Bonify 1.0: evaluating virtual reference collections in teaching and research

Abstract

Accessibility to zooarchaeological reference materials is a key hurdle when determining species classification, particularly in cases where the differences between two species (e.g. sheep and goat) are nuanced. Bonify is a pilot platform allowing the virtual comparison between 3D virtual animal bone models and zooarchaeological specimens. Two technologies were case studied, online web presentation and augmented reality. The two methodologies were tested by a selection of students and domain professionals. While the physical reference collection was viewed as the most usable, it was limited in terms of accessibility; the second best option turned out to be the web based interface while the augmented reality option suffered in terms of its usability. The web interface is available at www.digitalbones.eu.

Whale Bone Puzzles: Reconstructing and Identifying Historical Whale Skeletons Using Archive Records, Osteology, and Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS)

“…Not only do they serve an important purpose in public displays and educational resources (Cook et al 2016;Ballard et al 2017), they also provide reference collections for morphological analyses of bones (LeFebvre and Sharpe 2018; Lyman 2010) and study samples for biomolecular techniques (Eisenmann et al 2016;Harmon, Littlewood, and Wood 2019;Nganvongpanit et al 2017;Schmitt et al 2018). Since a reference osteological database for whales is lacking in completeness, with guidebooks insufficiently authenticated and not covering the extent of diversity within or hybridizations between species (Bérubé and Palsbøll 2018), authenticating museum specimens can help provide accurate reference collections for researchers, especially given the potential today for 3D scanning and printing (Nobles, Çakirlar, and Svetachov 2019). In addition, museum collections can be used to reconstruct food webs, migration patterns, disease outbreaks, health, and population size and structure from the historical period, which is all the more relevant to understanding healthy whale populations in these key marine species.…”

A photographic atlas for European freshwater and migratory fish remains and key considerations for their analysis

“…Comparison of three‐dimensional remains to two‐dimensional photographs can also be limiting. Digital 3D reference collections with interactive models are certainly addressing some of these problems (Niven et al 2009; Nobles et al 2019; Spyrou et al 2022).…”

“…Photographic resources also act as a method of digitizing faunal collections and making them accessible to a wider audience (Spyrou et al, 2022). Faunal collections require considerable time and resources to develop and maintain (Nobles et al, 2019). If in regular use, elements will likely require replacing, so digitizing collections can aid in preserving rare and fragile skeletal material.…”

Digital Zooarchaeology: State of the art, challenges, prospects and synergies

“…Aiming to address a fundamental research challenge in zooarchaeology, the morphological distinction between sheep and goat skeletal elements, and to evaluate the potential of digital resources compared to physical reference collection in teaching and research, the collaboration between a digital archaeologist and a zooarchaeologist resulted in the creation of Bonify 1.0 (Nobles et al 2019). To approach the topic of sheep/goat identification, a virtual reference collection was created with a structured light scanner (David-SLS2; see below).…”