Paper short abstract:

This paper presents interim outcomes of a project to examine the application of motion capture in archaeological fieldwork. This illustrates both how motion capture data can be linked with archaeological information, and how it can enable reconstruction of material culture.

Paper long abstract:

The Motion in Place Platform Project (MiPP) is a collaborative project whose principal aim is to investigate the application of motion capture technologies outside the studio. One such application is the practice of reconstruction of material culture in archaeology, and in the study of archaeological practice itself. MiPP has had the opportunity to collaborate with the team at the Roman town site excavation at Hampshire, and this paper will focus on the epistemological questions that applying motion capture in this context have raised. Two motion capture approaches were implemented: in the summer field season of 2010, excavators at Silchester were equipped with motion capture suits developed by Animazoo, a Brighton-based specialist hardware company, and over 2½ hours of activity were captured. The paper will present this material, and explore a) its potential as a teaching and demonstration tool, and b) outline the significant questions that have arisen in linking this quantitative motion data with the quantitative archaeological data produced by the excavation. Secondly, the paper will present the results of an exercise in recreating a section of the town, the Early Roman and Iron Age structures in the southwest corner of the trench, in a motion capture studio. As well as further exploration of the questions of how 'conventional' archaeological data can be used to enable such reconstruction, the paper will present how, by capturing human interaction with it, the use of motion capture allows archaeologists to illustrate and explore agentive intervention in the creation of material culture.