The Impact of Low-Cost, Low-Tech DIY Approaches at the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project

Author(s): Eric Poehler; Benjamin Crowther

Year: 2015

Summary

Born a paperless research project, the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project (PQP) employed multiple digital approaches to archaeology in its first three field seasons (2010-2012), including 3D modeling, ground penetrating radar, and a host of iPad applications. By the PQP's final season (2013), the availability of a number of low-tech, user-accessible digital techniques tempted us to consider if these DIY approaches could produce data sets of commensurate quality to those recorded using expensive and/or complicated equipment. Therefore, in our final season, the PQP evaluated several low-cost, low-tech DIY approaches to supplement our extant collection procedures and data sets. This paper focuses on the impact of three of these approaches: 1. DIY spectrometry, 2. in-field archival documentation, and 3. DIY aerial photography. In terms of results, some techniques proved more useful than others, but the process of implementation for each - including failures – offers insight for crafting successful future DIY approaches. Therefore, this paper also considers larger issues concerning DIY approaches to archaeology through the lens of the PQP's experience. These include the role of specialists in the implementation of DIY techniques, collaboration with a variety of fields outside of archaeology, and the combination of low-tech, DIY with high-tech, specialist approaches.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

Cite this Record

The Impact of Low-Cost, Low-Tech DIY Approaches at the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project. Benjamin Crowther, Eric Poehler. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 397245)

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Keywords

General
digital humanities • DIY Archaeology • low-cost

Geographic Keywords
Europe

Spatial Coverage

min long: -11.074; min lat: 37.44 ; max long: 50.098; max lat: 70.845 ;