Alexandria Archaeology Museum
105 North Union Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
A presentation and demonstration by Dr. Bernard K. Means, Director of the Virtual Curation Laboratory @ Virginia Commonwealth University
The Virtual Curation Laboratory was established at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) August 2011 through a partnership with Marine Corps Base Quantico and via funding from the Department of Defense’s Legacy Program. Working with a team of VCU undergraduate anthropology majors under the direction of Dr. Means, 3D digital models of hundreds of artifacts have been created, ranging from a million-year-old Acheulian handaxe once used by Homo erectus to German bomb fragments pulled from rubble in World War II London, England. Most of the digital models were created from prehistoric and historic sites located in the Middle Atlantic region, including objects from Jamestown, Montpelier, Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Poplar Forest, and many other heritage locations. These 3D digital models are created using lasers generated by the NextEngine Desktop 3D Scanner.
Dr. Means will discuss the efforts of the Virtual Curation Laboratory to digitally preserve the past, will share 3D digital models and plastic replicas generated by the models, and demonstrate that 3D scanning process using artifacts from the collections of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum.
More information about the Virtual Curation Laboratory can be found at: http://vcuarchaeology3d.wordpress.com/