Dig The Street: A Full Archaeological Investigation

From time to time something comes along that catches our eye, and if we can help we will. Helping in Dig The Street: A Full Archaeological Investigation seemed a fitting project.

Dig the Street is a Facebook page run by a group of folks dedicated to making sure the car park at the former Weymouth & Portland Borough Council offices is subject to a full archaeological investigation.

dig the street: archaeological investigation
Plenty of archaeology just under the tarmac – screenshot from the 3D model

On the face of it the location offers little historical inspiration, with what can only be described as a 1970s eyesore of an office building dominating the scene.

But the former high street runs right under the car park and the historical town walls set the backdrop. During the English Civil War the area bore witness to the Battle of Weymouth as Royalist fought Parliamentarian for control of the town.

The area slated for development had two trenches opened to investigate what lies under the tarmac.

Scan with Scale for Dig the Street: archaeological investigation

However, with limited opportunities to travel it made sense to ask Grahame Knott of Deeper Dorset to nip along with his camera and shoot the images needed. This includes the all-important scale bars to make sure we add the value of accuracy to the model.

A few hundred images later the results were ready for processing and turning into a scaled 3D model. Error values within the 3D models were within the sub-millimetre range. By analysing the DEM we could let the diggers know the volume of the soil removed from each trench.

The photogrammetry output are below and today sees the excavation wound down. We hope the findings will justify a complete excavation before developing the site.

In conclusion, We like to support projects like Dig the Street: archaeological investigation. Do you have something worthy and want to see how photogrammetry might help? Please use the contact page to get in touch.

Trench One

Trench Two

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