3D Bones – Digital documentation of skeletal remains
Andrew Wilson, University of Bradford
This talk will present the work of two JISC-funded projects that are using 3D digital documentation methods to provide access to fragile human bone specimens from world-renowned collections at the Biological Anthropology Research Centre, Bradford, together with project partners the Royal College of Surgeons, Museum of London Archaeology and Chichester District Museum. It is commonly the most fragile pathological bone specimens that receive the greatest attention from scholars, yet these are also at greatest risk of damage from handling attrition.
Key goals are therefore to safeguard these specimens longterm whilst making them more widely accessible as digital models. These projects seek to bridge the gap between modern clinical medicine, the use of historic medical collections and archaeological assemblages, with a synthetic approach to the Mass digitisation of pathological type-specimens, primarily using textured 3D laser scans. We have specifically focused on those chronic diseases which affect the human skeleton for which many of the physical changes are often not readily observable, even within clinical practice. Clinical interpretation of these Digitised Diseases is axiomatic within the project team/ ethos and will form an important part of the reporting and presentation of these palaeopathological lesions. The common goal of these projects is to educate the wider public and students from a range of clinical and non-clinical disciplines about the progress of different chronic diseases and how these are manifest both today and in past populations.
Speaker Biography
Dr Andrew Wilson is Senior Lecturer in Forensic & Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford and works at the interface of archaeological science, conservation science and forensic science. He is PI for the JISC-funded 3D digitisation projects: ‘From Cemetery to Clinic’ and ‘Digitised Diseases’ in collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons, Museum of London Archaeology and Chichester District Museum.
