Post from Clark

Hello all,

Clark asks that everyone check out the link here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/03/archeologists-eschewing-traditional-whip-leather-jacket-combo/

"I think that this scanning device and process could be useful. The archaeology content of the project is weak but the portability of the technology and ability to possibly scan exhibit visitors or let them scan each other and put themselves in the site architecture, wear Inca clothing, etc." - From Clark

- Jeanette

ok I simply can not make links work anymore so you're gonna have to do a lot of copying & pasting, sorry.

http://www.digitalview.com/

This company offers a variety of interactive display screens, signage, etc. specifically designed for exhibits and similar spaces.

http://paulbourke.net/papers/graphite2005/graphite.pdf

This is about a new, cheaper, easier, and more effective approach to projections in a dome (projection on a spherical mirror). I think something like this would be an investment that the museum could continue to use for future exhibits beyond pachacamac. A quick online search shows that this approach is about $10,000 cheaper than the traditional projection approach (projecting through a fisheye lens). other benefits of this system are that you can get away with using the cheapest projectors, the center of the dome (optimum viewing spot) is left clear, and there is no chromatic distortion at the edges.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:T1zJk3U8-eIJ:citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.126.7966%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf+space+feeling+and+alterity&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShmrUk5rYFMnVQt0cwxa23ovtxxdFPCYyZLxV8vcatWvPgvcq1lRhhuD_YHV1MuLI60Z2aPfPvq9wm0kcUqIr9FoippbbgXW2Ogh3H-Rit_JQ0r-UQ4yInJT5EXbzIBVDQZaNSo&sig=AHIEtbS0-70OJFQRnKnZWqCKzzgbDQlC_g

This is an interesting paper on how to effectively use digital media specifically for cultural heritage applications.

http://www.bodyscan.human.cornell.edu/scene0037.html


These are a bunch of projects going on at cornell that deal with cloth simulation and virtual fit. While reading through these, I discovered this guy:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~srm/

He has written a lot about fabric simulation

http://www.lbi.co.uk/

This company set up an interactive mirror a few months ago at the flagship macys in nyc to allow customers to virtually try on garments. I am in touch with a representative from that company because I think it would be really cool to allow our customers to virtually try on some garments that will be exhibited. I am also trying to track down someone at macys who can give me some feedback as to how customers reacted and how effective it was. when I physically went to the store some employees said that it was pretty polular, I have called a few people from the company and left some messages but haven’t learned much yet.

If anyone has any idea why I can no longer make links, PLEASE help me!

-Carly

More People in Pachacamac

I'm going to attempt a brief summary of the list I've compiled of the people that would have inhabited and visited Pachacamac. I've split them into two categories: 1) Religious and Ritual, and 2) Labor and Goods. Additionally, I'm including their sub-sections but not a description of their duties.

Religious and Ritual:
Priests
 - High priest - Temple of Pachacamac
   - Lesser priests
 - High priest - Sun Temple
   - Lesser priests
Guards
 - Temple of Pachacamac
 - Sun Temple
Pilgrims
- Dead
  - Interment of the dead
  - Re-interment of the dead
- Oracular
  - 20 day fast
  - 1 year fast
- Rituals & festivals
Acllas (chosen women)
  - Acllas
  - Mamaconas

Labor and Goods:
- Quarrymen
- Masons
- Metallurgists
- Ceramicists
- Agricultural laborers
- Fishermen
- Mitmaq and/or mit'a (corvee) laborers
- Painters

With the exception of mitmaq and mit'a laborers, the labor and goods people are pretty self explanatory. Mitmaq labor is when a group of people from one area are transplanted to another area. This may be done for various reasons such as praise or punishment. Mit'a labor is the tax due the Inka state by the subjugated groups. They would go to a place for a set amount of time in order to assist in state functions. It's unclear whether the Sun Temple was built using mitmaq or mit'a labor. Uhle has two conflicting views. The first is that the Sun Temple is not quintessentially Inka in design because it was charged to the local peoples to build the temple (mit'a labor) while the Inkas built the convent (Uhle calls it the Mamacona). His other view (from Santa Cruz) is that a group of rebellious huacas was punished and part of their punishment was to build a complex at Pachacamac (unclear which one) (mitmaq labor). This may not be a high area of contention for our purposes but is a good thing to keep in mind when dressing the building laborers.

I came across an article today by Thomas Pozorski ("The Early Horizon Site of the Huaca de los Reyes: Societal Implications". American Antiquity. 45:100-110 (1980)). In this article he calculates how many man hours it would take to build the complex of Huaca de los Reyes using the example in Charles Erasmus's article (1965). The site is similar to Pachacamac in that the basic building supplies consist of mud/clay, water, and rocks. A calculation for how many men and how many man hours it would take to build the Sun Temple could be made relatively easily using our Sun Temple model. If we calculated the area of the Sun Temple and figured out where the supplies came from (water shouldn't be too hard since there are waterworks at the site, but clay/dirt deposits are another story) we could figure out how many laborers should be working on the Sun Temple. This would allow for a more accurate reconstruction of the site and the people acting within it.

- Jeanette

Does anyone know why I can no longer post links????

I just typed out a big blog post and it wouldn't post because of my links (again).

- Carly

From Carly - Exhibit Stuff

There is an interesting project called “Get In Line” by the design team known as Evil Genius. I can not create links in this post for some reason right now so google “evil genius designs get in line”. It was designed to entertain people waiting in line for a ride at an amusement park or concert etc. While we probably won’t have to deal with huge lines of people, it could have applications for our purposes of engaging guests in a goal-oriented game like journey through our exhibit. Get In Line allows up to 6,000 people to use their cell phones to interact with games on one or more communal larger screens that everyone can see.

Evil Genius won an award for Get In Line at The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo last year. Again I cannot create a link to this for some reason. This year’s expo will be in November in Florida. This is not necessarily specific to museum exhibits but it looks like some pretty innovative ideas have come out of this expo in the past and it might be worth going to.

I have also been looking into retail applications for “virtual try-on” systems both in stores and online, as well as body scanning  for the same purposes (which is probably way to invasive for us to use). The flagship Macy’s in NYC has something called the “magic mirror” that I am going to test out on my way home to upstate NY next weekend, after which I will post more specifics. I am thinking we can use something like this to allow guests to “try on” some of our garments that will be on display.

- Carly

Peopling Pachacamac

I began my research on people Pachacamac by focusing more on the ritual and sacred activities that would have taken place at the site. From the following sources I was able to come up with this rough sketch of what life would have looked like for the religious side of the site. I'm not quite sure how to make the Excel sheet available to the project short of a Google doc (is there a way to embed a document in this post?) so I'll continue to work on it and if anyone would like to see it I can e-mail it to you. Accordingly, now I will begin more research on the people who worked at the site such as stonemasons, ceramicists (potentially), painters, roofers, food preparers, etc.

Bibliography (please ignore the helter skelter reference style):

Gose, Peter. “Oracles, Divine Kingship and Political Representation in the Inka State”. Ethnohistory. 43:1 (winter 1996) American Society for Ethnohistory.

Randall, Robert. “Qoyllur Rit’I, An Inca Fiesta of the Pleiades: Reflections on Time and Space in the Andean World”. Bull. Inst. Fr. Et. And. 1982, XI, No 1-2 pp. 37 – 81

Moore, Jerry D. “The Social Basis of Sacred Spaces in the Prehispanic Andes: Ritual Landscapes of the Dead in Chimu and Inka Societies”. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Vol II No 1, Part 1 (March 2004) pp. 83 – 124

Eeckhout, Peter and Lawrence Stuart Owens. “Human Sacrifice at Pachacamac”. Latin American Antiquity. Vol 19 No 4 (Dec 2008) pp. 375-398.

Paterson, Thomas C. “Pachacamac – An Andean Oracle Under Inca Rule”. Ed. D. Peter Kvietok and Daniel H. Sandweiss. Recent Studies in Andean Prehistory and Protohistory. Cornell Univ: 1983. p 159-175.

 

Steele, Paul R. and Catherine J. Allen. Handbook of Inca Mythology. ABC-CLIO, Inc: Santa Barbara, 2004.

Salomon, Frank. Urioste, Jorge. Avila, Francisco de. Ca 1573-1647. The Huarochiri Manuscript: A Testament of ancient and colonial Andean religion. Univ of Texas Press: c 1991.

MacCormack, Sabine. Religion in the Andes: vision and imagination in early colonial Peru. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ Press, c1991.

MacCormack, Sabine. "Gods, Demons and Idols in the Andes". Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol 67 No 4 Oct 2006, pp. 623-648.

Vanstan, Ina. "The Fabrics of a Peruvian Mummy Bale Found Beneath the Pachacamac Temple". Bulletin de liaison du Centre international d'e'tude des textiles anciens. Vol 19 1964 p. 20 - 37.
 

The 2 articles by Shimada, Segura, et al. listed on the PAP page here. And of course the Uhle reprint from 1991 with Izumi Shimada's preface.

- Jeanette

 

female model