News and New ‘Normals’
Amid a third national lockdown, the Arch-I-Scan team continues with research. Our principal investigator, Professor Penelope Allison has been active on the digital public lecture circuit, sharing research updates to international audiences from her current location in Australia. On Wednesday, 03 February, she delivered a virtual lecture for the Stanford University Archaeology Center’s ‘Distinguished Lecture […]
Celebrating End-of-the-Year Successes
With the start of a new year comes a renewed optimism and hope for better times, and the transition from 2020 to 2021 has been no exception (to say the very least). Still, as we usher in a new year it’s also important to reflect on the good things that happened in the old. In […]
There… and back again: Vindolanda, Week 3
Our third and final week of pottery scanning at Vindolanda got off to an unexpected start; unfortunately, circumstances led our comrade Santos to return home to Leicester, leaving Daan and me to continue collecting data as a duo. Santos was with us in spirit however, as were still able to check in with him over […]
The rime of the ancient archaeologist
I qualify for the above title after having celebrated yet another birthday, this time up here in Vindolanda. Victoria organised a caterpillar cake, which compensated somewhat for being isolated from my family back in Leicester. Although I would have definitely wanted to spend my special day with them, working with some really striking pieces of […]
Journey to the Edge of Empire: Notes from Vindolanda Week 1
When the UK government announced the first national lockdown in March, we were only at the very beginning of our pottery-scanning programme, having visited the Museum of London for a few days the previous December, and MoLA (Museum of London Archaeology) for a total of three weeks between February and March. We had plans for […]
Presenting during a plague
One of the perks of working in academia is going to conferences. Meeting colleagues from other institutions (and countries) and talking to them (sometimes even about your work) is tremendously rewarding. Despite always being knackered after even a single day of sitting on my backside listening[1], I almost invariably come away inspired and motivated for […]
Science-Fiction Reality? Artificial Intelligence and Archaeology
Every so often, I’ll get the question, ‘So, have you ever found any dinosaurs?’ Although I’d honestly love to encounter a dinosaur bone or two on an archaeological excavation, as a student of archaeology I have to respond that dinosaurs are generally the realm of the palaeontologist, and what I deal with are the […]
Pottery in times of COVID-19
London pottery photography week March 9th-13th. A third photography week! Blissfully ignorant of what the global impact of COVID-19 would be in a few short days, we set off for London to take more photos of pot sherds. As we make our way to St. Pancras station, we talk about the virus, but as […]
Focus, Photo, Repeat
Photographing sherds in London (January 29th -February 7th) As I detailed in my last post, the takeaway from our last photography session was that we needed more description to make sure that everyone knows what we are doing and we all stick to the same plan. So another protocol had to be devised for […]
Photographing in the dark
December 4th-6th 2019: the Arch-I-Scan project’s first encounter with proper pottery! After two weeks of planning our approach, seven of us (Penelope Allison, Evgeny Mirkes, Santos Núñez Jareño, Victoria Szafara, Alessandra Pegurri, Gabriel Florea and your faithful reporter) brave the winter morning cold to travel down to London to take photographs of whole vessels of […]
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