Bread & Circuses

3D app for Antonine Wall

Exciting news that thanks to a grant from Creative Europe, a 3D app is going to be developed for the Antonine Wall.

“Over the last twelve months we have made great strides in digitally interpreting the Antonine Wall. Thanks to this significant commitment from Creative Europe, as well as Historic Environment Scotland’s own substantial investment, we are now able to build on that work and expand our use of innovative technologies to engage the widest audience possible. The project is a great model of international partnership working and ultimately we will share the technology with other countries free of charge, which should benefit the entire sector,” said Patricia Weeks, Antonine Wall World Heritage Site co-ordinator for Historic Environment Scotland. 

The full press release is here, while newspaper coverage is here and here. The demo looks good and will make interpretation of the sites considerably easier.

Give Me Back My Legions!

Sarah Bond and I had a disgraceful amount of fun last week last week working on a piece for Forbes on this season's discoveries at Kalkriese (see my previous posts on these here and here). The article came out yesterday:

The most significant discovery by the archaeology team from Kalkriese and scientists from the University of Osnabrück in the museum park is eight gold coins, which more than doubles the number of gold coins found at the site. Called aurei, and featuring images of Augustus’ grandsons Gaius and Lucius, they were minted within a span of 2 BCE to 5 CE  – in other words, they all date to a time before the battle occurred.

You can read the full article here.

But for those who want a real giggle, you need to head over and have a look at the MailOnline. The story has been picked up and the comments are wonderful. A personal favourite is:

Confused, were coins minted before Christ dated counting down to 0BC?

But they are all worth a read.