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UKAS conference
Apr. 26th, 2019 08:57 pmI arrived in Manchester on Wednesday morning. Lucky for me as the train was approaching the city and I was gathering my stuff I noticed that the older gentleman sitting across from me had the most delightful rainbow shoelaces, so I complimented him on them, and we got to talking. When I took out my phone to figure out how to get where I was going he asked where I was headed, so I showed him the dot on the map, and he pointed out that rather than waiting till the Manchester Piccadilly station, I should get off at the Manchester Oxford road station instead, my walk will be only 5 minutes instead of 20, and the stop is sooner. So I took his advice, and reached the AirBnB just after 10:00, where I dropped off my luggage and picked up the key from my host, and then went directly to the conference.
UKAS is a science-heavy Archaeology conference, and, judging by the conference, the currently most fashionable sort of science for archaeologists to do is isotope studies of human, plant, and animal remains to determine if they ate local food (or grew locally in the case of the plants), or came from elsewhere. Next most popular is to look at bones, teeth, or residue in cooking pots, to figure out what people (or animals) have been eating.
My poster was the only one where the science was being applied to rocks, though there were two geoarchaeology posters that look at soil (we three share a supervisor).
But the poster I found most inspiring was the guy who is making 3D models of animal skulls by taking photos from all angles and letting the computer stitch them together. This made me wonder if one can also use the face recognition software to identify/classify archaeological objects. The 3D model guy tells me he knows of an archaeologist who is, in fact, applying face recognition software to pot shards.
On the first day a couple of people came over during a break to see my nålbindning. (typed this far, and then got distracted working, noticed the open tab, and decided to post as is...)
UKAS is a science-heavy Archaeology conference, and, judging by the conference, the currently most fashionable sort of science for archaeologists to do is isotope studies of human, plant, and animal remains to determine if they ate local food (or grew locally in the case of the plants), or came from elsewhere. Next most popular is to look at bones, teeth, or residue in cooking pots, to figure out what people (or animals) have been eating.
My poster was the only one where the science was being applied to rocks, though there were two geoarchaeology posters that look at soil (we three share a supervisor).
But the poster I found most inspiring was the guy who is making 3D models of animal skulls by taking photos from all angles and letting the computer stitch them together. This made me wonder if one can also use the face recognition software to identify/classify archaeological objects. The 3D model guy tells me he knows of an archaeologist who is, in fact, applying face recognition software to pot shards.
On the first day a couple of people came over during a break to see my nålbindning. (typed this far, and then got distracted working, noticed the open tab, and decided to post as is...)