CNR-ITABC ran a Landscape School (8-11 September) where students used the ARIADNE landscape services to produce and work with a few datasets. Places were limited to 21 students who were selected from 33 applicants.
Introduction
The Landscape School limited the number of participants to 21 students in order to be able to provide full support and verify improvements or difficulties with the training. The course was aimed at bringing together archaeologists and scientists, developers and advanced users from informatics and related fields of application (photogrammetry, remote sensing, GIS, Cultural Heritage, architecture) to study and discuss the latest developments in digital recording and 3D modelling of archaeological landscape, including the ARIADNE Landscape Services.
As archaeologists and other heritage professionals have become increasingly involved in the construction and presentation of increasingly complex and influential ‘virtual pasts’ so the need for qualified researchers and practitioners has increased. This course, in addition to providing a broadrange of transferable skills, offered a means to obtain ‘virtual archaeology’ skills. The course introduced participants to various fields related to landscape reconstruction, to the methodologies and technological tools dedicated to acquisition, processing and integration in spatial real-time or computer graphic systems. It was focused on interpretation and reconstruction of the archaeological and ancient landscape, through Virtual Reality and Computer Graphics techniques.
Programme
TUE 8 SEPTEMBER
Topics: Virtual Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Cartography, UAV in archaeology, From aerial photo acquisition to the creation of digital terrain models and orthophotos, through visual SFM
WED 9 SEPTEMBER
Topics: Virtual Landscapes: GIS (GRASS, Qgis), 3D Reconstruction and visualisation ofarchaeological landscapes : Introduction to Blender
THUR 10 SEPTEMBER
Topics: 3D Reconstruction and visualisation of archaeological landscapes: Blender Tutorial and introduction to ARIADNE Landscape Services
FRI 11 SEPTEMBER
Topics: 3D Reconstruction and visualisation of archaeological landscapes: Tutorial ARIADNE Landscape Services; Virtual Reality and Immersive Reality from terrain datasets generated.
Participants feedback
At the end of the week CNR-ITABC received a very positive feedback from all the participants, in particular the combination between intellectual activities such as lectures/discussions and practical laboratory experience have been particularly appreciated by the students. With respect to the training offered, all participants found the topics of the school to be relevant to their research. Furthermore, they said that the pace of teaching was about right, the material presented was appropriate and the material in the workshop was related to the announcements and schedule. All participants agree that the the course was too short!