For the first time, 3D models of skulls and other artefacts from the 1545 wreck of English King Henry VIII’s warship were exhibited online yesterday, offering an interactive view of the historical find.
Some of the virtual objects from Mary Rose shipwreck are public while others are for research purposes.
The idea is to see how much can be learned about the lives of the ship’s crew, just from their digitised bones.
The project would test the scientific value of digital archaeology – and the world’s burgeoning collection of cyber-artefacts, said Richard Johnston, a materials engineer at Swansea University in the UK.
The website virtualtudors.org, launched yesterday, offers an interactive view of one particular skull from the Mary Rose crew – that of a carpenter found on the ship’s lower deck – as well as several of his possessions. A separate, research-focussed section of the site will make a further nine skulls available to bone specialists around the world.
When the ship sank 471 years ago, it was leading the attack on an invading French fleet north of the Isle of Wight.
Discovered in 1971 and raised in 1982, the wreck is a famous time capsule of Tudor times, yielding around 19,000 artefacts and 179 skeletons.
Restoring and exhibiting the Mary Rose was a mammoth archaeological effort. A new display of the remains of her hull was unveiled in July in a purpose-built museum in Portsmouth, BBC News reported.
It includes projected vignettes of crew members moving among the ship’s timbers.
“We have sort of got a virtual ghost ship, with people walking around it and doing things,” said Alex Hildred from the Mary Rose Trust.
“And now we hope to have a virtual population that people can interact with online and that researchers, hopefully, may be able to help us build into more complete individuals,” said Hildred.
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Source: DNA India
