结合机器控制和熟练的操作员来帮助考古学

Author:Karina Lykke Lumholt
视频专家：Pamela Almeida

An area of about 10 hectares/25 acres is right now being excavated in Odense, Denmark, before being laid out for construction. Odense City Museums and their large team of archaeologists are responsible for researching, excavating, and preserving the prehistory of the area, and curator Jakob Bonde is leading the excavation.

“We have found parts of an existing village, which we can date back to the Middle Ages around 1200 A.D.,” explains Jakob.

South of this mediaeval site, the archaeologists were thrilled to find an even earlier site. A burial place with cremation graves from the Roman Iron Age (500 B.C. to 400 A.D.).

The digging of search trenches commences an archaeological excavation to get a sideways (layered) view of the deposits. This establishes if there are archaeological objects or material in the area and places them in chronological order.

If archaeological finds are discovered on site after the initial examination, an excavator will meticulously remove the topsoil. Thomas Petersen from the company Fuglsanggård is specialised in using an excavator equipped with Leica iXE3 machine control for archaeological projects.

“大约四年前，我们开始与托马斯合作。他拥有这种设备对我们非常有帮助，因为当我们不必衡量所有内容时，这使我们的工作变得更加容易。他可以帮助我们阐明测试沟和我们将要挖掘的区域，当我们完成时，我们再次将所有内容弄清楚，” says Jakob.

要用挖掘机进行考古项目需要技巧

挖掘机小心地去除表土，如果考古学家发现了一些东西，则使用Leica GS12 GNSS天线和CS15控制器来数字地记录发现的确切位置，并将其报告回博物馆。木钉放在土壤中，以便考古学家可以在指定区域寻找房屋，坑，井和坟墓的痕迹。

“I am trained in spotting the post holes, urn graves, or other graves. I know what the archaeologists are looking for, and I can stop the excavator before digging into something important. It demands patience and sense in order not to dig too deep,托马斯·彼得森说。

托马斯（ThomasLeica Conx到MC1software on the in-cabin control panel. He uses the machine control solution to log all heights of the area with the excavator’s bucket and the functionCreate Modelin MC1 to create a surface model on the fly. The advantage is that he knows exactly how much material to fill back and where, once the excavation is finished.

Logging of points to create a surface model.

托马斯使用新发布的MC1中的半自动功能when filling back the material.

“它使使用单手操作的正确高度填充后材料更容易。我的风险没有足够的材料，我可以创造出比手动能够更光滑的表面，并且第一次得到正确的表面！”解释说托马斯。