Volterra through lens

The field school of the Stockholm University in Volterra turned out to be so intensive I had absolutely no time for my blog. Those days I was not teaching, I was planning teaching, having meetings with other teachers and taking care of other research matters. One also has to keep contact with family at home and eat and sleep, so blogging was the thing that had to give.

One of our sites of photogrammetry

In this field school I participated in or ran single-handedly teaching of three different elements: photogrammetry with Agisoft, archive and library research and GIS. All are important parts of the archaeological research and give important skills to the students. Since I was in Volterra for this purpose for the first time, the workload was greater if I had been there for the first school ever in 2013. The experience was very giving and the people lovely, so it was an honour to teach such a talented group that consisted of people of different ages and backgrounds from four different institutions of higher education.

The part I perhaps enjoyed most were the photogrammetry sessions during the first week of the two week course. However, library sessions were also memorable, since we could see some of the treasures of the library, including the miniature portrait that was recently suggested to have been partly created by Leonardo da Vinci, and find out more about the earlier research of the monuments near which our group has carried out studies using georadar. In the future, building stadsGIS will grow in importance, even if now we are just starting.

Due to the pedagogical focus of the photogrammetry, we could not follow the same schedule as the main groups carrying out georadar studies and related GPS measuments. Due to the time constraints and changing conditions, we had to choose smaller monuments and photograph only in the morning. This meant that we could photograph two of the facades of the main structures at the sites, since the sun was shining directly to the camera or there were too many tourists to concentrate on our work. However, I managed to photograph the sites for the coming week: one in a Sunday afternoon when the lighting was optimal and the other on the Ferragosto morning at 7am when the site was deserted, albeit a priest opening the church door.

Students carrying out recording duties

The work I did with the students was directed more towards the visualisation than any other archaeological purpose. I can hardly wait to try to lay a model together with a time slice from the georadar prospection. Nevertheless, the students seemed to get the idea considering the successful independent modelling with some help from my colleague who was available for the task. There were issues, but they were mainly related to the particulars of the programme and how it calculates the models. The models themselves came out fine in the end and the wrong choices just added to the pedagogical experience. With students’ helpful feedback, there is room for improvement and even better classes, if needed!