My new position
So I already wrote, that my position as an assistant has ended last month. Today, I would like to write about what I do now as a new project member. For the longest time, I didn’t really know myself, but now I have a pretty clear picture and it involves travelling, scanning, presenting and coding!
The new project
So since this month, I am part of the “Meet and Greet: Platzanlagen in Kleinsiedlungen (vici) der Nordwestprovinzen des Römischen Reiches” or for my non-German readers “Meet and greet: Squares in Secondary Agglomerations of the North-western Roman Provinces in small settlements (vici) of the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire”. The project researches Roman squares (in the sense of plazas) and what happened (or didn’t happen) there.
The project is composed of several parts/participants: Archaeology, Digital Archaeology, Archaeobiology and Geoarchaeology and every part has his own goals and methods. Obviously, I am part of the Digital Archaeology group led by Prof. Paliou. This part is concerned with digital methods in researching Roman squares and my colleague Paul Vădineanu, a doctoral researcher, is doing work with spatial analysis.
My part
So how do I come in? Well I will do some RTI imaging and 3D scans as well as some 3D modelling and visualisation. Let me explain. The RTI part is a bit experimental. We want to try to see if RTI can help analysing soil samples. As far as I know this has not been done before and there might be a good reason to why, but we want to test this nevertheless. Additionally, I will do some RTI as comparison to use-wear analysis already done. This is also experimental, but might yield some interesting results.
Besides the RTI, I will also do some 3D scans of animal bones as well as some 3D modelling. I won’t go into detail with that, but what I can tell you is, that I probably will try to create an interactive platform where you can explore the 3D model. So all in all, very exciting. The best part is, I will need to do some travelling to Switzerland and Austria to get the data and that always is fun.
What to expect
So for now, my employment will last me until March next year, so not very long. But I will try to do my very best in these next six months to contribute to this interdisciplinary project. I’ll keep you posted.
