Oxford Women's Luncheon Club
Oxford Women's Luncheon Club

Dr Michael Athanson

 

Michael's current role at the Bodleian mainly involves supporting digital map making and spatial analysis across the University, and guidance on related topics such as fieldwork and data collection.

 

His background before he arrived at the Bodleian was archaeological.

 

After school Michael studied history at the University of Montpellier in France, and then took an MA in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He then obtained an MPhil from the Glasgow School of Art in 2D/3D motion graphics and virtual prototyping, involving work on 3D computer modelling and animation, and information visualisation.

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In 2004 he took a Masters in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Oxford, studying scientific and humanistic approaches to landscape interpretation, and the principles of landscape related technologies. He then took a DPhil in Archaeology, researching on GIS-based methods of modelling bullet trajectories on historic battlefields. He worked on plug-in software development, with an emphasis on methodology on quantitative pattern recognition in spatial data.

 

Michael spoke to us about three archaeological sites; one an Iron Age/Roman religious complex outside Abingdon, one a palaeolithic cave site in the mountains of north east Morocco, and the third a Viking farmstead in Orkney.

 

Michael's talk, delivered in November 2014,  was entitled "The experience of archacological discovery; reflections on three fieldwork projects".