potsherds

The salt sellers

My first experience of fieldwork in Southeast Asia found me in Roi et province of Northeast Thailand. It was a total accident that led me to this spot. The mighty Mekong River was then in the early stages of being seriously affected by the construction of hydro dams on its tributaries.

Using computer science to classify potsherds

‘Now, using digital photographs of pottery, computers can accomplish what used to involve hundreds of hours of tedious, painstaking, and eye-straining work by archaeologists, who physically sorted pieces of broken pottery into groups, in a fraction of the time and with greater consistency.’