Facilities of Bioarchaeology Laboratory

Links: Homepage Laboratory Mini-excavations Conservation Identification Records

Over the years, the project has evolved specialist techniques for excavating, cleaning and conserving the remains of small children from a very hard soil matrix. We use a wide range of tools for this and the laboratory contains sufficient supplies for everyone involved. It is not necessary for students to bring their own excavating tools. There is a store of tools and consumables for conservation and storage of the bones and teeth. We have also evolved methods for mapping and recording the small burials, and again all the materials for this are supplied. Students are introduced to the site database and there are computers to run this.

One of the main requirements of our work is photography, particularly macro-photography. The laboratory houses a comprehensive set of cameras with high quality close-up lenses, including a sophisticated StackShot system so that we can use focus stacking to improve our images of high relief objects. The image stacks are manipulated with Helicon Focus software. Our macro-photography cameras are controlled through an iPad app, using a wifi link. In addition, we are using Agisoft Photoscan software to generate 3D models of the skeletons, as exposed by our mini-excavations. To do this, we take 40-50 photographs covering all sides of the soil ball and these are then processed by the software to create a 3D mesh on which the surface is rendered. The model can be tilted to show different views of the excavation (picture below) and this is a very useful record for use in post-excavation work.