I think this project is a great way not only for students to gain experience but a great way to interact with the community and with their help I think this project would be able to be more beneficial not only to the county, but to the families who don’t know where some of their loved one s are buried. I think some collaborative ways to get the community involved could be getting more news stations to talk about the project or have someone of importance in the community come out and see what were doing and then spread the word. Maybe having events out at the cemetery ,such as having musicians come and play for people visiting loved ones on the day of the dead or maybe buying bags of marigold petals and leaving a trail of them on the graves to the main street.It could be a way to get peoples attention and remind them that we need to preserve this historic cemetery. Other methods could be interviewing people and we could use the oral histories to research more background on the cemetery. Its also a way for people to know what exactly were doing at the cemetery and a way to also show them that their loved ones haven’t been forgotten about. Our overall goal is to make an interactive map that will allow the public to search for graves that might belong to their loved ones.All they would have to do is click on a grave,that looks like the area where there loved one wold be and it would show a picture of it and have information about it such as, how long it is and whats its made out of, which way its facing and as much information that we were able to collect from that grave.
I think there could be a lot of benefits to 3D technology, for sure it would help us understand just how many people are buried in the cemetery since were going off incomplete records form Hill crest cemetery, which inst their fault of course but it would be a big help if we had an idea of just how many people were researching. I think one of the major pitfalls to 3D scanning could be time, since the data is a a lot of work to go through and it would take most likely more than one semester for all the data to be looked at since we only meet once a week. One way we should integrate this technology into our project is by using some options our professor gave. We could have a group of people at the cemetery with professor Rowe on Fridays ,who would do the 3D scans and then have people on campus working on the scans or the data that needs to be combed through and analyzed. Overall I think this project it going to take a lot of time and work as well as a lot of patience since the equipment we use may take a while to set up and if we only have one machine then it will take a bit longer.But its an experience that not only helps us as students but helps the community as well.
I agree with you on the main pitfall of this lengthy project which is time. And yes the project would have been a lot easier if there were records of how many people were buried at the cemetery. Overall i think 3D scanning is an excellent tool that must be done to complete this project.
My question to you is: how do you suggest we make use of these 3D scans we will develop of grave markers at the cemetery? We could make a printed collection of them, but we would also need to know which to print. For example, if we create 3D models of the scans for displaying purposes, we would need to know who our audience is– whether it’s our peers, students, or general members of the community– so we can provide context for the model, and use it as a learning point. I think 3D scans and models can be a great idea, but who are they for and how will we make use of them? Besides for archaeological data and record keeping. How can we reach a wider audience for public archaeology with these digital techniques?