Digitizing the Past: Charting New Courses in the Modeling of Virtual Landscapes

Abstract

The past thirty years have seen a tremendous upsurge in the use of digital modeling in archaeology as well as in projects and applications based in the humanities. This article is an overview of selected projects that use digital modeling to study or illustrate ancient sites, focusing on new areas of interest including virtual collaborative environments, online applications used in pedagogical contexts, reconstructions of large‐scale spaces, and the digital preservation of cultural heritage sites.

Keywords:

• Digital Modeling
• Reconstructions
• Archaeology
• Architecture
• Three‐Dimensional
• Humanities

Notes

1 Brian Molyneaux, introduction to The Cultural Life of Images: Visual Representation in Archaeology, ed. Brian Molyneaux (London: Routledge, 1997), 6. See also Diane Favro, “In the Eyes of the Beholder: Virtual Reality Re‐Creations and Academia,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, “Imaging Ancient Rome: Documentation, Visualization, Imagination” (proceedings of the Third Williams Symposium on Classical Architecture, 2004), ed. Lothar Haselberger and John Humphrey, supplementary series no. 61 (2006): 325. For a discussion of the “history of particular ways of seeing,” see Richard Bradley, “‘To See Is To Have Seen’: Craft Traditions in British Field Archaeology,” in Brian Molyneaux, The Cultural Life of Images, 62.

2 Anne Beaulieu, “Images are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge, and Iconoclasm,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 27, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 53–86. Beaulieu provides an overview of digital representations and how they are used in research. For a discussion of how these representations can constitute new forms of knowledge, see Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Barbara Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment and Medicine (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997); and Barbara Stafford, Good Looking: Essays on the Virtue of Images (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

3 Paul Reilly, “Towards a Virtual Archaeology,” in Proceedings of Computer Applications in Archaeology 1990, British Archaeological Reports, International Series S565, ed. Kris Lockyear and Sebastian Rahtz (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1991), 133–39.

4 Maurizio Forte and Alberto Siliotti, eds., Virtual Archaeology: Re‐Creating Ancient Worlds (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 10.

5 Forte and Siliotti, Virtual Archaeology.

6 Bernard Frischer, “Introduction: From Digital Illustration to Digital Heuristics,” in Beyond Illustration: 2D and 3D Digital Technology as Tools for Discovery in Archaeology, British Archaeological Reports, International Series S1805, ed. Bernard Frischer and Anastasia Dakouri‐Hild (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2008), vi.

7 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

8 http://3d.cineca.it/storage/demo_vrome/htdocs/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

9 Virtual Museum of the via Flaminia Antica, http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/flaminia/index02.html/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

10 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/flaminia/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

11 http://www.appia.itabc.cnr.it/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

12 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/esaro/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

13 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/giotto/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

14 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/kazakhstan/ (accessed 8 July 2009).

15 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/Projects_Aksum.htm (accessed 8 July 2009).

16 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/Projects_Vettii.htm (accessed 8 July 2009).

17 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/Projects_Urkesh.htm (accessed 8 July 2009).

18 http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/Projects_peru.htm (accessed 8 July 2009).

19 This project was most recently presented by Daniel Michon as a paper co‐authored with Yehuda Kalay and Selina Lam, titled “Virtual Sambor Prei Kuk: Weaving the Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage,” at “Making History Interactive,” Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) 2009 conference, Williamsburg, VA, 22–26 March 2009. The project director is Yehuda Kalay (Professor of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley).

20 A MUVE is an online multi‐user virtual environment in which individuals operating as “avatars” can interact in real time simultaneously with other online users.

21 Virtual Sambor Prei Kuk, http://steel.ced.berkeley.edu/research/sambor/ (accessed 12 July 2009).

22 Forte and Siliotti, Virtual Archaeology, 12–13.

23 Maurizio Forte, “Virtual Archaeology: Communication in 3D and Ecological Thinking,” in Beyond Illustration (see note 6), 23.

24 http://www.coastal.edu/ashes2art/; ASU’s Digital Delphi Web site is http://www.digitaldelphi.org/ (both accessed 15 July 2009).

25 Visualizing the Roman City Web site, http://web.cast.uark.edu/home/research/visualizationanimation/visualizing-rome.html/ (accessed 5 July 2009).

26 Jackson Cothren, David Fredrick, W. Fredrick Limp, Tim de Noble, Adam Barnes, Christopher Goodmaster, and Caitlin Stevens, “Visualizing the Roman City: Viewing the Past through Multidisciplinary Eyes” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference, Budapest, Hungary, 2 April 2008). A copy of the paper is available at http://www.cast.uark.edu/home/research/archaeology-and-historic-preservation/archaeological-visualization/university-of-arkansas-resource-center-for-heritage-visualization/heritage-visualization-in-the-classroom.html (accessed 5 July 2009).

27 See URL in note 26.

28 Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli, Pompei: pitture e mosaici, 10 vols. (Rome: Istituto della encyclopedia italiana, 1990–2003); The Digital Pompeii project, http://pompeii.uark.edu/Digital_Pompeii/Welcome.html/ (accessed 5 July 2009).

29 UCLA–Archaeology Field Program, http://www.archaeology.ucla.edu/Peru-Geomatics/overview.htm/ (accessed 5 July 2009).

30 The students are Elizabeth Baltes (graduate student, Classical Art History), Umberto Plaja (undergraduate), Akara Lee (undergraduate), Catherine Stanley (undergraduate).

31 The Hadrianic Baths at Aphrodisias, http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/olson/courses/wired/projects/hadrianicbaths/ (accessed 28 July 2009).

32 More information about Wired may be found at http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/projects/2009/01/16/%E2%80%9Cwired-new-representation-technologies-for-historical-materials-fusing-creativity-with-scholarship-and-communication/ (accessed 9 July 2009).

33 See the SimTeach Second Life Education Wiki Web site, http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki#Institutions_in_Second_Life/ (accessed 9 July 2009).

34 The Second Life SLURL for Vassar College’s “Virtual Sistine Chapel” is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Vassar/200/85/27/. St. Catherine’s Monastery’s SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/LCC/175/184/28 (accessed 9 July 2009). The reconstruction includes the basilica and apse behind the main basilica, including the Transfiguration mosaic, several additional areas within the monastery, as well as the library which contains manuscripts, scrolls, and books. Of particular interest is the “Gallery of Icons” that includes more than one hundred icons from St. Catherine’s with note cards about each work.

35 The Remixing Çatalhöyük Web site is at http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.html/. The Okapi Island Project Wiki is also a good source of information about the project: http://okapiisland.pbworks.com/. The Second Life SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0/ (all accessed 9 July 2009).

36 http://okapi.wordpress.com/category/open-access-publishing/ (accessed 9 July 2009).

37 Maurizio Forte and Niccolò Dell’Unto, “Embodied Communities, Second Life and Cyber Archaeology” (paper presented at the 14th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia [VSMM], Limassol, Cyprus, 20–25 October 2008), http://vsmm2008.vnikos.com/WorkshopPapers/19.doc/ (accessed 4 July 2009).

38 Some aspects of this project were presented recently by Maurizio Forte in a paper co‐authored with Niccolò Dell’Unto, titled “Cyber‐Archaeology: Embodiment Experiments of Training and Research,” in “Making History Interactive” (see note 19).

39 The UCM Heritage Island SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/UCM%20Heritage%20Island/113/111/26/ (accessed 28 July 2009). Forte and Dell’ Unto, “Embodied Communities.”

40 See note 9.

41 Forte and Dell’ Unto, “Embodied Communities.”

42 Forte and Dell’ Unto, “Embodied Communities.”

43 The ASU Virtual Campus Second Life SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/ASU%20Virtual%20Campus/159/105/24/ (accessed 17 July 2009).

44 For a discussion of the tholos of Athena Pronaia by Dr. Elena Partida (Delphi Ephoria), see http://www.culture.gr/h/2/eh251.jsp?obj_id=4933/ (accessed 5 July, 2009).

45 In summer 2010 a new virtual heritage course will be launched at Arkansas State University in which a three‐dimensional virtual model of the Lakeport Plantation (an ASU Heritage site) will be created and then placed on the ASU Virtual Heritage Island in Second Life. In creating this model, ASU students will be attempting to preserve a piece of cultural heritage that is an important part of the Delta region. As with the Digital Delphi Second Life project, the creation of the Lakeport Plantation model allows scholars to address a broad range of theoretical applications that are not as accessible without the use of a three‐dimensional model.

46 Digital Karnak Web site, http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/ (accessed 17 July 2009).

47 http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/team-s-digital-recreation-of-ancient-89298.aspx/ (accessed 17 July 2009).

48 http://www.epoch-net.org/ (accessed 16 July 2009).

49 David Arnold, “Procedural Methods for 3D Reconstruction,” in Recording, Modeling and Visualization of Cultural Heritage, ed. Emmanuel Baltsavias, Armin Gruen, Luc Van Gool, and Maria Pateraki (London: Taylor & Francis, 2006), 355–56.

50 http://www.epoch-net.org/ (accessed 16 July 2009).

51 http://www.epoch-net.org/ (accessed 16 July 2009).

52 This project was presented most recently by Lisa Fischer (Director, Digital History Center, Colonial Williamsburg) in a paper titled, “Engaging a Twenty‐First‐Century Audience with the Eighteenth‐Century: Using Digital Technologies at Colonial Williamsburg,” at “Making History Interactive” (see note 19). The information about this project was provided by Lisa Fischer.

53 http://www.cvl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/gallery_e/nara-hp/nara.html/ (accessed 16 July 2009).

54 Takeshi Oishi and Katsushi Ikeuchi, “Digital Restoration of the Nara Great Buddha,” in Digital Archiving Cultural Objects, ed. Katsushi Ikeuchi and Daisuke Miyazaki (New York: Springer, 2008), 481. See also Katsushi Ikeuchi and Yoichi Sata, eds., Modeling from Reality (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001).

55 Bayon Digital Archival Project, http://www.cvl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/bayon/ (accessed 16 July 2009). Mawo Kamakura, Takeshi Oishi, Jun Takamatsu, and Katsushi Ikeuchi, “Classification of Bayon Faces,” in Digital Archiving Cultural Objects (see note 54), 405–18.

56 Mawo Kamakura et al., “Classification of Bayon Faces,” in Digital Archiving Cultural Objects (see note 54), 406, 408.