CRANE

I am pleased to announce the recent promotion of Dr. Miller Prosser (effective September 1, 2020) to the position of Associate Director of Digital Studies in the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. In this role, Miller will be overseeing the new Digital Studies of Language, Culture and History (DIGS) degree program and teaching two courses as part of its core curriculum: “Data Management for the Humanities” and “Data Publication for the Humanities.”

While Miller will no longer be based in the Oriental Institute, his new role includes providing computational support to Humanities-based research projects, and so he will remain affiliated with the OCHRE Data Service and will continue to provide consultation and support to our OCHRE projects. Going forward, the OCHRE Data Service will establish strong ties to the Digital Studies program, offering opportunities for internships or research project participation for the students enrolled in DIGS.

Miller has been a valued colleague for over 9 years and I am grateful for the high-quality, dedicated, and friendly service that he has provided to our client projects, enabling the OCHRE enterprise to thrive. Practically speaking, if you are accustomed to addressing your OCHRE questions or support requests to Miller, please continue to do so but also copy me, as is our usual practice.

I am sure you will join me in congratulating Miller on this well-deserved recognition, and wishing him success as he takes on new responsibilities.

All the best to you all,

Sandra Schloen

OCHRE Service Data Manager, University of Chicago

The Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) which was supposed to take place in Boston this year, occurred virtually over November 12-15 and November 19-22, 2020 because of the pandemic. CRANE project members, institutional partners, collaborators, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral fellows participated in several different sessions and workshops where they shared the results of their current research and research experience, especially in relation to the digital approaches to archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. 

View below the list of CRANE-related presentations and workshops: 

Understanding the Development of Complex Society in Lebanon during the Early Bronze Age (Kamal Badreshany, Durham University; Michel de Vreeze, Rijksmuseum of Antiquities; Graham Philip, Durham University).

Understanding the 4th and 3rd millennia cal. BC in the Orontes Valley: a well- dated material culture sequence from Tell Nebi Mend (Graham Philip, University of Durham; Melissa Kennedy, University of Western Australia).

Changing Animal Herding Strategies in the 4th – 3rd millennia BCE in the Upper Orontes Valley: Preliminary Isotopic Data (δ18O, δ13C, 87Sr/86Sr) from Tell Nebi Mend (Lynn Welton, Durham University; Graham Philip, Durham University).  

Iron Age Urbanization and Middle Bronze Age Networks at Zincirli Höyük: Recent Results from the Chicago-Tübingen Excavations (Virginia Herrmann, University of Tübingen; David Schloen, University of Chicago; Kathryn Morgan, University of Chicago; Sebastiano Soldi, National Archaeological Museum of Florence).

Burning Kerkenes down one pixel at a time: Modeling the destruction by fire of an Anatolian Iron Age City (Dominique Langis-Barsetti, University of Toronto).

Assessing the raw materials utilized in lime production: a case study of plasters and mortars from Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, Cyprus (Hannah Herrick, Simon Fraser University; Francesco Berna, Simon Fraser University; Rachel Kulick, University of Toronto; Kevin Fisher, University of British Columbia).

Analyzing socio-environmental processes in south-central Cyprus: Geoarchaeological case studies from the Vasilikos and Maroni Valleys (Rachel Kulick, University of Toronto; Francesco Berna, Simon Fraser University; Kevin Fisher, University of British Columbia; Catherine Kearns, University of Chicago; Sturt Manning, Cornell University).

Beyond entertainment? Developing a Virtual Reality Application for a Late Bronze Age Cypriot City (Kevin Fisher, University of British Columbia).

Grand Challenges for Digital Research in Archaeology and Philology (Workshop) – Chairs: Miller C. Prosser, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; Timothy P. Harrison, University of Toronto.

On-site Digitization and Visualization of Stratigraphic and Spatial Relations Using OCHRE (David Schloen, University of Chicago; Sandra Schloen, University of Chicago).

Best Practices for Digital Scholarship (Workshop): Perspectives from Field Excavations (Timothy P. Harrison, University of Toronto).

Report on 2019–2020 Seasons of the Gadachrili Gora Regional Archaeological Project Expedition (GRAPE) Excavations (Stephen Batiuk, University of Toronto).

Check the CRANE Project website to learn more about our research endeavors. 

Originally published at: https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/resilience-face-climate-change-archaeological-investigations-reveal-human-adaptability

October 30, 2020 by Sean Bettam – A&S News

View of Early Bronze Age excavation (Field 1) at Tell Tayinat in Hatay, Turkey.Photo credit: Tayinat Archaeological Project.

An examination of two documented periods of climate change in the greater Middle East, between approximately 4,500 and 3,000 years ago, reveals local evidence of resilience and even of a flourishing ancient society despite the changes in climate seen in the larger region.

A new study led by University of Toronto and Cornell University archaeologists working at Tell Tayinat in southeastern Turkey, demonstrates that human responses to climate change are variable and must be examined using extensive and precise data gathered at the local level. The study highlights how challenge and collapse in some areas were matched by resilience and opportunities elsewhere.

The findings published in PLoS ONE this week are welcome contributions to discussions about human responses to climate change that broaden an otherwise sparse chronological framework for the northern part of the region known historically as the Levant, which stretches the length of the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

“The study shows the end of the Early Bronze Age occupation at Tayinat was a long and drawn out affair that, while it appears to coincide with the onset of a megadrought 4,200 years ago, was actually the culmination of processes that began much earlier,” says Tim Harrison, professor and chair of the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto and director of the Tayinat Archaeological Project. “The archaeological evidence does not point towards significant local effects of the climate episode, as there is no evidence of drought stress in crops.”

“Instead, these changes were more likely the result of local political and spatial reconfiguration.”

The mid-to late Early Bronze Age (3000-2000 BCE) and the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BCE) in the ancient Middle East are pivotal periods of early inter-connectedness among settlements across the region, with the development of some of the earliest cities and state-level societies. But these systems were not always sustainable, and both periods ended in collapse of civilisations/settlements, the reasons for which are highly debated.

The absence of detailed timelines for societal activity throughout the region leaves a significant gap in understanding the associations between climate change and social responses. While the disintegration of political or economic systems are indeed components of a societal response, collapse is rarely total.

Using radiocarbon dating and analysis of archaeological samples recovered from Tell Tayinat, a location occupied following two particularly notable climate change episodes 4,200 and again 3,200 years ago, the Toronto-Cornell team established a robust chronological timeframe for Tayinat for these two pivotal periods in the history of the ancient Middle East.

“The absolute dating of these periods has been a subject of considerable debate for many years, and this study contributes a significant new dataset that helps address many of the questions,” says Sturt Manning, Goldwin Smith Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classics at Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, and lead author of the study.

“The detailed chronological resolution achieved in this study allows for a more substantive interpretation of the archaeological evidence in terms of local and regional responses to proposed climate change, shedding light on how humans respond to environmental stress and variability.”

The researchers say the chronological framework for the Early Iron Age demonstrates the thriving re-settlement of Tayinat following the 3,200 years ago event during a reconstructed period of heightened aridity.

“The settlement of Tayinat may have been undertaken to maximize access to arable land, and crop evidence reveals the continued cultivation of numerous water-demanding crops, revealing a response that counters the picture of a drought-stricken region,” says Harrison. “The Iron Age at Tayinat represents a significant degree of societal resilience during a period of climatic stress.”

The research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Toronto.

Originally published at:
https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/news/capturing-ancient-world-3d-research-teaching-and-outreach

October 2, 2020 by Chris Sasaki – A&S News

Spence Morrow using a scanner at Phnom Mrec in Cambodia.Photo credit: Giles Spence Morrow.

As director of the Tayinat archaeological project in Turkey, Tim Harrison saw the need and potential for 3D scanning and modelling technology.

Harrison, chair of the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, has for years conducted research in the region of the Orontes River which flows from Lebanon through Syria and Turkey. Populated continuously for thousands of years, the region’s rich history is reflected in a wealth of archaeological finds.

However, archaeological finds are rarely uncovered in pristine condition and whole.

“We’ve found thousands of fragments of broken sculptures,” says Harrison. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, but it’s a three-dimensional puzzle and you only have maybe five per cent of the pieces.

“So, we became very interested in the development of fast, high-resolution scanning technology that would help generate 3D images that we hope to eventually import into shape-matching software that will help solve these puzzles.”

The 3D scanning and modelling that Harrison and his colleagues are doing is accomplished using portable, hand-held scanners that can be used in the field. They are also developing shape-matching software with a team led by Eugene Fiume, a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Department of Computer Science.

One goal is to be able to create 3D models of pieces of pottery or statues and rebuild them digitally the way you manually rebuild a broken coffee cup by fitting its pieces together. Another is to identify artifacts such as pieces of pottery by comparing their shape to a database of similar pieces.

“Eventually, we also want to compare texture, color, chemistry and minerology,” says Harrison. “The more layers of information you add, the more patterns and matches you can make. We’re not quite there yet, but that’s the direction we’re headed.”

According to Steve Batiuk, a senior research associate in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and a member of the Tayinat team, “3D modeling quite literally introduces a new dimension to our research, providing us with new ways to measure objects, visualize them and help in reconstruction.

“Plus, since many of these artifacts can’t leave the countries from which they were excavated, it extends our ability to do research on them beyond the field season and allows others who were not there to work on them as well.”

As powerful as it is, the 3D scanning capability is just one tool in the toolkit that Harrison and his colleagues launched in 2011 called the Computational Research on the Ancient Near East or CRANE.

With funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), CRANE was originally conceived as an effort to build a large collaborative environment for different archaeological projects and researchers working mostly in the eastern Mediterranean. At its core are powerful computational tools for modelling ancient social groups, analyzing complex and diverse data sets from those researchers — and it will even be used to validate climate change models with archaeological data.

The 3D capability is part of what Harrison refers to as “CRANE 2.0” which was made possible through a partnership grant — that includes funding from SSHRC and the Faculty of Arts & Science — to equip the Archaeology Centre’s Digital Innovation Lab. With this Faculty support, researchers in other departments can apply this technology to their own realm of the ancient world.

The application of 3D scanning to create models of architectural complexes and artifacts has revolutionized our research. It permits continued, detailed analysis long after the close of excavations and on-site laboratory analysis.

“The technology was purchased by CRANE for CRANE work,” says Batiuk. “But all archaeologists at U of T  can benefit from us having bolstered the Digital Innovation Lab. This is a spirit of cooperation that CRANE is trying to promote, especially when using University funds.”

Ed Swenson is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the University’s Archaeology Centre. Last winter, Swenson, his former doctoral student Giles Spence Morrow — who is now with the anthropology department of Vanderbilt University — and other colleagues conducted research at ancient sites from the Angkorian Empire that was based in present-day Cambodia and dominated much of Southeast Asia. The work was supported by a grant from the Hal Jackman Foundation.

The team surveyed and conducted excavations of religious temples and complexes built near the end of the first millennium CE. They employed traditional archaeological methods and tools in their work, as well as drone cameras. They also used CRANE’s portable scanners to create 3D models of statues, stone monuments and architecture, and to record inscriptions to facilitate translation and share with other researchers.

One of their most remarkable discoveries was of pieces of a statue that was likely a three-metre-tall likeness of a divine figure. The team discovered a base on which were two feet. Nearby they found a shoulder, an arm, part of a leg and the torso. The head was not found.

The team scanned the pieces and re-assembled both the actual statue and its digital facsimile.

“The application of 3D scanning to create models of architectural complexes and artifacts has revolutionized our research,” says Swenson. “It permits continued, detailed analysis long after the close of excavations and on-site laboratory analysis.

“In other words, one can literally revisit and restudy sites that are accurately recreated in 3-dimensional simulations. The models also offer an invaluable teaching resource as it allows students to fully experience and analyze virtual archaeological datasets.”

A 3D model of a reconstructed torso of a statue. Courtesy of Yaśodharāśramas Archaeological Project; Giles Spence Morrow.

Bence Viola is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. As a paleoanthropologist, he studies the interactions and relationships between different sub-species of humans living during the late Pleistocene epoch which ended nearly 12,000 years ago.

Using the 3D scanning capability of CRANE, Viola creates 3D models of the teeth of Neanderthals, an extinct species of humans who — until around 40,000 years ago — lived alongside our human ancestors in what is now Eurasia. The scans serve as documentation and are used in analyzing the specimens. They also aid in the producing illustrations and enable the creation of 3D-printed replicas.

Klara Komza, one of Viola’s PhD students, is researching the evolution of feet and has scanned some 5,000 ape and human foot bones from about 400 individual feet. Komza’s goal for 2020 was to scan the entire fossil record of the earliest hominins — the first of our human ancestors to stand and walk on two feet who lived between five and one-and-a-half million years ago. That project would have taken her to Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa this past summer, but that effort was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the pandemic has curtailed some research activities, it has also revealed new value in turning objects into digital facsimiles.

“Along with colleagues at U of T Mississauga,” says Viola, “we’re scanning several skeletons from our teaching collection and creating digital replicas which we’ll use in virtual labs for online classes in the fall.”

Batiuk and his team are partnering with the Gardiner Museum to do the same for museum goers whose access to the museum’s collection has been similarly restricted by the pandemic.

They have begun scanning Japanese ceramic pieces and South American artifacts from the Gardiner’s collection which the museum plans to exhibit online. Not only will the public be able to view pieces from the collection, they’ll be able to interactively “handle” them in a way they couldn’t in a gallery.

“This technology allows people to explore an object in multiple dimensions, almost as if it were in their hands,” says Batiuk. “From a public outreach standpoint, it brings the material to life and engages the audience in ways that still photographs never could.”

Professor Scott Branting, and the University of Central Florida, are CRANE’s newest partners, and they’re bringing a lot of exciting projects with them. Professor Branting has spent many years adapting tools like remote sensing and 3D modeling for use in archaeology, and he and UCF are in the middle of sending those tools into space. Thanks to what he calls “a very robust partnership” with organizations like NASA, they’re developing mini-satellites that will monitor and photograph cultural heritage sites.

To begin with, though, the CRANE partnership will focus on DATCH (Documenting and Triaging Cultural Heritage), a project to equip archaeologists with “augmented reality” headsets, which will give them all the information they need without ever taking their eyes off a site. “You might be able to eventually look at a tree through your goggles, and have an AI that tells you what sort of tree it is,” Professor Branting says.

Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality headsets let users multi-task; they can see the real world and project information and images on top of it. For now, they mostly display pre-existing content like images and statistics, but someday, Professor Branting says, a user could “detail and draw in what parts are still standing, and what parts have been destroyed,” all without having to leave the scene or use another device.

Augmented reality could also allow archaeologists to communicate with experts remotely. Professor Branting wants to make it possible to let anyone, anywhere, “work through your headset and give you information or ideas about what you’re looking at.”

Professor Branting is hopeful that CRANE, which he considers a pioneer in “experimenting and exploring what can be done with these technologies,” will help make this a reality sooner. He predicts that users will be able to use a headset to see the history of any site they’re looking at.“It could bring up an entire plan of what something looked like before it had been blown up.”

We are thrilled that Professor Branting and UCF have joined CRANE, and we look forward to a long and productive research partnership!

Written by Jaime Weinman (jaimeweinman.com)