30th April 2012, 08:35 PM
Not meaning to harp on about the laser scanning (although apparently I'm going to) but might we not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
In a system where competitive tendering has reduced budgets to the absolute bare minimum, the capacity to produce, in 20 minutes, a rectified photo which can be digitised brick for brick in CAD, a comprehensive level survey, AND a cool 3D picture you can zoom around sounds pretty appealing. Obviously someone then has to go round it all doing all the sheets and hammering out the matrix, as far as I'm aware they're a long way off creating a machine for that. If this is not done then information would certainly be lost, so make sure you do it!
It is absolutely right that all archaeologists should, when called upon, be able to plan complex structures; I happen to like drawing bricks and I'd be quite sad if I was completely usurped by cylon machinery, but technology does have it's uses. Industrial and Victorian structures are all too frequently only given scanty recording, and that's if they're not virtually machined away when the site is stripped. This seems to me like a pretty good way to get an accurate plan quickly, and not to have to explain to some developer who can't wait to see the back of you why you spent six weeks and thousands of pounds recording something that has been buried for less than 100 years.
I heard that at one unit it was common practise to create section drawings by digitising section photos: this sounds to me like a terrible idea as texture as much as colour can be what distinguishes one context from another: this would be a poor use of technology.
Laser scanning would be completely unsuitable for most sites, but where it would be useful, why not use it?
In a system where competitive tendering has reduced budgets to the absolute bare minimum, the capacity to produce, in 20 minutes, a rectified photo which can be digitised brick for brick in CAD, a comprehensive level survey, AND a cool 3D picture you can zoom around sounds pretty appealing. Obviously someone then has to go round it all doing all the sheets and hammering out the matrix, as far as I'm aware they're a long way off creating a machine for that. If this is not done then information would certainly be lost, so make sure you do it!
It is absolutely right that all archaeologists should, when called upon, be able to plan complex structures; I happen to like drawing bricks and I'd be quite sad if I was completely usurped by cylon machinery, but technology does have it's uses. Industrial and Victorian structures are all too frequently only given scanty recording, and that's if they're not virtually machined away when the site is stripped. This seems to me like a pretty good way to get an accurate plan quickly, and not to have to explain to some developer who can't wait to see the back of you why you spent six weeks and thousands of pounds recording something that has been buried for less than 100 years.
I heard that at one unit it was common practise to create section drawings by digitising section photos: this sounds to me like a terrible idea as texture as much as colour can be what distinguishes one context from another: this would be a poor use of technology.
Laser scanning would be completely unsuitable for most sites, but where it would be useful, why not use it?