BRADFORD, ENGLAND—According to a Live Science report, researchers led by Ian Armit of the University of Bradford have created a 3-D virtual map of Scotland’s Sculptor’s Cave, which overlooks the North Sea and can only be entered at low tide. The cave is known for the images carved at its entrance by the Picts between A.D. 500 and 600. It may also have served as a place to lay out bodies for funerary rites beginning around 1000 B.C. Analysis of one group of human remains suggests the people may have been decapitated in the cave, sometime around A.D. 250, near the end of the period the cave was is use. “The site is pretty hard to get to, so if people want to appreciate it and want to understand it, then the idea was to create a resource that was as close to being in the cave without actually having to get there,” Armit said. The cave’s main chamber and twin entrance passageways were mapped with a terrestrial laser scanner. Different equipment and lighting techniques were employed to capture the Pictish symbols and other fine details. To read about a similar site in Iceland, go to "The Blackener's Cave."
