The Digital Ossuary: 3D visualisation of a unique and endangered archaeological site

This
project was funded by the University of Sheffield Digital Humanities
Exploration Fund in 2015.

The project integrated computer science and archaeological approaches
in an investigation of the subterranean medieval charnel chapel of Holy Trinity
church in Rothwell (Northamptonshire), which houses one of only two remaining in situ medieval ossuaries in England. The
chapel, which was constructed during the 13th century, houses
disinterred human skeletal remains radiocarbon dated to the 13th-15th
and 18th-19th centuries. While medieval charnelling was a
European-wide phenomenon, evidence has largely been lost in England following
the early 16th-century Reformation, and Rothwell is the most
complete surviving example of a charnel chapel with in situ medieval remains. Recent research within the Department of
Archaeology has suggested that these charnel structures served a much more
complex liturgical role than merely permitting the clearance of overly-full
graveyards (which has long been presumed to be their prosaic role); they also
provided places of pilgrimage and were the focus of intercessory devotion,
where the faithful could pray for the souls of the departed whilst in the
physical presence of their corporeal remains. Rothwell charnel chapel is,
hence, a site of major international significance, but analysis of the site is
hampered by issues of access and preservation. The proposed project has four
principal aims:

1. to develop analysis of the hitherto largely unstudied medieval charnel
chapel by collecting digital records of the charnel deposit and their
environment;

2. to enhance interpretation of the manner in which the ossuary was
utilized in the medieval period, through digital capturing of the spatial
arrangements within the chapel, and the range of medieval vantage points into
the chapel;

3. to present this fragile, and largely inaccessible (due to narrow stair
access, now blocked medieval windows and cramped internal space), heritage
resource to the public in a sustainable manner; and

4. to facilitate preservation of the ossuary, which is in a fragile state,
in the form of digital preservation in
situ.

A Leica ScanStation P20 3D
scanner was used to capture a 3D point cloud of the charnel chapel. Seventeen
scans were taken at different locations and registered (using Leica Cyclone) to
produce a model containing 60 million points. This data set is supplied in the
following formats:E57 file format – Oss_E57.e57

.ptx file format – Ossuary_PTX.ptx Initial work was done (see
publications) to convert the point cloud into a 3D virtual reality model of the space.
A simplified (decimated) mesh containing approx. 3.5 million faces is available in
.obj format as mesh.zip (which contains mesh.obj, mesh.mtl, and eight supporting
texture files: tex_0.jpg to tex_7.jpg). PublicationsElizabeth Craig-Atkins, Jennifer
Crangle and Dawn Hadley. Rothwell Charnel Chapel – The nameless dead. Current
Archaeology magazine issue 321, November 2016. Jenny Crangle, Elizabeth
Craig-Atkins, Dawn Hadley, Peter Heywood, Tom Hodgson, Steve Maddock, Robin
Scott, Adam Wiles. The Digital Ossuary: Rothwell (Northamptonshire, UK). Proc.
CAA2016, the 44th Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative
Methods in Archaeology, Oslo, 29 March – 2 April, Session 06 Computer tools for
depicting shape and detail in 3D archaeological models.Wuyang Shui, Steve Maddock, Peter
Heywood, Elizabeth Craig-Atkins, Jennifer Crangle, Dawn Hadley and Rab Scott.
Using semi-automatic 3D scene reconstruction to create a digital medieval
charnel chapel. Proc. CGVC2016, 15-16 September, 2016, Bournemouth University,
United Kingdom.

Wuyang Shui, Jin Liu, Pu Ren,
Steve Maddock and Mingquan Zhou. Automatic planar shape segmentation from
indoor point clouds. Proc. VRCAI2016, 3-4 December 2016, Zhuhai, China.

本项研究由谢菲尔德大学数字人文学科探索基金于2015年资助。该项目融合了计算机科学与考古学方法，对诺福克郡罗索威尔圣三一教堂下方的中世纪地下骨灰堂进行了调查，该教堂拥有英格兰仅存的两个原地中世纪骨灰堂之一。该骨灰堂建于13世纪，藏有经放射性碳定年法测定的13至15世纪及18至19世纪的人类骨骼遗骸。虽然中世纪骨灰堂在欧洲范围内是一种普遍现象，但在16世纪初的宗教改革之后，英格兰的证据大多已失传，而罗索威尔骨灰堂是保存最为完整的此类教堂实例。考古系近期的研究表明，这些骨灰堂承担的宗教仪式角色远比仅仅允许清理过于拥挤的墓地（长久以来被认为是其平凡的职能）更为复杂；它们还成为了朝圣之地，并成为代祷的焦点，信徒们可以在遗骸的物理存在中为逝者的灵魂祈祷。因此，罗索威尔骨灰堂具有重大的国际意义，但其分析受到可进入性和保护问题的阻碍。拟议中的项目有四个主要目标：

1. 通过收集骨灰堂沉积物及其环境的数字记录，对迄今为止鲜有研究的 medieval 骨灰堂进行分析；

2. 通过数字化捕捉教堂内部的布局和多个中世纪视角，增进对骨灰堂在中世纪时期使用方式的解读；

3. 以可持续的方式向公众展示这一脆弱且大多难以进入（由于狭窄的楼梯通道、现已封闭的中世纪窗户和狭窄的内部空间）的遗产资源；

4. 促进骨灰堂的保护，鉴于其脆弱状态，通过原地数字保护的形式进行。

采用徕卡ScanStation P20 3D扫描仪对骨灰堂进行了三维点云扫描。在不同位置进行了十七次扫描，并使用徕卡Cyclone进行注册，生成了包含六千万个点的模型。该数据集提供以下格式：E57文件格式 - Oss_E57.e57
.ptx文件格式 - Ossuary_PTX.ptx。初步工作已将点云转换为空间的三维虚拟现实模型（参见出版物）。一个包含约350万个面的简化（减量）网格以.obj格式提供，作为mesh.zip文件（包含mesh.obj、mesh.mtl和八个支持纹理文件：tex_0.jpg至tex_7.jpg）。

出版物：
Elizabeth Craig-Atkins, Jennifer Crangle 和 Dawn Hadley. 罗索威尔骨灰堂——无名死者。Current Archaeology 杂志第321期，2016年11月。
Jenny Crangle, Elizabeth Craig-Atkins, Dawn Hadley, Peter Heywood, Tom Hodgson, Steve Maddock, Robin Scott, Adam Wiles. 数字骨灰堂：罗索威尔（英国诺福克郡）。Proc. CAA2016，第44届计算机在考古学中的应用和定量方法年会，奥斯陆，2016年3月29日至4月2日，第06场：用于描绘3D考古模型形状和细节的计算机工具。
Wuyang Shui, Steve Maddock, Peter Heywood, Elizabeth Craig-Atkins, Jennifer Crangle, Dawn Hadley 和 Rab Scott. 利用半自动3D场景重建创建数字中世纪骨灰堂。Proc. CGVC2016，2016年9月15-16日，英国伯恩茅斯大学。
Wuyang Shui, Jin Liu, Pu Ren, Steve Maddock 和 Mingquan Zhou. 从室内点云中自动分割平面形状。Proc. VRCAI2016，2016年12月3-4日，中国珠海。