Practical Application of Digital Photogrammetry for Fieldwork in the American Midwest: An Example from the Middle Ohio Valley

ABSTRACT

The use of close-range digital photogrammetry for field documentation has been steadily increasing in the past half decade in several parts of the world. However, this technology has not been widely utilized in archaeological contexts in the American Midwest. We explore the utility of close-range photogrammetry in this region with examples from the Guard site (12D29), a Fort Ancient village located in southeastern Indiana. This article outlines the methods utilized for production of georeferenced 3-D models of several units excavated during the 2016 field season. These models as well as plan and profile orthophotos derived from them act as important supplements to standard photographs and drawings made in the field and easily integrate with the site GIS. Overall, we found close-range digital photogrammetry to be very useful to better document excavation details, doing so for limited cost and time expenditure.

KEYWORDS:

• Photogrammetry
• Field Methods
• Midwest Prehistory
• Documentation
• Structure from Motion

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Aaron Comstock and Kyra Pazan for their assistance in the field, as well as Robert Jeske and Alex Anthony for reading drafts and providing input for this article. Finally, we are indebted and grateful to Mike Sedler for his ongoing support and continuing stewardship of the Guard site.

Notes on Contributors

Kevin Garstki is a lecturer of anthropology at Marquette University. He has worked on excavations in Cyprus, Ireland, and the Czech Republic and throughout the American Midwest. His current research focuses on how new digital methods can and should be utilized in archaeological research. This includes field documentation with mobile devices, 3-D documentation of excavations through photogrammetry, and the increasing accessibility of archaeological material through 3-D digital artifact representations. He is interested in broader considerations of how archaeological methods and practice affect the creation of knowledge in archaeological contexts.

Marcus Schulenburg is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His research focuses on the development of villages—particularly the intersection of the built environment and human behavior. He actively studies prehistoric ceramic production methods, archaeochemistry, and digital 3-D representations in both fieldwork and publication. He has performed fieldwork in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. He is currently collaborating with several researchers investigating early Fort Ancient village development in the lower Miami Valley.

Robert A. Cook is associate professor of anthropology at Ohio State University. His research interests are primarily focused on cultural evolution in relation to mortuary patterns, migration, and interregional interaction. His specific methodological interests include the integration of biological and archaeological data sets focused on questions of diet, relatedness, identity, and cultural affiliation studies, as well as multivariate field methods, including geophysical prospecting. His regional focus has included fieldwork in the midwestern and southwestern United States and Mesoamerica.

Notes

1 Although there are examples of Structure from Motion being used in different archaeological contexts in the United States (see, for example, Douglass et al. 2015; Magnani and Schroder 2015; Willis et al. 2016).

2 http://www.agisoft.com/pdf/tips_and_tricks/PhotoScan_Memory_Requirements.pdf