Our technical director, Alistair Carty, will be speaking at the Renfrewshire Local History Forum on Thursday 10th January, 2008 with the snappy titled “Zapped! Scanning sites by Laser” (not our title!). The talk will cover a range of subjects from extremely detailed close-range artefact scanning up to scanning huge Roman forts and castles.The talk is at the YMCA, New Street, Paisley, Scotland at 19:30 on 10th January 2008. More information is available at the RLHF website. 

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In 2003, many new and important Rock Art discoveries at Church Hole, Creswell Crags were announced.

As a result, a conference was held at Creswell in 2004 and the proceedings have been published as “Palaeolithic Cave Art at Creswell Crags in European Context” by Oxford University Press edited by Paul Pettitt, Paul Bahn and Sergio Ripoll.

An article on the use of 3D laser scanning to record some of the carvings within Church Hole has been written by Alistair Carty, Technical Director of Archaeoptics, with several illustrations of the scan results from Church Hole.

More information on the proceedings including a full table of contents and ordering information can be found at the OUP website.

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We have been working closely with heritage reproduction specialists Relicarte on a retail project for the National Museum of Scotland.

The project revolves around the non-contact, high-quality reproduction of several key pieces from the NMS’ collection of Isle of Lewis (or Uig) Chessmen. These reproductions are now available for purchase in the NMS’ shop.

Photograph of the horseman

Render of the horseman

Replica of the horseman

To date, we have produced 4 replica pieces, a king, queen, horseman (pictured) and bishop. A berserker and warder pieces have also been scanned and will be in production shortly.

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We have a fully reconditioned and calibrated Trimble/Mensi GS200 3D Laser Scanner available for immediate purchase at a considerable discount from list price. See our Reconditioned Equipment list for more information and to contact us. We only have one of these scanners available, so first come, first served.

In a nutshell, the scanner is capable of 1000 points/second, +/-6mm accuracy at 50m, 3mrad @ 100m resolution and has ranging capability of up to 350m using OverScan. The scanner has a 360×60 degree field of view from a single station.

For examples of work undertaken with this scanner, see Brodick Castle Survey Completed, 3D Laser Scanning at Callanish Stone Circle and National Archaeology Day at Rievaulx Abbey.

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We undertook some survey work for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in Aberdeenshire. Both projects were commissioned to use 3D laser scanning to extract additional information from heavily weathered Ogham inscriptions and, in the process, we also clarified the interpretation of a Pictish symbol.

The two sites in question were the Pictish cross slab located in Fordoun and the Lang Stane of Auquhollie, near Stonehaven.

The slab at Fordoun features an inscription on the top-left corner and also two putative Ogham inscriptions, one down each side. All three inscriptions were scanned at extremely high resolution to help establish their meaning.

The Lang Stane was also completely scanned with extremely high resolution scanning used on the long Ogham inscription down one arris and on a section of the stone thought to feature two Pictish “double-disc” symbols. After visualisation, it was determined that the two symbols were in fact a single lobed “rectangle” symbol.

Fordoun Pictish Cross Slab

Lang Stane of Auquhollie Pictish symbol

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In conjunction with Dept. of Earth Sciences, Oxford University, we undertook high-resolution 3D laser scanning in collaboration with the Bradgate Trust to form part of an initiative to conserve the evolutionary information of Ediacara biota at highly vulnerable but key sites in Leicestershire, UK.

New 3D reconstructions of the type specimens of Charnia, Charniodiscus, Bradgatia and Ivesheadia raise questions about the currently mooted taxonomy, palaeobiology and ecology of these early Ediacaran fossils.

Charnia P80 Fern Fossil

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We recently undertook an exterior survey of Brodick Castle on the Isle of Arran. Two days survey were required to scan the entire structure at a resolution of 1cm allowing us to generate elevation drawings, sections and plans with high accuracy.

Brodick Castle Raw 3D Data

Detail of Brodick Castle Western Elevation

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After many positive comments at World of Geomatics 2006, we’ve decided to release our showreel animation for general download. The movie is encoded in AVI format with the DiVX4.12 codec (which can be downloaded for free for Windows and Mac). The filesize is 27.2Mb.

The animation can be downloaded from this link.

The animation shows datasets from:

1. Provan Hall, Glasgow (National Trust for Scotland, Terrestrial LiDAR scanning)
2. Avebury World Heritage Site (National Trust/English Heritage, Airborne LiDAR)
3. Knowlton Henge, Dorset (English Heritage, Terrestrial LiDAR scanning)
4. “Mephistopheles” Wedgewood Figurine (Potteries Museum and Art Gallery/Hothouse, Close-Range Scanning)
5. Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage, Terrestrial LiDAR)

Thanks to all our clients for permission to use the datasets and to Headland Archaeology for the illustration work on Provan Hall.

Avebury: Viewing south towards Silbury Hill and West Kennet Avenue

"Mephistopheles" Wedgewood Figurine

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Once again, Archaeoptics will be exhibiting at World of Geomatics at Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry on the 29th/30th March 2006.

We will be displaying our usual mind-blowing array of visuals generated from some of our latest 3D laser scanning work both at close-range, terrestrial and airborne LiDAR levels of detail.

Our Technical Director, Alistair Carty, is also presenting a paper on the use of 3D laser scanning technology within the cultural heritage and archaeology sectors at the M3 Conference which runs alongside the exhibition.

We will be at Stand #16, so please drop by and say hello!

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Artist Simon Watkinson and London Borough of Barking and Dagenham recently commissioned us to undertake scanning work on two iconic pieces of history from Barking and Dagenham forming part of his planned public sculpture, “The Ice Harvest”. The pieces in question were a section of Anglo-Saxon cross shaft from Barking Abbey and a replica of the famous Dagenham Idol, a Bronze Age wooden figure.

3D Scan of Barking Abbey cross shaft

3D Scan of the Dagenham Idol

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