The fortunes of Southampton correlate with its maritime history. Its geographical location – on a major estuary on the English Channel coast with an unusual double high-tide, and its proximity to Winchester and London; the ancient and modern capitals of England – made the city an important regional centre for many centuries.

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CMA masters students spent most of the long bank holiday weekend at Buckler’s Hard in the New Forest learning ancient boat and ship building skills.

The backdrop of the River Beaulieu, the intermittent sunshine and occasional ice cream belie the serious labour (both physical and intellectual) involved in learning to work with adzes and axes. Using a range of replica tools students worked with chunks of oak to recreate boat building technologies from the Bronze Age to the Post Medieval period.

This kind of experimental archaeology offers a unique pedagogical experience. It allows students to engage with the physical labour and bodily practices involved in boat building, as well as the tools, techniques and environment. They experience at first hand the time, co-operation and materials involved and the types of choices engaged in choosing timber and in moving and shaping those timbers collaboratively. Hopefully, they also gain an inkling of the embodied skills and knowledge involved in working with the tools and the wood. When it’s going well an axe moves as an extension of the body, connecting head, hand and timber, and producing a beautiful hollow, rhythmical sound – but it takes a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge to see boat frames in tree trunks, work with and accommodate knots and imperfections, and to sculpt parts of a boat out of massive pieces of oak.

Shaping timbers with an adze

For researchers this kind of experimental archaeology remains a valuable tool in efforts to better understand seafaring and maritime communities in the past. In replicating something of the experience of ancient boat building, it can open up our ideas about the connections between timber, tools, labour and the social world within which that building took place, as well as offering a unique opportunity to test out our ideas about how ancient boats were constructed, crewed and used. The recent Bronze Age Dover Boat reconstruction is a prime example of this kind of work.

This weekend’s course was also an opportunity for Jon Adams to do some filming for the maritime archaeology MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) we are developing at the CMA. There will be more news on that in the next few months, with – we hope – the first course going live in the autumn.

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’3D Imaging for Archaeology using Structured Light Technology: Developments in Systems for Remote Areas, Hostile Environments, and Maritime Archaeology’

Christopher Begley, Ph.D.
Transylvania University and University of Kentucky Center for Virtual and Visual Environments

Abstract: Recent innovations in structured light scanning has allowed the development of a rugged, portable, weather and waterproof system for use in archaeological projects in any environment, including underwater. The system uses a diving light and a standard digital camera to record data that can be rendered in 3D at any time after data collection, eliminating the need for a computer in the field. Weighing in at around 7 pounds, this system can produce images at sub-millimeter accuracy. In tests in various contexts, from historic cemeteries to caves with ancient foot impressions to underwater archaeology, the potential uses of this technology for data collection and as a conservation tool are discussed.

Dr. Begley’s research primarily focuses on Central and South America elite power strategies as well as digital recording methods in remote locations. This seminar will focus on recent development of a robust, high accuracy 3D imaging system for archaeological use in non-traditional environments.  Specific case studies will focus on petroglyphs in remote areas of Honduras, Native American footprints in a North American cave, bronze warship rams from the First Punic War found off Sicily, Late Bronze Age mortuary caves in the Balearic Islands, and underwater applications from a Spanish site.

All are welcome to the seminar and lunch with Dr. Begley following the talk. If you would like to meet with Dr. Begley while he is here, please contact the CMA Seminar team.

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