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One nice thing about 3D printing is that it doesn’t just make things possible, but that it makes them easier. Some complex shapes, intricate lattices of splines — sure, those might be hard to make by conventional means, but generally 3D printing is about putting old abilities in new hands. For instance, we’ve always been able to make precise casts of ancient artifacts — but it’s always been difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Now, 3D printing is making accurate recreation of relics as easy as passing it through a scanner, and that has big implications for science.

One researcher from the Australian National University decided to put this to use to test out an enigmatic artifact called the Conical Spear Butt of Navan, from Ireland’s Navan Fort archaeological site. As the name implies, experts thought the conical, bronze object had to be the back end-piece of a spear, but Billy Ó Foghlú was already preoccupied by a separate mystery: why did Ireland seem to go through a long historical period with no mouth-pieces for its wind instruments? This would seem to indicate a musical dark age we wouldn’t otherwise expect.

Foghlú cast his 3D printed spear butt in bronze, making it basically identical to the original, and placed it in the end of a horn from the period. Immediately, the sound was richer and more natural, and Foghlú said it was much easier to play. The horns show signs of having been played for hours on end, and the young researcher was convinced they must have had a well-designed mouthpiece to make that possible for the player — and pleasant for the listener. He published the results with the Navan Research Group.

The bronze-cast replica mouthpiece, left.

3D printing can let many physical objects be in multiple places at once — this study didn’t require the researcher to ever actually be in the same room as the artifact he was studying. Foghlú had the object scanned for him by a colleague, then worked with a digital representation of it. He was able to derive insight about its nature while never actually seeing it — something previously only possible through two-dimensional photographs.

No number of flat images would have allowed this particular insight into the artifact. It’s not that they couldn’t have ever made this discovery with traditional molding techniques, but that they wouldn’t have. The hassle of getting access to artifacts, combined with the expense of the molding process, make collaborative archaeology a pain. And molding can often damage the originals themselves, while lasers tend not to.

Technologies like 3D printing allow less and less wealthy researches to pursue potentially dead-end ideas with little associated risk — it’s doubtful that this study required much more than booking some time on a 3D printer. There was an extra step required, thanks to the bronze casting, but next-generation 3D printers might make even that unnecessary.

Archaeology in general is going to change significantly, as technology allows more creativity, and potentially greater insight. 3D printing could help study history more cheaply, and without risking the originals. What might we know about the ancient Egyptians, if every interested scientist had been able to make their own copy of everything in King Tut’s tomb? Some things, like chemical analysis, will always require the original artifacts, but many scientists are still preparing to receive their most sought-after treasures as email attachments.