Three Things Tuesday

Let’s try a three things Tuesday for a change. Today is a day off because our ceramics expert had to run to Nicosia on business. That means, I’ll spend some time writing, playing with the GIS, and messing around with some 3D imaging techniques down at the site.

So far this year, we’ve managed to do three things at least part way.

Thing the First

We managed to finish reading the pottery and the notebooks and analyzing the material from the trenches immediately to the east of the “South Basilica.” We focused on the Roman levels in these trenches and worked to connect them to pottery kiln and levigation pool that we studied a couple of years ago.

As I wrote about last week, mostly we focused on understanding the Roman period road and a series of superimposed drains. As part of that work, I digitized about 50 of the sixty odd burials excavated in the area. I was mostly concerned about discerning when the burials cut into Roman period levels. As a quick way to adduce this, I looked at the elevation of each burial and made this nice plan.

Thing the Second

This week, I also played around with the survey map produced as part of an exploratory survey conducted in 1983. After a bit of cajoling, we decided to look at the ceramics from this extensive survey and the map produced by the project’s architect at the time. 

So far, things are georeferenced and units are digitized. In the future, we hope to add some ceramic information to this!

Thing the Third

I’m up and out the door “fieldwork early” to mess around with some 3D modeling at our site. This morning I’m going to use both PolyCam (an app for iPad and iPhone) and traditional photogrammetry using my camera. I’m not optimistic about success, but it will give me a nice morning at the site!