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Virtual Archeology and Visualization Background

 

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In an IBM Technical Report published in 1989, Reilly and Shennan first proposed applying 3D computer technology to the modeling of the Saxon Minster of Winchester (Reilly 1989; Reilly and Shennan 1989). Through the mid 1990s, commercial information technology firms' engineers conducted the bulk of archeological computer modeling activities, due to the high cost of computers. At this time North American and European historians and archeologists were not central to these visualization efforts (Frisher et al. 1997). After presentation of a number of virtual archeology papers at the Computer Applications in Archaeology meeting and International Standards Organization approval of Virtual Reality Markup Language in 1997, the Virtual Reality in Archeology Festival was held during CAA98. European academics had entered the field in earnest (Niccolucci 2002). Recent efforts in virtual archeology have focused on scientific research in visualization, the creation of virtual labs and specific site studies, and the use of archeological resources for education and public presentation of sites and museums (Niccolucci 2002).

Research questions include the general framework for visualization applications that distinguishes 'seeing' from 'visualizing'. Visualization is seen as an inferential process aimed at deriving understanding from explanatory models built from incomplete data (Barcelo 2002). The relationship between cognitive archeology and landscape is being examined in the context of the spatial aspects of how archeological landscapes are defined, identification of the differences between real and imaginary landscapes, reconstruction of paleoenvironments, and contextualization of settlements (Forte 2002). Research is being conducted to determine what degree of field accuracy is necessary to reconstruct the spatial distribution of artifacts at a site. Through the use of computer simulations Gilead (2002) has suggested that the investment in high cost of field accuracy may not necessarily translate into better models. Much research focuses on methods and tools for 3D object creation (Van Gool et al. 2002), digital photogrammetry (Arvanitis et al. 2002, Drap et al. 2002, Gisiger et al. 1996), 3D database development (Clark et al. 2002), and the use of computer aided classification (Kampel and Sablatnig 2002).