Handshouse Studio

May 6, 2005 Alun The Past No Comments Archaeology, Conferences, Education, Experimental Archaeology, Handshouse, History

Hand­s­house Stu­dio have a site that’s worth look­ing at. They’re the people who designed the sand sys­tem for the NOVA doc­u­ment­ary on Rais­ing the Obelisk / Secrets of Lost Empires. I have to admit I wasn’t impressed by the doc­u­ment­ary. I thought there was far too much faff­ing around and the exper­i­ence of the work­ers seemed to be ignored. Luck­ily for me I saw the sys­tem in oper­a­tion at the AIA con­fer­ence in Janu­ary and I was much more impressed. They had an excel­lent model which gave me much more con­fid­ence of the phys­ics of how the sys­tem worked. Cru­cially, the people demon­strat­ing were the people who designed the sys­tem and they did a much bet­ter job of it than the TV crew.

Their site also shows some of their other work includ­ing the Bush­nell Turtle. It’s an excel­lent way to lose an after­noon when you should be working.