7th November 2008, 04:32 PM
28 years for me, I'm afraid. I did get broken once, but a physiotherapist fixed me.
Having been away for a few days (editing a report from I site I directed in 1980!), I've missed a few comments on my earlier posts. Apologies for back-tracking, but there were a couple of good questions, and it would be rude not to reply.
Delilah? My my my, Dr Peter, that is going back a long way. This is a completely different beast, not least because it's working and has support...
Mercenary asked about paper records. We use these initially to get data back to the computer, but the site archive will be digital, so we plan to recycle the paper at the end of assessment. This is still too much double-handling; we have looked into using PDAs for the entering of context data, and are aware of the work that others are doing and have done in this area.I hope that we will move to those in future. Would what we are doing work for a commercial unit? Honestly, I don't know. We made a business case for this based on an analysis of our data-flows and our user needs, and each organisation would have to do the same. It does increase costs at excavation and site archive creation, but the payoff is in speed of assessment and analysis. Our colleagues in Sweden, who have been using this system widely for several years, claim that its use saves c. 30% of analysis costs, and we will be testing this on our own projects. I know that other organisations are developing systems based on open-source software, and if that works out it should be even more cost-effective.
We've also moved to entirely digital photography, a move our photographer colleagues elsewhere in EH made some time ago. Film processing was getting more difficult to procure, and we've agreed standards and archiving methodologies with our chums in the NMR. Hard copies can still be printed out on archival-quality paper for those archives/curators that insist on it.
I agree with Mercenary on the potential of close-range colour photogrammetry. The ability to process these images quickly on site and to add layers of interpretative data was essential to the recording process at Silbury, and in my view it worked extremely well. More recently I've seen some fantastic work done at Wilanow Palace near Warsaw by Polish National Heritage Board (Kobidz) archaeologists where colour photogrammetry of soft deposits and masonry structures was carried out, with interpretation added, and the results seemed to be the most effective integration of buildings and excavation recording and presentation that I've seen so far.
Keen to know more about Dr Peter's total station feature detection, but I hae ma doobts. But I imagine it depends what you're recording.
Brian
Resistance is futile. Your project documentation will be MoRPHE-compliant.
Having been away for a few days (editing a report from I site I directed in 1980!), I've missed a few comments on my earlier posts. Apologies for back-tracking, but there were a couple of good questions, and it would be rude not to reply.
Delilah? My my my, Dr Peter, that is going back a long way. This is a completely different beast, not least because it's working and has support...
Mercenary asked about paper records. We use these initially to get data back to the computer, but the site archive will be digital, so we plan to recycle the paper at the end of assessment. This is still too much double-handling; we have looked into using PDAs for the entering of context data, and are aware of the work that others are doing and have done in this area.I hope that we will move to those in future. Would what we are doing work for a commercial unit? Honestly, I don't know. We made a business case for this based on an analysis of our data-flows and our user needs, and each organisation would have to do the same. It does increase costs at excavation and site archive creation, but the payoff is in speed of assessment and analysis. Our colleagues in Sweden, who have been using this system widely for several years, claim that its use saves c. 30% of analysis costs, and we will be testing this on our own projects. I know that other organisations are developing systems based on open-source software, and if that works out it should be even more cost-effective.
We've also moved to entirely digital photography, a move our photographer colleagues elsewhere in EH made some time ago. Film processing was getting more difficult to procure, and we've agreed standards and archiving methodologies with our chums in the NMR. Hard copies can still be printed out on archival-quality paper for those archives/curators that insist on it.
I agree with Mercenary on the potential of close-range colour photogrammetry. The ability to process these images quickly on site and to add layers of interpretative data was essential to the recording process at Silbury, and in my view it worked extremely well. More recently I've seen some fantastic work done at Wilanow Palace near Warsaw by Polish National Heritage Board (Kobidz) archaeologists where colour photogrammetry of soft deposits and masonry structures was carried out, with interpretation added, and the results seemed to be the most effective integration of buildings and excavation recording and presentation that I've seen so far.
Keen to know more about Dr Peter's total station feature detection, but I hae ma doobts. But I imagine it depends what you're recording.
Brian
Resistance is futile. Your project documentation will be MoRPHE-compliant.