Available online
Description
The team of archaeologists who excavated a Roman pottery kiln at Highgate Wood had a small problem on their hands. Two tons of pottery shards, broken pottery originally produced at the kiln, it wou...ld be an impossible task to glue enough pieces together to reconstruct whole pots. Keith Attenborough and Bob Tunnicliffe (O.U.) describe the use of a mathematical model (developed by Clive Orton, University of London) to categorise the pieces, match them up, and produce drawings of reconstructed pots. The work was in three phases: identifying, categorising and sizing rim and base shards (these are the most useful pieces for joining up) matching sizes within a group; and 'filling in' the missing centre portion of pot body. Bob Tunnicliffe demonstrates how to size the rim fragments. He displays the distribution of size and base fragments. He displays the distribution of sizes, firstly as histograms (bar-charts) and then as idealised gaussian distributions; these concepts form important parts of Unit One of the course. Simple linear relations between rim and base sizes are formulated by Keith Attenborough. As this is the first programme, the mathematical manipulation of equations is described in full detail. Bob Tunnicliffe applies these models to the data to check against reality. An understanding of means and standard deviations of such, distributions will emerge from this. The final part of the problem is to fill in the missing centre portion of the pots. The ideas behind this are illustrated by specially commissioned graphic animations. Animation sequences are also used to explain the fundamental concepts of geometric similarity upon which the analysis depends, and the key patterns behind the analysis.
The team of archaeologists who excavated a Roman pottery kiln at Highgate Wood had a small problem on their hands. Two tons of pottery shards, broken pottery originally produced at the kiln, it wou...ld be an impossible task to glue enough pieces together to reconstruct whole pots. Keith Attenborough and Bob Tunnicliffe (O.U.) describe the use of a mathematical model (developed by Clive Orton, University of London) to categorise the pieces, match them up, and produce drawings of reconstructed pots. The work was in three phases: identifying, categorising and sizing rim and base shards (these are the most useful pieces for joining up) matching sizes within a group; and 'filling in' the missing centre portion of pot body. Bob Tunnicliffe demonstrates how to size the rim fragments. He displays the distribution of size and base fragments. He displays the distribution of sizes, firstly as histograms (bar-charts) and then as idealised gaussian distributions; these concepts form important parts of Unit One of the course. Simple linear relations between rim and base sizes are formulated by Keith Attenborough. As this is the first programme, the mathematical manipulation of equations is described in full detail. Bob Tunnicliffe applies these models to the data to check against reality. An understanding of means and standard deviations of such, distributions will emerge from this. The final part of the problem is to fill in the missing centre portion of the pots. The ideas behind this are illustrated by specially commissioned graphic animations. Animation sequences are also used to explain the fundamental concepts of geometric similarity upon which the analysis depends, and the key patterns behind the analysis.
| Module code and title: | TM281, Modelling by mathematics |
|---|---|
| Item code: | TM281; 01 |
| First transmission date: | 22-02-1977 |
| Published: | 1977 |
| Rights Statement: | |
| Restrictions on use: | |
| Duration: | 00:24:30 |
| + Show more... | |
| Director: | Philip Ashby |
| Producer: | Colin Robinson |
| Contributors: | Keith Attenborough; Bob Tunnicliffe |
| Publisher: | BBC Open University |
| Keyword(s): | Archaeology; Gaussian distribution; Histograms; Pottery; Reconstruction; Roman Britain; Statistics |
| Master spool number: | 6HT/72366 |
| Production number: | 00525_5285 |
| Videofinder number: | 767 |
| Available to public: | no |
