Heather Richards-Rissetto

The MayaArch3D project: A 3D WebGIS for analyzing ancient architecture and landscapes

There is a need in the humanities for a 3D WebGIS with analytical tools that allow researchers to analyze 3D models linked to spatially referenced data. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow for complex spatial analysis of 2.5D data. For example, they offer birds eye views of landscapes with extruded building footprints, but one cannot get on the ground and interact with true 3D models from a pedestrian perspective. Meanwhile, 3D models and virtual envir- onments visualize data in 3D space, but analytical tools are simple rotation or lighting effects. The MayaArch3D Project is developing a 3D WebGIS—called QueryArch3D—to allow these two distinct approaches to talk to each other for studies of architecture and landscapes—in this case, the eighth-century Maya kingdom of Copan, Honduras. With this tool, researchers can search and query, in real time via a virtual reality (VR) environment, segmented 3D models of multiple resolutions (as well as computer-assisted design and reality- based) that are linked to attribute data stored in a spatial database. Beta tests indicate that this tool can assist researchers in expanding questions and develop- ing new analytical methods in humanities research. This article summarizes the results of a pilot project that started in 2009, with an art historian and an archae- ologists collaborative research on the ancient Maya kingdom and UNESCO World Heritage site of Copan in Honduras—called MayaArch3D. The project

Kinect and 3D GIS in archaeology

This paper explores the potential of using Microsofts Kinect to create a low-cost and portable system to virtually navigate, through a prototype 3D GIS, the digitally reconstructed ancient Maya city and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan in Honduras. The 3D GIS, named QueryArch3D, was developed as part of the MayaArch3D project (http://mayaarch3d.unm.edu), which explores the possibilities of integrating databases and 3D digital tools for research and teaching on ancient architectures and landscapes. The developed system, based on the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), controls in a remote and touchless mode the movements in the 3D environment in order to create a sense of spatial awareness and embodiment. A user can thus use gestures to interact with information stored in the spatial database, calling up photos, videos, textual descriptions as he/she moves through the virtual space of the ancient Maya city.

Shabik’Eschee Village in Chaco Canyon: Beyond the Archetype

Abstract This study revisits an earlier publication in this journal (Wills and Windes 1989) in which a settlement model involving seasonal mobility and limited household autonomy was outlined for Shabik’eschee Village, a Basketmaker III period (ca. A.D. 400–750) site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. We return to that work for three reasons. First, the original interpretation has been challenged and an alternative view offered in the form of a large sedentary village. Second, the issue of Basketmaker III sedentism is central to recent efforts to identify and understand a Neolithic Demographic Transition in the northern Southwest. And third, we have obtained new field data from Shabik’eschee and Chaco that contributes to this debate. We conclude that our understanding of Shabik’ eschee’s history is improved by both new data and the ongoing consideration of alternative models, but the site does not contain evidence for a sedentary village.

From mounds to maps to models: Visualizing ancient architecture across landscapes

Since the onset of settlement pattern studies in the 1950s, landscape mapping projects have become an archaeological mainstay. Remote sensing technologies such as lidar, photogrammetry, and SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) steadily reveal new archaeological sites. For landscape archaeology, the detection and mapping of small architectural complexes and households offers important data to contextualize larger (often already known) sites and perform regional analyses. However, because the majority of sites remain unexcavated, analysis is limited, and yet Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D Visualization are expanding the possible uses for older and newly-acquired data on unexcavated mounds. This paper describes a GIS approach to interpolate architectural data from maps of unexcavated mounds into 3D models useful for landscape archaeology. The case study is the ancient Maya city of Copan-today a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Honduras.

Procedural modeling for ancient Maya cityscapes initial methodological challenges and solutions

Digital reconstruction of 3D cityscapes is expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant expertise. We need a 3D modeling approach that streamlines the integration of multiple data types in a time-efficient and low-cost manner. Procedural modeling - rapid proto-typing of 3D models from a set of rules - offers a potential solution to this problem because it allows scholars to create digital reconstructions that can be quickly updated and used to test and formulate alternative hypotheses that are derived from and linked to underlying archaeological data. While procedural modeling is being used to visualize ancient Roman, Etruscan, and Greek cities, in the Maya region the approach has only been applied to reconstructions of individual buildings and not an entire city. In this paper, we present initial methodological challenges and solutions to procedural modeling of ancient Maya cityscapes using the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan, Honduras as a case study.

An iterative 3D GIS analysis of the role of visibility in ancient Maya landscapes: A case study from Copan, Honduras

For several decades, Geographic Information Systems (GISs) have held center stage in archaeological studies of ancient landscapes. Recently, three-dimensional (3D) technologies such as airborne LiDAR and aerial photogrammetry are allowing us to acquire inordinate amounts of georeferenced 3D data to locate, map, and visualize archaeological sites within their surrounding landscapes. GIS offers locational precision, data overlay, and complex spatial analysis. Threedimensionality adds a ground-based perspective lacking in two-dimensional GIS maps to provide archaeologists a sense of mass and space more closely attuned with human perception. This article uses comparative and iterative approaches ‘tacking back and forth’ between GIS and 3D visualization to explore the role of visibility in conveying sociopolitical and ideological messages at ancient Copan—today a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Honduras. A two-prong approach comprising computational and experiential components explores the potential role of visibility in sending messages that participate in the shaping of social interaction on a daily basis. The organization of built forms within the natural landscape created spatial configurations that sent visual messages targeting specific different groups, subsequently influencing how people negotiated their physical surroundings and the frequency and intensity of social interactions. The ancient Maya belief that sight played a key role in structuring everyday experiences because it triggered perception in the other senses thus serves to bridge the computational and experiential results in this case study. .................................................................................................................................................................................

Data management in anthropology: the next phase in ethics governance?

Recent demands for accountability in ‘data management’ by funding agencies, universities, international journals and other academic institutions have worried many anthropologists and ethnographers. While their demands for transparency and integrity in opening up data for scrutiny seem to enhance scientific integrity, such principles do not always consider the way the social relationships of research are properly maintained. As a springboard, the present Forum, triggered by such recent demands to account for the use of ‘data’, discusses the present state of anthropological research and academic ethics/integrity in a broader perspective. It specifically gives voice to our disciplinary concerns and leads to a principled statement that clarifies a particularly ethnographic position. This position is then discussed by several commentators who treat its viability and necessity against the background of wider developments in anthropology – sustaining the original insight that in ethnography, research materials have been co‐produced before they become commoditised into ‘data’. Finally, in moving beyond such a position, the Forum broadens the issue to the point where other methodologies and forms of ownership of research materials will also need consideration.

3D Tool Evaluation and Workflow for an Ecological Approach to Visualizing Ancient Socio-environmental Landscapes

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in an underutilization of plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological approaches to simulate plant habitats, the data requirements of these approaches, and the pros and cons of these approaches for reconstructing archaeological landscapes, and (4) then built on these findings to propose a workflow to integrate archaeological, paleo-environmental, and ethnobotanical into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for export into a virtual landscape for investigations of ancient socio-environmental interaction. To identify possible 3D digital tools and workflows to visualize plant distribution models alongside archaeological settlement, we keep in mind several key issues: capacity to handle georeferenced data, levels of detail, multi-scalar analysis, and availability of quantitative and qualitative data.