-18.00

Informations and reservations
Bookings Starting from January 12, 2015
Phone: 049 2010270
Website: VivaTicket

Tickets
Full price: € 8,00
Reduced: € 6.00 (employees of the University of Padua, students of all levels, over 65, visitors with full ticket for the Botanical Garden or for the “Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask  (Abano Terme, Padua)
Reduced for schools: € 4.00

Groups (minimum 10, maximum 20 people): € 6.00
Guided tour for groups (minimum 10, maximum 20 people - mandatory reservation): € 80.00
Guided tours for individuals (mandatory reservation): € 8.00

Presenting the full ticket of the exhibition "FACES. The many visages of human history", you will be entitled to reduced ticket to visit the "Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask  (Abano Terme, Padua)

The Taung Child is now touchable, thanks to 3d printing

As Luca Bezzi said in his presentation in Catania, the next step in the Taung project was 3d printing; in a previous post, I explained some issues we found in the original mesh. But thanks to Cicero's suggestions, the problems have been fixed, and 3 days ago Kentstrapper finally printed the Taung Child skull.

Here are some images:

The .stl model

Kentstrapper strongly believe that 3d printing can be a real revolution in education and culture. And, of course, in archaeology 3d printing should also be a great change in museum expositions: facial reconstructions, scale models of ancient buildings or (as in this case) plastic copies of finds could make archaeology much more easily understandable for visitors.

HERE you can download the final .stl file of the skull.

AnthropoloG+

Hi all,

this post is nothing serious, maybe just fun, but somehow interesting. 

Today I was reading last post of Cicero Moraes in G+; it regards an exposition about about evolutionary anthropology which will soon take place in Brazil. I will not write about this exposition here, because I hope that Cicero will do a post in the next days, but I want to report what I noticed when I loaded the poster of the exhibition in G+ (you can see it in the image below)...

Poster of the exhibition (by Cicero Moraes)

... I knew that G+ added a facial recognition application, so that it is now simpler to find human faces in the user's uploaded pictures, what I did not expected was that G+ tried to recognize the faces inside the exhibition's poster. The result is what you can see in the short clip below:

the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus), the Australopithecus afarensis and the Homo habilis are not considered human faces by G+. On the contrary, the facial recognition application is able to find the Turkana Boy (Homo erectus), the Homo floresiensis, the Homo erectus pekinensis, the Homo heidelbergensis, the Homo neanderthalensis and, of course, the Cro-Magnon (early Homo sapiens sapiens). 

To verify that the facial recognition was not due to Cicero tags, I downloaded the image and uploaded again on my account and... I get the same result. Moreover, when I uploaded the picture, the software asked me to tag the people of the "photo", recognizing the same six faces, as you can see in the image below.

The facial recognition during uploading process

I do not know if this report can be interesting for an anthropologist; maybe Moreno Tiziani could better analyze this phenomenon, but I just wanted to inform you about this strange anthropological attitude of a social network, let's say this AnthropoloG+ application :).

We want you, for ArcheOS

In the last weeks we started again with the development of ArcheOS 5 (codename Theodoric) and I have to say that the first results are really promising, especially thanks to the work of Fabrizio Furnari and Romain Janvier.

The reorganization  of the whole system, planned by Fabrizio, is leading to a better management of the entire project. Moreover the division of the internal software in thematic metapackages (CAD, GIS, etc...) will help final users in customizing their own version of ArcheOS (in accordance with their specific needs).

On the other hand, Romain is working really hard to build source packages of the different applications, so that ArcheOS 5 will be architecture independent.

Last but not least, the 3D artist Cicero Moraes is preparing a brand new artwork for the upcoming release. If you are curious, just take a look on the preview for the splashscreen below.

New artwork from Cicero Moraes

So, what's missing now? Just you!

We need your help to improve ArcheOS 5! 

We want you, and GNU ;)

Any kind of help is welcome! Some examples? You can give us suggestions for a better software selection, or write tutorial (as well as record videotutorial). If you have some computer skills, you can package the missing applications, or develop new ones...

In any case, you can find us as usual on the developer mailing list or, even better, in our brand new IRC chanel (thanks to Fabrizio). The server is FreeNode and the channel #archeos. 

I prepared a short videotutorial to illustrate how to join our channel in a fast way.

We wait for you there ;)

The Taung Child

Dr. Nicola Carrara, curator of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua, sent us a note on the Taung project which we willingly share:

The Paleoanthropology is littered with nicknames assigned to various discovered hominin fossils: Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), Mrs Ples (Australopithecus africanus), Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), Twiggy (Homo habilis), the Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster), The Hobbit (Homo floresiensis), the old man of Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens) are some of the most famous examples.

Naming the living beings is one of the tasks of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Giving a name to someone is the first way to know him, take him into our circle and, somehow, pigeonholing him.

But the name alone is not enough. To know someone, we also need to see his face. Name and Face are an inseparable pair to frame a person, so much that you go often in crisis when someone greets us, and we identify his face, but we can not remember the associated name.

Or, when you go back with memories, you feel uncomfortable with the fact that we remember the name of some people but not the features. Incidents of this type are common and show a fundamental process of our brain: we are better when we know a person's name and his aspect!

The Taung child (Australopithecus africanus) is a fundamental fossil in the history of Paleoanthropology. Discovered by Raymond Dart at Taung, South Africa, in 1924, the find consisted of the entire face, including teeth and jaws, and the endocranial cast of the brain. Dated between 2 and 3 million of years ago, the child was about 3 years old and had a cranial capacity of 410 cc, which would have been 440 cc in adulthood.

The fossil surprised the discoverer for the modernity of some of its features: the large and "rounded" brain, the small canines, different from those of apes, and especially the relatively advanced position of the foramen magnum compatible with bipedalism.

The cast of this fossil is in many museums around the world, and it's the evidence of the evolutionary history of our species. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua keeps three copies of this find, along with those of many other Hominins.

When I was approached to join the "Taung" project, the first feeling was that of curiosity: I could finally know how the face of the child looked like, whose fossilized skull was in the closet behind my desk!

The curiosity was fueled by the various progresses of the work of Arc-Team that reached me through dr. Moreno Tiziani. Since a few weeks, the strictly scientific work of the team gave a face to the Taung child.

As an anthropologist and a curator of a museum, this result is very important. All the museography linked to human evolution is moving for some time to make our ancestors more human, taking away from the head the mistaken belief of the oneness of our humanity. There were many ways of being "human" and there have been many attempts to reach humanity. The Taung child is fully embedded in this story.

The times when the French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, between 1911 and 1913, reconstructing erroneously the skeleton of the Neanderthal of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, removed him from humanity because incapable, because of its anatomy, to "raise his eyes to heaven", are really far.

Today, thanks to the dedicated work of many scholars such as Arc-Team, when I open the closet behind my desk it's nice to see a familiar face.

Padua, december 4, 2012
Nicola Carrara

Translation: Moreno Tiziani

Arc-Team and Antrocom NPO start "Taung" project

"Taung" project starts: its aim is the craniofacial reconstruction of the fossil known as "Taung child", a specimen of Australopithecus africanus discovered by Raymond Dart in 1924 in a quarry near the town of the same name in South Africa.

"Taung" is a collaborative project between Antrocom non-profit organization, an association for anthropological studies, Arc-Team, a company that operates in the field of cultural heritage, and Cicero Moraes, an expert in 3D modeling applied to the forensic context.

The Museum of Anthropology of the University of Padua has provided the casts of its collection to the experts of Antrocom NPO and Arc-Team. Among the objectives of the project: to evaluate the applicability of the used method to the reconstruction of faces of contemporary human beings, to the paleoanthropological context and to create a database of examples of application of modern techniques of digital reconstruction to the anthropological context for research and popularization.

The researchers decided to work through a three-dimensional survey of the cast of Taung child at first, and then they decided to reconstruct the facial muscles of the skull through the observation and comparison of DICOM scans of primates.

In particular, the three-dimensional survey of the find was made through techniques of Structure from Motion and Image-Based Modeling (SFM / IBM), using only free and open source software (Python Photogrammetry Toolbox). For the digital reconstruction of the facial musculature researchers chose open source programs (including Blender), modeling using the technique of "metaballs" the needed muscle bundles, while they will be used mainly the free software InVesalius for the comparison with DICOM data of other primates.

The project is located in a wider context of research that aims to explore the application of digital techniques in the museum context, with particular attention to the findings of anthropological nature.

The search results will be released as soon as possible in turn under an open source license and therefore freely distributed. Antrocom NPO and Arc-Team would like to thank, for their invaluable cooperation, the Museum of Anthropology of University of Padua, in the person of the keeper, dr. Nicola Carrara, and the Centre for Museums of University of Padua.

Antrocom non-profit organization promotes and encourages the development of studies of physical and cultural anthropology, working in scientific research, education, training and in the popularization of anthropological sciences. The Association is careful to perceive and enhance both the local tradition that the new technological perspective applied to anthropology.

Arc-Team sas is a company based in Cles (TN, Italy) formed up by young archaeologists and anthropologists working in the field of cultural heritage, characterized by wide-ranging collaborations at national and international levels. In particular, it deals with archaeological excavations, documentation and digital modeling (2D and 3D), GIS geoarchaeology, WebGIS, paleopathology, anthropology and musealization.

July 27, 2011 - July 27, 2012: a year of ATOR

Hello all,

today ATOR reaches its first year, so I thought to post and analyze some statistics to see how this experiment of shared research is progressing.

Until now we have six active authors, who wrote 79 posts. The community reacted with 96 comments, although most of them are written by the authors in response to direct questions from readers. Overall the blog counted 21484 visits (8695 visits since the activation of the Revolver Maps plugin, as you can see in the image below).

Today ATOR has 25 members and the general trend is still growing, but sinlge posts may affect the statistics with an increase of visitors related both to the quality of the post and to the interest aroused by the topic. A good example of this situation is the post of Cicero Moraes about forensic facial reconstruction, which has captured the attention of the community of 3D modelers and of physical anthropologists, reching the peak traffic you can see in June 2012 in the graph below.

The post reached also the attention of Ton Roosendaal (original creator of Blender), who wrote a tweet about it:

Anyway, the main strength of ATOR and of an open approach to research remains the active collaboration between researchers operating in different fields (not only archaeologists). In this case must be placed, for example, the new collaborations with the 3D artist Cicero Moraes (already mentioned) and with the anthropologist Moreno Tiziani, creator of anthropological association Antrocom Onlus, which publishes the Online Journal of Anthropology. 
We will go on working with this open philosopy in archaeology, inspired by the Free/Libre and Open Source Software movement, and to further increase the quality of posts in ATOR with the help of the community. As usual, if you want to collaborate, just contact us! 
Thank you.