Digital technology is giving a virtual second life to stone tools, our first technology and imperishable reminders of our distant human past.
University of New England (UNE) archaeologist, Professor Mark Moore, is using 3D scanning and printing, and the internet, to ensure that anyone can view and study stone tools collected from across the globe, across ages spanning 2.6 million years of brain development.
Prof. Moore’s Open Access Stone Tools Museum is, he acknowledges, an unusual museum in that it is the world’s largest online collection of its type … but it contains nothing.
Instead, the museum is a portal to UNE’s swiftly growing archive of high-resolution 3D scans of stone tools. UNE’s Archaeology discipline, led by Professor Martin Gibbs, started 3D scanning artifacts in 2015 as part of a “digital humanities” push to make a wide range of historical artefacts more available to students. The scans faithfully capture the shape, texture and colour of the original object, and can be virtually manipulated on-screen so they can be examined from every angle.
The museum allows the user to view stone tools by age, type and geography. Each artefact carries all the data known about its provenance, and in many cases additional analysis by Prof. Moore of where the object sits within the sequence of stone tool development.
Prof. Moore estimates he has written 80,000–100,000 words of explanatory text for the Museum, “a mini textbook in itself”.
Along with the 3D models, the Museum carries virtual measuring tools to help students analyse the models, online workshops in stone tool analysis and concise essays on the history and significance of stone tools.
While a virtual examination can’t match the experience of handling an original stone tool picked up from the earth, Prof. Moore believes that digitising these expressions of human cognitive growth brings important advantages.
The first is that artefacts can be made available to all, while never leaving the landscape they had come to rest in.
Artefacts like stone tools can be taken away from their resting place for study, with permission from Indigenous custodians, but must be then returned to the place they came from.
“Indigenous people are very proud of their cultures, and want to show people their artefacts, but they don’t want to lose them off Country,” Prof. Moore says.
“By using 3D scanning and collecting the scans online, we can follow Indigenous protocols and preserve their cultural heritage, while giving students and scholars worldwide access to the artefacts for study.”
3D scans also contain the information necessary for 3D printing.
UNE has begun making extensive use of 3D printing to support its distance education program. The technology means that geographically scattered students can meet online to investigate an exact replica of a stone tool via 3D-printed models that each have sitting on their desk.
Aboriginal people are also now opening up to the potential of building off-site 3D-printed collections of their artefacts, Prof. Moore observes.
“Older people were more conservative about their cultures, but newer generations are digital natives. They can see the value of being able to go onto their smartphones and looking at their own artefacts in the context of what else was happening in stone tool development around the world.”
The Stone Tool Museum already houses the world’s largest virtual assembly of stone tools, but Prof. Moore hopes that it is just the beginning.
UNE technicians and student volunteers are now regularly receiving packages of stone tools from Indigenous custodians for digitising before the artefacts are returned to Country. Prof. Moore is also in conversation with museums and universities about having their own 3D scans added to the archive.
Prof. Moore conceived the idea of the Stone Tools Museum when, shortly after receiving a coveted $1 million, four-year Future Fellowship grant from the Australian Research Council, he found that his ambitious plans were grounded by COVID and the subsequent global lockdowns.
Wondering how to get access to the resources he needed, he realised that researchers and students alike would benefit from a sophisticated virtual collection of stone tool-related artefacts.
Now the online museum is built and functional, he hopes it can become a global resource for those who study or have an interest in the long, fascinating development of humanity’s first technology.
Website: https://stonetoolsmuseum.com
