Royal Society Award to Beaminster Museum
Beaminster Museum has been awarded a grant to purchase a new 3D Scanner to enable using 3D scanning to improve access and education to heritage objects.
Royal Society Award text
Beaminster Museum is a volunteer run community museum in West Dorset, keen to strengthen links to the local community and nearby museums. As a relatively new museum, (founded 1995) much of the historical and archaeological material from the area is in other museums.
The museum plans to fill gaps in telling the story of their local community by using 3D scans and digital display to share material on display elsewhere, but also to use the material in new ways to help improve their educational offering. The scans will be used to tell the historical stories in a more interactive way to help appeal to a younger audience, especially the groups of local schoolchildren who visit, and for whom there are themed visits such as on the Iron Age, or recently on WW1 and a local Victoria Cross recipient (the first air based VC – William Rhodes Moorhouse), and share more material to a wider public audience.
Our initial focus will be on the Roman Fort of Waddon Hill, the material from which is scattered, and on the local National Nature Reserve fossils, from Horn Park Quarry.
This could be a library of all the artefacts from Waddon Hill, from the Antiquarian finds of the 19th c, the Webster excavations, and the personal collection of Mr. Tolley. Currently these are scattered between Bridport, Dorchester, Poole, The Ashmolean, The British Museum, Stoke Abbott Parish Hall and Beaminster, and have never all been assembled in one place.
More models of our artefacts and fossils can be seen here.
Below are some examples of what future work might look like, but these models were prepared both with photogrammetry and the new 3D scanner, Click on the icon bottom right of the model or the “Toggle Fullscreen” button to make it full screen. You can manually grab and move the 3D objects yourself.
The larger models may take a few seconds to load depending on your internet speed.
Waddon Hill : Two handled Flask fragment- Webster, Dorset Museum Proceedings 1962, course pottery item 4, DMAG number 1962.46. Ref 1. Dimensions approx. 200 mm tall.
Two handled Flask fragment – from Webster 1962, course pottery. Item 4, DMAG number 1962.46.
Compare the published illustration, with the 3D model below. Which helps you better understand the object ?
A double handled flagon with the handles showing a peak and the rim with an internal lid seating, in Black Burnished ware with brown oxidised patches. This is a fully romanised form but made in the local native technique including the vertical burnishing on the neck, a feature of later flagons made in the South West. Kindly on loan from Dorset Museum and Art Gallery.
(Photogrammetry based Model . Use button for full screen view.)
Waddon Hill : Samian Ware
This fragment of high status pottery made in Gaul (Southwest France) in a mould, is part of a Dragendorff type 30 bowl, found in Websters Trench 2 in 1961.The first image is of a very similar patterned complete type 30 bowl, from La Graufesenque kilns in Gaul (South West France).
Waddon Hill : Broadwindsor Brooch
These are the first scans using the new scanner. A faster process, and a more accurate mesh model, than photogrammetry but first attempts lacked the desired resolution on the surface texture. We have a new approach combining the best of photography and the mathematical precision of the scanner and we will improve the textures on this same model in the next few weeks. The scanner models can also be reproduced physically with 3D Printing, which we plan to use on a few selected objects.
This fragment of a 1st century brooch is almost certainly a stray from Waddon Hill, and was found by a metal detectorist in 2015 two fields to the north of Waddon Hill fort. It was kindly donated to Beaminster Museum.
Spatial coordinates : 4 Figure: ST4400
Entry In PAS DataBase at the British Museum
The model below is the first using the new scanner, with a hybrid approach to improve the surface textures. In in the next few weeks we will replace this with a better version we know is possible, and with new imagery, and later still with a new viewer giving easier control over the object.
An incomplete copper alloy Aesica bow brooch.There are old breaks in several places. The open wings are incomplete. At the head is a remnant of a rearward hook. The pin is missing. The lozenge-shaped head arches steeply forming a loop with the flat bow behind it. The head is decorated with a central longitudinal rib with and eye-like moulding either side (a curving ridge around a pellet). There is a slight projection on each side apex. Where the head joins the bow there is a raised circular ridge. Below this extends the stub of the leg decorated with a crescent at the top a pellet below and side ridges. At the back is a remnant of the catchplate.
Date: Late Iron Age to Early Roman – c. AD 43 – 100
Dimensions: 37.58 mm x 23.03 mm x 18.50 mm
Weight: 20.80 g
Roman Pilum tip from Waddon Hill.
The pilum (Latin: [ˈpiːɫʊ̃]; pl.: pila) was a javelin commonly used by the Roman Army. It was generally about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) long overall, consisting of an iron shank about 7 mm (0.28 in) in diameter and 600 mm (24 in) long with a pyramidal head, attached to a wooden shaft by a socket. Click box bottom right for fullscreen view, and this model can be zoomed.
Poole Museum Waddon Hill Brooch
Brooch in Poole Museum, Keith S Jarvis, DMAG Proceedings Vol 104, 1982
Poole Museum Accession number T:2021.193 . A bronze brooch, said to be from Waddon Hill (ST 447016), is now in the Poole Museums collection. The brooch has the pin missing and may be compared with the aucissa type since the head, ribbing and foot-knob are of this form although the profile is not sufficiently bowed. The find is consistent with the early Roman military occupation known on this site. KEITH S. JARVIS – 1982
It is believed this is one of the earliest finds from the fort, made in the late 1870’s by quarrymen working at the site, and passed to the landowner of the time, Mary Cox of Beaminster Manor House. It was handed round as an example of finds at the site, by Boswell-Stone at his 1892 lecture at the Bridport Literary Institute. The missing pin is rendered in green.