Archaeologists recreate a two-thousand-year-old pin using 3D printing and scanning
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The jewelry was reconstructed using computer technologies and traditional methods. In the manufacture of wax, clay and bronze were used.
Archaeologists have restored the decoration of the Iron Age using digital technology.
The BBC News article has been translated and updated for you by the Top 3D Shop .
To recreate the ancient accessory, it was necessary to scan the clay forms that were used to cast bronze jewelry in the first or third centuries of our era. The original shapes found at Cairns, on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, were too fragile to make jewelry.
The jewelry was recreated by Ben Price, a graduate student at the University of the Institute of Archeology of the Highlands and Islands. During a recent excavation of an Iron Age brocha in Cairns, about 60 fragments of clay forms were found.
Excavations on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, Scotland.
Brochs, also known as “Atlantic round houses,” were stone towers built on the Scottish islands and highlands. Broches are characterized by a round shape and construction with dry masonry, without any cementitious mortar.
Brooch Ruins at Dan Carloway, Lewis, Scotland. Photo from Wikipedia.
Ancient pin, render.
Ben Price has recreated the entire Iron Age jewelry making process, from finding the original molds to casting a new pin.
How to do it:
- At first, fragments found on the ground in Cairns were collected;
- 3D scans and photographs of the fragments of injection molds simulated a 3D image;
- According to the recreated digital model , a wax was printed on a 3D printer ;
- The clay mold was recreated by waxing;
- After the clay froze, bronze was poured into it, which took the form of a pin;
- The product was left to cool for 48 hours;
- The clay form was broken, exposing the resulting bronze pin, repeating the shape of an ancient product to the smallest detail.
Mr. Price photographed and scanned the original computer age forms of the Iron Age and created a digital 3D image on the screen.
He then created a three-dimensional computer model of the pin. It was printed from wax on a 3D printer . The wax was ideally suited for the pin to be cast in bronze, a material used by Orkney jewelers thousands of years ago.
Martin Carruthers, head of the UHI Master's program, said:
“This process gives us unique and exciting information about the facilities that the Cairns residents created and used over 2000 years ago.
You can see all the flaws of the product created by ancient technology.
This approach opens up many opportunities for experimental archeology. The reconstruction of such products makes it possible to assess how the Iron Age was full of bright original objects. Perhaps our ancestors did not differ much from the people of our time. ”
Now everyone can join the story by buying an exact copy of the famous Cairns pin, unlike a bronze original cast in silver, for 66 British pounds.
In your opinion, will jewelry recreated based on patterns found in the former USSR be popular? Are people interested in the history of the peoples living here so much as to buy copies of artifacts? Can museums make money on this?