Introduction
The University of Bradford has established a reputation for work on imaging and visualisation in archaeology and anthropology through a number of high-profile projects. These capabilities are built around expertise in 3d imaging of bones, artefacts, archaeological sites, heritage structures and landscapes. We undertake research and commercial work with institutions that want to make their collections more widely accessible; as well as archaeologists and heritage bodies that are interested in digital documentation of bones, artefacts, standing buildings and archaeological sites.
Capabilities
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3d capture – Laserarm & structured light scanners; RTI & photogrammetry
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Data handling - Object movies; Digital reconstruction; CT- and Micro-CT data
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Macro, Texture & Z-stack photography
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High resolution microscopy & Surface metrology
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Terrestrial laser scanning & photogrammetry
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Geophysical prospection & Survey
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Remote aerial imaging
AHRC Digital Transformations Programme Theme Large Grant awarded £1,979,850 – this major project led by Dr Andrew Wilson (with Dr Adrian Evans and Dr Nicholas Ashton) will be working with new transformative digital recording methods and computed analysis to revolutionize 'refit analysis' for landscape, site, and artefact studies, practices that are traditionally labour intensive.
Curious Travellers is a data-mining and crowd sourced infrastructure to help with digital documentation of archaeological sites, monuments and heritage at risk. It provides a priority response to sites that have been destroyed or are under immediate threat from neglect, cultural vandalism, conflict and natural disasters. The project will initially highlight threatened or damaged sites in North Africa, including Cyrene in Libya, as well as those in Syria and the Middle East, but is open to heritage at risk around the world.
Global warming at the end of the last Ice Age led to the inundation of vast landscapes that had once been home to thousands of people. These lost lands hold a unique and largely unexplored record of settlement and colonisation linked to climate change over millennia. Within the Europe's Lost Frontiers project, researchers in the fields of archaeo-geophysics, molecular biology and computer simulation will develop a new paradigm for the study of past environments, ecological change and the transition between hunter gathering societies and farming in the inundated land of the southern North Sea - Doggerland.
Jisc Rapid Digitisation Project awarded £93,199 – this project led by Dr Andrew Wilson (with Dr Jo Buckberry, Dr Chris Gaffney and Prof Hassan Ugail) served as a pilot study for Digitised Diseases and concentrated on the collection of leprosy skeletons from the Medieval leprosarium of St Mary and St James in Chichester, curated in Bradford.
Jisc Mass Digitisation Project awarded £937,458 – this project led by Dr Andrew Wilson (with Dr Jo Buckberry, Dr Chris Gaffney and Professor Hassan Ugail) has produced 3d photo-realistic digital models of diseased bone reflecting chronic pathological conditions that affect the skeleton. More than 1600 specimens were digitised in Bradford and with our project partners - The Royal College of Surgeons & Museum of London Archaeology - using 3d laser scanning, ct and radiography.
AHRC Science & Heritage Programme RDA awarded £97,512 – this project led by Dr Andrew Wilson (with Dr Sonia O’Connor, Rob Janaway and Professor Hassan Ugail) is creating a web-based resource of digitised raw materials and worked artefacts that will help with the identification of animal hard tissues (e.g. ivory, horn, baleen) of benefit to many including heritage professionals and in the fight against wildlife crime.
