Bog Bodies, Bronze Age Shields and Building 3D Digital Worlds
Professor Andrew Wilson can trace his fascination with archaeology, heritage and forensic science back to an obsession that began in his childhood, including his reading of Roald Dahl’s The Mildenhall Treasure, one of a collection of short stories that told of the real life discovery by two farmers of a Roman horde in 1946; as well as the raising of the Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose in Portsmouth which he watched at school in 1982.
“I was captivated from an early age and my interest in archaeology evolved through childhood. I remember dragging primary school friends to the British Museum to visit the Mildenhall Treasure” recalls Andrew from the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. “Roald Dahl’s vivid account recalls the true story of the discovery of this horde of Roman silver found in Suffolk. I also remember the Mary Rose being lifted, having visited South Sea Castle to watch the dive vessel moored above the wreck in the Solent; and soon after the opening of the Yorvik Viking Centre, a family holiday to Yorkshire offered up the sights, sounds and smells of Viking life, which had me hooked on the value of an immersive experience of the past as well as the contextual linkage to the present.”
Andrew Wilson scanning inside Saltaire United Reformed Church within the World Heritage Site in the aftermath of Storm Ciara which destroyed part of the ceiling
Today his research interests span a number of key areas - he is a world-renowned expert in the field of human bioarchaeology, specialising in the study of ancient mummies, bog bodies and other preserved human remains from around the world. Indeed, by analysing keratin from ancient hair, fingernails and wool, he can tell you what a person (or animal) ate and what their lifestyle was like before they died. Over the years, he’s studied remains from Greenland, South America, Egypt, Europe and the UK and he has attended every World Congress on Mummy Studies since 1998.
However, for more than ten years now he has also built up the University’s capabilities in digital documentation for 3D imaging and visualisation, now under the banner of ‘Visualising Heritage’ – a wealth of instrumentation, skills and expertise that have been developed across a range of research projects and KT work.
Visualising the Crucible of Shetland's Broch Building - joint AHRC-funded project with Historic Environment Scotland, Shetland Amenity Trust supporting PhD researcher Li Sou (July 2017)
Background and education
He attended his first archaeological dig, in Sussex, aged just 15, subsequently helping out with the Field Archaeology Unit each year into his undergraduate studies. Whilst in sixth form he helped to excavate and record damage caused by the hurricane at the famous landmark of Chanctonbury Ring on the South Downs; helped to excavate sites along the route of the A27 Brighton by-pass and assisted in the excavation and post-excavation processing of human skeletal remains at the site of Grey Friar’s Friary in Lewes, East Sussex close to the River Ouse. He says they were all “trigger points” linking an interest in the survivability of buried materials and human remains with conservation, analysis, forensic science and most recently the use of digital innovations for heritage, archaeology and contemporary value.
His first degree was in Archaeological Conservation from University College London and concentrated on approaches to reveal, document and preserve information embodied in fragile materials - anything from earthenware ceramics excavated from burial mounds on the South Downs through to corroded metalwork and human remains. In fact, Otzi the Tyrolean Iceman was discovered the same month that he started at University (30 years ago). He honed a passion for Archaeological Science after graduation when he moved to Washington DC to work for a year-and-a-half at the Smithsonian Institution, examining protein (blood) residues on stone tools and more specifically, understanding what such residues could tell us about the people who lived in the past.
The parallels with forensic science are clear. The fact that the discipline of Forensic Archaeology was first established through casework at Bradford was one of the factors in selecting Bradford for postgraduate training, where he gained an MSc in Osteology, Paleopathology and Funerary Archaeology in a programme run jointly with the University of Sheffield.
Even before his undergraduate studies Andrew had developed a keen interest in the study of human remains and his dissertation supervisor was due to be the late Prof Don Brothwell (1933-2016) who had led research on Lindow Man (the well preserved bog body discovered in 1984). Although Prof Don Brothwell took up a post at York in 1993 he would later act as Andrew’s external examiner for his PhD. From 2004 onwards, Andrew was also invited to work with the National Museum of Ireland on their Irish Bog Body Project, together with Prof Don Brothwell and Prof Niels Lynnerup, following the discovery of two Iron Age bog bodies: Old Croghan man and Clonycavan Man.
National Museum of Ireland Bog Bodies Research Project - Andrew Wilson shown here sampling hair from Clonycavan man in 2005
His career has taken him from conserving the Late Bronze Age Yetholm-type Shield excavated from South Cadbury, Somerset which won the Museums & Galleries Commission National Conservation Award in 1999; to working with Turner prize nominee Cornelia Parker to image mourning jewellery made from the hair of the Brontë sisters as part of an exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage - ‘Brontëan Abstracts’; from excavating a 19th century crypt in Sunderland to recreating tombs in Peru to understand the mechanisms of survival and decay and in arid environments; from working with the hair of mammoths from Siberian permafrost to detailed interpretation of the life histories of Inca capacocha (child sacrificial victims) from Volcán Llullaillaco, often described as the World’s highest archaeological site; from setting up collaborations with Louise Leakey at Lake Turkana in Kenya, to using the latest digital documentation methods to record the world’s first railway roundhouse designed by Robert Stephenson as part of the HS2 enabling works at Curzon Street in Birmingham.
Making archaeology and heritage more accessible
Andrew reflects on the fact that whilst his research now draws from each of these elements, digital documentation is at the core of approaches that he and colleagues now use routinely. The establishment of our capabilities with ‘Visualising Heritage’ means that today a large part of our work is concerned with making archaeology more accessible and understandable, to both academics and the public.
The digitisation of archaeological collections and sites is important because it not only helps to preserve their relevance - and prevents damage through repeated handling - it also enables anyone to gain access to them.
A good example being the University of Bradford’s collection of human remains within the Biological Anthropology Research Centre, which is one of the largest and best of its kind in the UK and featured in our collaboration with the Royal College of Surgeons, Museum of London and MOLA - Digitised Diseases, which employs high resolution photorealistic 3D models of human bones affected by chronic disease and is now used across the globe in teaching and research within biological anthropology and palaeopathology.
Our Fragmented Heritage project explored transformative use of digital technologies in the digital documentation of bones, artefacts, buildings and even entire landscapes, seeking to engage anyone as citizen scientists in efforts to interrogate imagery from East Lake Turkana within the FossilFinder workpackage; and to use crowd-sourcing and web-scraping of imagery to document heritage at risk within the hugely successful Curious Travellers workflow which seeks to recreate heritage sites that have suffered destruction through conflict (Palmyra, Syria), or natural disaster (following the devastating earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal), or a range of similar threats.
Digitised Diseases - joint UoB, MOLA and Royal College of Surgeons team in the crystal gallery at the Royal College of Surgeons, September 2012 with Jisc-funded project
Of course heritage is a complex and often quite personal thing, in that it encompasses the physical structures we all recognise in buildings, monuments and landscapes, but also the intangible – the stories, memories and personal recollections of individuals for whom those sites are important
We’re now using that approach to connect communities and share heritage narratives with new generations who might otherwise have no experience of the original. An approach that was particularly valuable as we took 3D imagery of sites such as Palmyra to refugee communities in Jordan through the BReaTHe project and explored its relevance for wellbeing, or helped conservation architects in the rebuilding of Kathmandu in a project with Durham University”.
Andrew reflects: “Our research has tended to take us all over the globe and yet one of the most rewarding aspects is being able to share these leading advances with partners closer to home. The Virtual Bradford project for instance sees a strengthening of ties between the University of Bradford and Bradford Council, which will deliver an open-source digital twin of the entire City Centre – to support planning decisions, regeneration, manage heritage assets and helping to realise Bradford’s ambition of being a leading clean growth city.
“It’s been quite an interesting journey with a diverse range of drivers – ranging from forensic science and work with human remains to the current work that we have ongoing more broadly within the field of imaging and visualisation. Of course much of these aspects come full-circle, with the work with digital documentation really just an extension of my training from archaeological conservation.
These new approaches allow us to create a very accurate representation of physical evidence, and ways of looking at it objectively with fresh eyes – something that draws many cross-disciplinary parallels to address contemporary needs in heritage science, forensic science and exploring that relevance with partners across the life sciences, healthcare and social sciences.
Additional information
Professor Wilson is Member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of World Prehistory and a member of the Forensic Archaeology Expert Panel with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. He is published in major interdisciplinary publications including Nature, Science, PNAS, Current Biology, Nature Scientific Reports and PLoSONE. A jointly-edited book ‘Visual Heritage: Digital Approaches In Heritage Science’ will be published later this year.