stremke-archeology.net

Here you will find recent news on this site and on my work

 

  • 2020-10-27 | it's been a while...

 

What have I been up to?

2018 and 2019 have been very busy years followed by a "pandemic" 2020 with almost all fieldwork suspended and no travel other than to Austria. But let's pick up where we left here.

Before we embarked on our trip to Morocco I did the first session of aerial videography of archaeological sites in Northern Bavaria for a museum video project. This was a welcome creative break from the strict survey routines and I got some very nice video sequences of large sites in nice autumn light.

In Autumn of 2018 I could combine work in Morocco with a family holiday which was great. The work was good fun too, we had the chance to create high resolution aerial maps and 3D models of numerous early islamic sites in northern Morocco. This was accomplished by using the Smartplane and the Mavic Pro. The weather was a bit tricky I have hardly ever seen so much rain.

Just a few days after returning from Morocco, I went to Qatar, to do an Aerial survey of settlement sites in Northern Qatar. This was done using Kite Aerial Photography. This proved a superb technique and from the survey results it was possible to create plans of individual houses and small settlements.

 

To finish the year 2018 off, it was once more, time to go to Sudan. This time the usual survey of the excavation results was combined with some tests of new survey technologies including aerial photography with a thermal camera and a magnetic deflection survey. As always the people of the local villages have been great and we all got invited to a great party as well.

Spending Christmas and new year at home was a nice break.

 

The new year started off with some more aerial videography in Bavaria for the museum project this time covering a snow capped landscape. This was the second of three sessions.

With the spring, it was time for Sudan again, little did I know it was the last trip there for a long time. This trip was two projects in one the first half of the trip was spent with my dad creating 3D models of the pyramids on the Western cemetery. The second half was spent without him doing the excavation survey work for the iron working sites as well as exploring some interesting other sites for future work.

In April I was back in Bavaria for the final round of aerial videography this time with nice spring vegetation.

In June, the newest member of our family Joris was born.

 

During the Month of July I could get some surveying done on the Stätteberg next to the Danube in Bavaria the excavation season was prepared and a survey system established.

The high of the summer (second half of July and all of August) I spend on the second season of the Gold Mining project in Austria. Here we excavated a second Water tank. Details can be found on the project website, see above.

The fieldwork season finished off early this year with a trip to Croatia where I spend some days surveying at excavations, on the Danube once more.

The rest of the year was spent with lots of office work booth related and unrelated to my fieldwork. I created historical Maps for museum exhibits. Also, I used existing photographs of inscribed stone pillars and created flattened orthoimages for transcription and publication. I could process all the data from this year and got everything delivered in time.

The Year 2020 started of with a visit from Rick Spurway the documentary filmmaker from our Gold Mining Project. He visited for a few days to interview me.

Then the COVID-19 lockdown stopped all fieldwork but fortunately I got plenty of new desk jobs which could be done from Home so I spend the first half year of 2020 processing data and doing GIS analysis. In summer, it was finally possible to do some limited fieldwork so is spent some days doing aerial surveys for environmental protection projects in Leipzig and Jena. In August, it was possible to do some limited fieldwork for the gold mining project in Austria. We spend five weeks with the survey and photographic documentation of leads and tanks. We also conducted some interesting experiments with traditional gold washing techniques.

After the return from Austria in early September I spend lots of time working on desk jobs as well as maintaining and upgrading my equipment for when it is finally time to start proper international fieldwork again. And thanks to that break and a pending second lockdown I could now update this website. However, a major refresh of the whole site is likely to happen within the next year, the design will be five years old by then.

 

  • 2018-09-14 | return from first Campaign in Austria
  • Successfully concluded the Project in Basra but had to skip the work with the smart plane because of customs. Instead we where using the Mavic Pro for plenty of aerial mapping and photography work.
  • The first of four seasons in Austria finished, you can find details of the project as well as updates photos and videos on the dedicated Website:

    Roman Gold Mining in the Karth (Austria)
  • Now preparing for my next trip (Morocco)

 

 

 

  • 2018-05-25 | Just finished one more documentation. I was on tour quite a lot this year already. Sudan in February Iraq in early March and then late March early April in Qatar.
  • just updated the website for the mining project in Austria. LINK
  • iam now preparing to leave for iraq again day after tomorrow (one week in Basra).
  • 2018-01-07 | Leaving a busy 2017 behind
  • What a Year I was so busy i could not manage to update let alone extend the website in the way i would have wished.
  1. I have been on fieldwork In Sudan and Qatar as well as some office days in Qatar
  2. in Spring i also had a nice non archaeology fieldwork job in central Germany.
  3. In April i co hosted a panel on Drone work in Archaeology at a conference in Newcastle where i gave a presentation as well.
  4. in May and June I had to stop working since i had to finish our house with laying floors, wallpaper and painting as well as lots of electrical work.
  5. Moving to our new House in Bremen Nord in June.
  6. In July i also had to move my office since my rent was cancelled since the building was to be sold and demolished. The office is now at the top floor of my new House.
  7. August: Fieldwork in the Bavarian Alps again and then straight from Munich to Pomeiopolis a site Roman site in northern Turkey where i spend a month as field director  training students how to excavate and document and of course surveying.
  8. September was spend with two deployments on the training dig of the university of Munich in Bavaria. In between these i spend two weeks in Qantir Egypt surveying and doing photogrammetry.
  9. October it was back to Egypt for the last to weeks of the excavation in Qantir.
  10. November was spend for two weeks setting up my new office and building furniture to store all my equipment. Towards the end of the month i flew to Sudan again for survey and photogrammetry work in Meroe.
  11. In December i returned to do some more work on and in my new Office. Since there is lot of post processing to be done of this years fieldwork i could not manage to update the website...

 

more...

  • 2016-11-17 | Back and leaving again
    The three projects which filled my schedule to the utmost in the last months were finished successfully.
  • Now after 3 weeks back in Bremen and doing post processing i will head out to Sudan once more on Monday morning.  more
  • 2016-09-21 | Added blog to website
    In order not to overload the News section i created a blog sub site to make some room for up to date reports from the field. There you can find field reports photos and videos to allow you to follow my work more closely. You can open the blog by using the menu on top of the page or the forward button in the top right. Or just click here.
  • 2016-09-20 | Away for a while
    In the next 5 weeks i will be away on 3 different projects as well as on Holiday.
    1. Egypt
    2. Holiday at the North Sea
    3. Iraq
    4. Romania
    So i hope that you can reach me by E-mail if needed.
  • 2016-09-19 | Alps again!
    Last week i worked in high terrain again. Doing GNSS and Total Station Survey between 1700 and 2280m above MSL. Harsh conditions and extremely difficult logistics, but a nice view.

360° view from the Gumpenspitze in the Karwendel nature reserve park. Click on the image to download full size Panorama (about 50mb).

  • 2016-09-15 | Some real work...
    Enough desk work, now its time to do something practical.
    After setting up a image downlink for one of my planes it is now time to reconfigure the remote controlled camera kite rig for upcoming work in Austria next week.
  • 2016-08-15 | Visitor and working on new Publication
    A busy week completed; Dr. Chris Carey spend the last week here at my office and we worked together on the next publication on ironproduction in Meroe.

    Now it is back to other work like finishing the post processing work for Qantir (Egypt) project.

    The schedule for autumn is almost full now and lots of exiting new projects are coming up.
  • 2016-08-06 | Alps excavation
    Last week I spend on a excavation in the Bavarian Alps. One small trench about 1200m above MSL. We had some great finds and a good workout program climbing uphill for 1.5h every morning. First day we had to bring our equipment up there using mules provided by the German army. That’s one thing you don’t see every day, total station carrying mules.
  • 2016-06-28 | Training in Munich completed
    I was teaching a three weekend photogrammetry course at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich since March. This was successfully completed last Saturday. We did lots of theory but also hands on training using conventional and modern photogrammetry techniques.
  • 2016-05-02 | New Equipment
    To get nice images of my equipment and for finds photography i recently upgraded my photo equipment. I added remote control terminal for my flashlight collection as well as a simple studio set up including backgrounds and lights.
  • 2016-04-28 | Back from the UK
    The conference in Leicester was great and I had the chance to meet some very interesting colleagues and learn a lot. Now back to office work including this site.

 

  • 2016-04-19 | UPCOMING EVENT
    This Friday 22th of April I will speak at the CIfA 2016 annual conference in Leicester (UK).
    The title of the presentation is "Utilizing UAVs for large area mapping projects. Applications for archaeological documentation from site to landscape scale"
  • 2016-04-18 | Website re-launch
    Finally after a long time and by utilizing new web design technology I am now able to completely re-launch the website. The new page will come online in pieces as I add content. It will feature more digital content such as pictures videos and animations.

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