Ancient MakerSpaces

Trapezites is a standard online currency conversion website designed to convert from one ancient currency to another, accompanied by information about purchasing power in antiquity. Determining historical exchange rates and purchasing power is a notorious problem and requires the careful study of many different types of evidence.

ToposText is an indexed collection of ancient texts and mapped places relevant to the history and mythology of the ancient Greeks from the Neolithic period up through the 2nd century CE.

At Ancient MakerSpaces we wish to present the results of a hands-on workshop on the application of 3D printing in classical studies we designed for public school students in grades 7-12 who are enrolled in Union College’s Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP).

Digital research tools are ubiquitous for archaeologists, philologists, and historians, yet hands-on, introductory courses geared towards teaching undergraduates how to explore the past through these digital methods are rare.

Most efforts at improving the accessibility of epigraphy revolve around making two-dimensional images of inscriptions or squeezes openly available online. This approach has its advantages in keeping file size moderate and digitization time and costs under control, but it also excludes blind scholars from an area in which they might otherwise thrive.

This presentation discusses the use of 3D printing and 3D imaging technologies in an art history course taught at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). The class takes advantage of the resources available at the Visual Resources Center, an emerging makerspace located within the Department of Art and Art History.

We are examining diverse corpora of manuscripts, with an initial focus on manuscripts of the Iliad and Latin music manuscripts, to understand how their textual and paratextual content have been transmitted and have evolved throughout time. In many fundamental ways, the transmission of cultural information, like historical manuscripts and music notation, is analogous to biological evolution where species and characteristics change through time.

This project seeks to examine the way in which traditional typological studies and modern scientific analysis can be combined to provide a better understanding of the chronological and geographical provenance of a collection, as well as to better detect counterfeit ceramics. To achieve this aim, a case study of the 32 ill-provenienced ceramic oil lamps found within the Brandeis University Classical Studies Artifact Research Collection (CLARC) was conducted.

This projects' primary goal is to compile a holistic set of data about Panhellenic victory networks in the Archaic period, and to present this set in a dynamic and interactive manner.

This study uses Google Earth to map and examine roads used for the transport of quarried stone for Greek temples in Selinunte, Sicily in the Archaic and Classical periods. Google Earth is a user friendly open source tool that allows users to map quarries and temples, plot roads and study their lengths and gradients in order to better understand transport roads, and conduct digital landscape surveys.