Developing the method at Sandby borg

The PHOTARCH method began at Sandby borg, the fifth-century ringfort on Öland excavated by Kalmar läns museum. The excavation was planned to run over many seasons, and the objects from each season had to be photographed so that they could be compared with those from every other — whatever camera, lights or people happened to be involved that year.

No existing approach gave that kind of consistency, so a new one was worked out during the excavation: a fixed light falling from the same direction, a white ground that keeps the object's shadow, and the same set-up for every object, season after season. The aim was not a beautiful picture but the same picture, so that a bead photographed one year could be laid beside a brooch photographed the next.

Objects from Sandby borg laid out on white in rows: spiral rings, finger rings, silver beads, glass beads in many colours, iron knives and fittings, and gilded brooches at the bottom — Objects from Sandby borg, each photographed on its own with the same set-up, then laid out together on one sheet. Because the light and the ground never changed, they read as one set.

Everything PHOTARCH has become since — the guides, the archive, the measurement — grew out of that one practical question asked at Sandby borg.