Dawn Hadley

Viking and native: re–thinking identity in the Danelaw

This paper addresses the impact of the Scandinavian settlements in England in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the role that ethnic identity and affiliation played in the society of the so–called Danelaw. It is argued that ethnic identity was not a constant factor, but one that only became relevant, at least in the evidence available to us, at certain times. It is suggested that the key to understanding expressions of ethnicity lies in the absorption of new ruling elites in northern and eastern England, and in subsequent political manoeuvring, rather than in the scale of the Scandinavian settlement. Indeed, the scale of the settlement does not easily explain most of our evidence, with the exception of some of the linguistic data. This paper stresses the importance of discussing the Scandinavian settlements not simply by reference to ethnic factors, but within the social and political context of early medieval society.

THE WINTER CAMP OF THE VIKING GREAT ARMY, ad 872–3, TORKSEY, LINCOLNSHIRE

This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary project that has revealed the location, extent and character of the winter camp of the Viking Great Army at Torksey, Lincolnshire, of ad 872–3. The camp lay within a naturally defended area of higher ground, partially surrounded by marshes and bordered by the River Trent on its western side. It is considerably larger than the Viking camp of 873–4 previously excavated at Repton, Derbyshire, and lacks the earthwork defences identified there. Several thousand individuals overwintered in the camp, including warriors, craftworkers and merchants. An exceptionally large and rich metalwork assemblage was deposited during the Great Army’s overwintering, and metal processing and trading was undertaken. There is no evidence for a pre-existing Anglo-Saxon trading site here; the site appears to have been chosen for its strategic location and its access to resources. In the wake of the overwintering, Torksey developed as an important Anglo-Saxon borough with a major wheel-thrown pottery industry and multiple churches and cemeteries. The Torksey evidence allows for a radical reappraisal of the character of Viking winter camps, and the legacy of the Viking Great Army for Anglo-Saxon England.

Viking VR : Designing a Virtual Reality Experience for a Museum

Viking VR is a Virtual Reality exhibit through which viewers can experience the sights and sounds of a 9th Century Viking encampment. Created as part of a major museum exhibition, the experience was developed by an interdisciplinary team consisting of artists, archaeologists, curators and researchers. In this paper, approaches to the design of authentic, informative and compelling VR experiences for Cultural Heritage contexts are discussed. We also explore issues surrounding interaction design for the long-term deployment of VR experiences in museums and discuss the challenges of VR authoring workflows for interdisciplinary teams.

Recreating Sheffield’s Medieval Castle In Situ using Outdoor Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) experiences generally function well indoors, inside buildings, where, typically, lighting conditions are stable, the scale of the environment is small and fixed, and markers can be easily placed. This is not the case for outdoor AR experiences. In this paper, we present practical solutions for an AR application that virtually restores Sheffield’s medieval castle to the Castlegate area in Sheffield city centre where it once stood. A simplified 3D model of the area, together with sensor fusion, is used to support a user alignment process and subsequent orientation tracking. Rendering realism is improved by using directional lighting matching that of the sun, a virtual ground plane and depth masking based on the same model used in the alignment stage. The depth masking ensures the castle sits correctly in front of or behind real buildings, as necessary, thus addressing the occlusion problem. The Unity game engine is used for development and the resulting app runs in real-time on recent high-spec Android mobile phones.

Using semi-automatic 3D scene reconstruction to create a digital medieval Charnel Chapel

The use of a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) has become a popular technique for the acquisition of 3D scenes in the fields of cultural heritage and archaeology. In this study, a semi-automatic reconstruction technique is presented to convert the point clouds that are produced, which often contain noise or are missing data, into a set of triangle meshes. The technique is applied to the reconstruction of a medieval charnel chapel. To reduce the computational complexity of reconstruction, the point cloud is first segmented into several components guided by the geometric structure of the scene. Landmarks are interactively marked on the point cloud and multiple cutting planes are created using the least squares method. Then, sampled point clouds for each component are meshed by ball-pivoting. In order to fill the large missing regions on the walls and ground plane, inserted triangle meshes are calculated on the basis of the convex hull of the projection points on the bounding plane. The iterative closest point (ICP) approach and local non-rigid registration methods are used to make the inserted triangle meshes and original model tightly match. Using these methods, we have reconstructed a digital model of the medieval charnel chapel, which not only serves to preserve a digital record of it, but also enables members of the public to experience the space virtually.