The Hampson Museum Collection represents one of the world's most extraordinary collections of American
Indian artistic expression as well as a major source of data on the lives and history of late pre-Columbian peoples of the Mississippi River Valley. The collections at the museum are the result of extensive excavations of the Nodena Site as well as excavations at other sites in the region by Dr James K. Hampson, as well as work by others including the University of Alabama and the University of Arkansas.
The Original Hampson Collection
While the museum and its collections are well known in selected archeological circles, its extraordinary materials are not widely known. The Hampson Virtual Museum Project was initiated to improve the visibility and accessibility of these materials – making them more available to both the public and scholars. The project was made possible through the generous financial support of the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council and the assistance of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, the Arkansas Department of Heritage and the Arkansas Archeological Survey.
The Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resource Council was established in 1987 to manage and distribute grants from the Natural and Cultural Resources Grants and Trust Fund. The fund is
managed for the acquisition, management and stewardship of State-owned lands, or the preservation of State-owned historic sites, buildings, structures or objects which the ANCRC determines to be of value for recreation or conservation purposes, said properties to be used, preserved and conserved for the benefit of present and future generations.
Virtual Hampson Museum in the News and Other Publications
The Virtual Hampson Museum was completed by CAST in 2010. The museum is the first of its kind to make such high resolution data available and was the subject of a UA Research Frontiers article in April 2010. In 2011 the museum has begun to receive substantial scholarly recognition. Below are a list of articles that reference the Virtual Hampson Museum.
1. In The International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XXXVIII, Part 5 Commission V Symposium, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. 2010 in an article by M. Floth and M. Breuer An Optical Three-Dimensional Measuring Technique For A Detailed Non-Contact Data Acquisition Of Object Surfaces In The Fields Of Cultural Heritage, Archeology And The Care And Preservation Of Historic Monuments
"In years to come museum visitors will be able to rotate Roman amphorae on a screen or fly around a temple." (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, 2009). The beginnings are already there. One good example is the Virtual Hampson Museum (www.hampsonmuseum.cast.uark.edu) in Arkansas/USA. (page 240)
And later on page 242
"In the areas of archaeology, the preservation of historical monuments and building research the internet is used almost exclusively in 2D, i.e. with pictures and descriptions. Only very few, e.g. the Hampson Museum (see above) work with the third dimension, and even with the fourth – time."
2. From the University of Birmingham's Magazine discussion of a new museum exhibit
But, while the Barber's exhibition is a visually dazzling
'conventional' museum display, a second, virtual exhibition of the
objects also goes live, created by the University's Visual and Spatial
Technology Centre (VISTA). … In the next few months,
VISTA's virtual Sacred and Profane exhibition will be reconfigured to
enable the virtual objects themselves to be accessed directly from the
website; the first virtual museum of its kind in the UK and, along
with the Virtual Hampson Museum, University of Arkansas, and the
Virtual Museum of Iraq, at the leading edge of virtual museum
displays.
Source: http://www.newscentre.bham.ac.uk/buzz/Editions/4930_Buzz_124_AW.pdf
3. The website Archaeology, museums and outreach by Robert Connolly had this to say:
The Hampson Virtual Museum has over 400 downloadable 3-D clips of
ceramic vessels and stone tools from the late prehistoric Nodena phase
sites of Northeast Arkansas, US. This virtual offering is a truly
impressive site with considerable contextual information on the
materials present … An important feature of the Hampson website is the ability
to download the 3-D clips of this phenomenal artistry of the Native
American cultures for later research, educational, or other viewing
purposes.
Source: http://rcnnolly.wordpress.com/page/2/
4. The Hampson digital data was used in a recently published article in the Journal of Cultural Heritage (11(3):329-338 by researchers at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi Greece entitled 3D Pottery content-based retrieval based on pose normalisation and segmentation Anestis Koutsoudisa, b, , , George Pavlidisb, , Vassiliki Liamib, , Despoina Tsiafakisb, and Christodoulos Chamzasa,
5. From a thesis "The Virtual Armory Survey and Portal by Robert Bass, Daniel Cotnoir and Jeffrey Elloian from Worcester Polytechnic Institute has an extended section discussing the Hampson Museum (page 63ff):
Another unique approach to the concept of the virtual museum is
provided by the Virtual Hampson Museum. The most unique feature of
this virtual museum in comparison to others, is the detailed
presentation of the pieces. Although only a small subject area is
examined by this website (The Nodena tribes of the Mississippi), the
collection consists entirely in the form of highly detailed 3D
renderings of each of the exhibits. This allows one to easily view
individual exhibits, such as a piece of pottery, then rotate the view
as if one were holding it in their hands. Moreover, a search feature
is introduced to provide the user the ability to quickly find a
specific piece of artwork, a trait many researchers would desire in an
actual museum to save time. The impressive 3D images were generated
through a complex laser scanning process using the Konica-Minolta
VIVID 9i system to capture the surface texture mapped to the
respective 3D coordinates, along with a corresponding RBG values.
After digitally combining these through processing software, the final
viewable form of each object is precise from 0.2 mm at most to
approximately 5μm (University of Arkansas, 2009, para 2-6). An example
can be seen on the following page (Figure 8 showing the menu, and
Figure9 showing an example of a specific artifact). All of these
artifacts exist in storage, but the highly detailed renderings seen in
Figure 9 allow visitors to examine an exhibit safely up close. The
shelving style provides the user with sense of realism, whereas the
search bar provides a utility to find an artifact quickly from a
practical standpoint. When one clicks on an object, the so- called "3D
Viewer" appears as seen in Figure 9. Two windows are opened: the
rightmost window displays a description and brief movie file rotating
the object. By clicking the "3D Viewer" button, the rightmost window
is opened and the user my rotate the artifact manually, zooming
anywhere up to a few millimeters from the surface with excellent
resolution.
6. In Artefact Studies, Artifact Data and information technology: a point in time review by Rob Sands of the University College Dublin (2009:50) said:
The Virtual Hampson Museum Project is a good example of the way in which 3D data is being used both within a museum environment and potentially within a research environment. Approximately 450 artefacts have been 3D scanned as part of this project by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST). Access to the digital version of the collection is via an interface that is deliberately designed to look like objects in display cases. Objects can be selected by type, location or keyword or simply by browsing the virtual shelves. It is worth noting that the objects looked at are a very specific collection, the types identified are small group of 'things'(bowls, jars, effigies, lithics) and in this sense exemplifies a well bounded 'problem' for which this approach provides a practical solution. Having said this, however, the project usefully demonstrates potential, in particular it is not just a passive web example. All of the items on digital display can be downloaded in a number of formats including the latest 3D interation of PDF (fig. 14). PDF 3D allows for the object to be explored and measured and allows for cross sections to be made.
7. From the web blog "Paleo Planet" by Neil Garrison
I attended a park naturalist conference at St. Louis, Missouri on
February 21-24. One of the presentations that I sat in on was one
that concerned an archaeological site in Arkansas. It is the Hampson
Archeological Museum State Park in Wilson, Arkansas. Here is the
address for their home page on the Internet:
http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/hampsonmuseum/
Once you get there to that home page, put your cursor on the icon in the center
of that page......i.e., where you see the words "The Virtual Hampson
Museum." Click on that. It will take you to another home
page.........that shows 3-D images of the American Indian pottery that
is there in their museum. .....of.....if you want........you
can use this address to access the home page:
http://hampsonmuseum.cast.uark.edu/nodena_3D.htm
The museum at the state park is tiny. They are only able to display a mere
fraction of their artifacts there at the museum. That is why they
decided to take photos of each artifact......and place it on the
Internet. An entity at the University of Arkansas ("C.A.S.T." ...
"The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies") got some grant funding
that allowed them to take 3-D pics of each of the artifacts with a
9-eye laser scanner. The end result is a 3-D image of the artifact
that rotates so that both the front...and...the back...of the artifact
can be seen. ....also....the image can be rotated so that the piece
of pottery can be tilted forward......so that you are able to look
inside the pot.... Wow! The images can even be viewed as "CAT
scans".....so that you can look at the pot as it is stripped
apart.....strip by strip. There is another option that can be used so
that the image can be viewed in "gray scale".....so that engravings
can more easily be viewed. The color of the background can be changed
from light to dark...and back again......so that an object can more
easily be examined. While it may not necessarily be
the same thing as seeing the actual artifact in person.......you and I
both know that there is no way that the museum personnel would allow
us to handle the actual artifact.......because......clumsy me!.......I
am just as likely to drop the thing on the floor!.......and see it
shatter into a gazillion pieces!
Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies
304 JBHT, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville AR 72701
Phone: (479)575-6159 Email: info@cast.uark.edu
