The EVAN Toolbox (ET) is a software package to facilitate form and shape analysis of objects featuring a complex geometry. It uses Geometric Morphometrics (GM) which includes methods such as General Procrustes Analysis, Principal Component Analysis, Thin-Plate Spline Warping or Partial Least Squares Analysis. The software also supports data acquisition, i.e. to locate landmarks and semilandmarks on surfaces and curves. It is available for Windows systems.

The idea behind the EVAN Toolbox is to make your life easier if your task is to analyse 3D shape and form of complexly shaped objects as we find them, for instance, in anthropology, palaeontology, archaeology, and medicine. ET is particularly focused on the advanced visualisation of shape and form comparisons. The application of GM procedures underlying such studies was previously quite demanding in terms of programming and mathematical knowledge. Not every biologist, palaeontologist or medical doctor feels comfortable to code algorithms in programming languages like C++ or R. The EVAN Toolbox is built to allow those users the application of state-of-the-art tools.

Our training day will introduce the basic features of ET (e.g., semilandmarks, GPA, PCA, TPS, PLS) using a sample of human crania. In principle, all objects such as postcranial elements of vertebrates, teeth, soft tissues, shells and other can be analysed in a similar way.

Please bring your own laptop to the workshop. We will provide temporary licenses for ET that you can install on every current PC (large memory and fast NVIDIA graphic cards will deliver best results, slow netbooks are not be suitable).

The registration fee is € 30.-, all major cards accepted.

To learn a bit about ET in advance, please consult our website at https://www.evan-society.org/support/et-open-space/ and DOWNLOAD THE MANUALS 1 & 2.

We are looking forward seeing you in Leiden,

Gerhard Weber (Chairman EVAN-Society)

Kevin di Modica (Scladina Cave Archaeological Centre)