Digital Vacone

Tyler Franconi

Digital Vacone

Studies in Digital Heritage

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2018, excavations at the Roman villa of Vacone, carried out by the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project, transitioned to completely digital recording practices. The methodological shift was accompanied by a three-year campaign of backfill removal and cleaning, which allowed most of the villa’s extant architecture and décor uncovered since 2012 to be digitized. Moreover, a new documentation protocol was established that employs photogrammetry in lieu of scale drawing to model the three-dimensional spatial characteristics of every archaeological context. Notable artifacts were also modeled to facilitate off-site study. The excavation’s experiences with this conversion offer valuable lessons for other long-term archaeological projects contemplating a similar shift amid active fieldwork. The project’s digital recording team developed a methodology for layer-by-layer modeling that ensures precise alignment between stratigraphic contexts using fixed markers. From these, standard...

The archaeological excavation is a destructive and not repeatable process: the documentation of archaeological stratigraphy and relations between the layers is an essential component of the work of the archaeologist aimed at the understanding the site object of researches. The traditional techniques of documentation, based on direct survey and manual drawing, are time consuming to be executed and they are also characterized by some poor level of precision and accuracy that, spread over time, can lead archaeologist to errors and misunderstandings. The use of traditional techniques of survey does not allow any margin of error in the interpretation: once produced documentation, layers are destroyed and it is hardly possible to make further corrections in documentation. Over the last two decades technological innovations have progressively reduced these issues: survey instruments such as total stations and dGPS have gradually replaced the direct survey. The introduction of digital SLR cameras has eliminated the cost of production of photographs and allowed the archaeologists to produce a massive documentation of contexts, mainly qualitative. The laser scanners have been tested within various excavation sites: the possibility to record excavations in three dimensions have been found to be of great interest by archaeologists, but the high cost of the instrumentation and the complexity of the whole process of processing and management of laser data have limited its use and dissemination. In recent years, the advent of photogrammetric software based on the 'Structure from Motion' technique has gradually made accessible three-dimensional survey within the excavation sites. During the excavation of the roman site of Santa Marta, in Cinigiano (GR), we developed a pipeline for fast 3D recording of excavation. Through an integrated approach of topographic instruments, aerial and terrestrial images, semi-automated photogrammetric packages and GIS system we have been able to systematically recording in tree dimension the stratigraphy of the sites. This approach allowed us to overcome issues related with precision and accuracy of the documentation and different datasets can be integrated to create diachronic 2D and 3D documentation. The high resolution and precision of recorded surfaces allow us to improve both quality and speed of documentation, optimizing all the work in excavation site.

For most archaeological projects, summer is the time when data are collected and organized. We travel to sites and spend most of our time outside, surveying, excavating, and recording. However, restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic have made this an impossibility , so many have turned their attention to the organization of data and their publication. Our project , named Re-Imaging Scholarly Exchange in Three Dimensions (Rise 3D), aims to reconstruct past environments in a virtual realm, not only for educational purposes but also for further research. Within this framework, our project builds upon the legacy of the Fayum Project-a collaboration between UCLA, the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), and the University of Auckland (New Zealand)-which began its archaeological exploration of the Greco-Roman site of Karanis (modern Kom Aushim) in Egypt in 2005. Since 2005, a multidisciplinary, international team has investigated the rich history of the northern edge of Lake Qarun, where the Greco-Roman town of Karanis is located. 3 Although archaeological excavations were concluded in 2015, the long-term goals of the project are aimed at creation of a digital platform that will not only serve as a digital repository but also allow for the gathered data to be displayed and disseminated to a broader audience. Our virtual field season in the summer of 2020 set out to create geospatial and three-dimensional models using the innovative recording techniques of the project as our starting point. Our team, including Willeke Wendrich and Deidre Brin (director of the Digital Archaeology Laboratory), has been meeting weekly to create an environment that will allow the public to access and interact with the archaeological data recovered from the eastern part of the ancient city. We specifically focused on a building called the East Karanis Granary. This building became the focal point of our project because it allows us to build upon digital work done during the 2008-2012 field seasons, as well as to showcase the potential of Rise 3D. While the pandemic moved our discussion into a digital environment (Figure 1), the silver lining was that this allowed us to meet and work across continents. The ability to share our computer screens and allow computer takeovers has made collaboration on the digital three-dimensional project almost seamless , exemplifying the power and importance of digital technologies in archaeological inquiry. PHOTOGRAMMETRY The team excavating and recording the site displayed impeccable foresight in the way they recorded the East Karanis Granary. Thousands of photographs allowed us to reconstruct a photogrammetric model of the archaeological features as they were excavated (Figure 2). Software such as Agisoft Metashape allows us to stitch together hundreds of photographs to create an accurate digital three-dimensional representation of the archaeological features. Photogrammetry not only allows us to visualize and manipulate objects in three dimensions but also produces a highly accurate representation (up to an accuracy of 0.001 m., equivalent to 0.04 inch). Figure 2 provides a snapshot of the remains of the East Karanis Granary looking southward. The living or administrative quarters of the building are in the lower right of the image. The storage vaults, now filled with sand, are on the left and lower left of the image, while the partially collapsed subterranean vaults are visible through holes resulting from their collapse. One of the goals of our project is to make our photogrammetric model the focus of a virtual reality environment, where visitors can walk through and experience the archaeological features themselves.

Our team, the archaeological section of the Medieval Art, History, Paleography and Archaeology research group (MAHPA) and part of the Laboratory of Medieval Archaeology of the University of Barcelona (LAM-UB), has been working on the field in the Tremp-Montsec area (an important part of the Orígens UNESCO Global Geopark in Lleida, Catalonia) for more than 25 years now (Alegría et al., 2019). Since some years ago, other sites from around Catalonia have been added, and we now have three undergoing intervention projects that include 13 archaeological sites with chronologies that range from the 7th to the 17th century, most of them located in the Catalan Pre-Pyrenees. Since the early 2000 this team has been eager to implement and use emerging technologies. Our main motivations have been ameliorating data analysis and interpretation, fostering dissemination and public engagement, but also overcoming the challenges that our work implies: mountain sites that are difficult to access, lack of time and, especially, short funding. With these goals in mind, we have been using for some years 3D reconstruction tools, GIS, databases and 3D digital recording methods. These new techniques and methods, applied both to our field and laboratory work, have profoundly changed our workflow. The use of new tools to process and work with those data are also fostering the interpretation exercise and helping build archaeological and historical knowledge (Costa & Sancho, in press). However, their implementation by fits and starts, the lack of funding to provide proper training to our team (or to have a specialist on the matter), and the dramatic growth our site set has undergone in the last few years (from 2 active sites in 2014 to 11 excavation and 4 survey sites in 2022) left in result a slightly chaotic, Frankenstein-like flow that combines both digital and analogic processes, with a lack of standard procedures (differences in the recording and processing methodology amongst the different sites), high risk of miscommunication, and redundant data. The field data is currently recorded mostly on paper (stratigraphic context information) or by digital means or tools (topographic data, graphic data). For some specific excavations, a database (running on a tablet) is updated on-site. The finds and artifacts are later studied in the Medieval Archaeology Laboratory (LAM-UB) and the data collected from their analysis is normally registered in internal simple databases or Excel files. In 2018, a new recording methodology was introduced to all site excavations within the project. Since then, all stratigraphic contexts are being recorded with georeferenced photogrammetry, creating 3D models that are the core of the documentation of those contexts that are now already destroyed. This new methodology is giving great results in terms of accuracy and efficiency, and is now opening a great deal of possibilities, even though it is now mostly used to produce 2D recording traditional results, such as archaeological planimetries and sections (Batlle et al., 2022). However, it also highlights the need to better document the digital data (which is more easily decontextualized) and to link it with all the related archaeological, landscape and historical data. The new technologies implemented have been game-changing for our team, and the workflow described is giving us good results, as it allows us to work in a more efficient way and to record more and better data. However, we are aware it is not perfect: sometimes the data are not centralized nor interconnected, and, as they are processed, stored and managed by the site directors only, they end up in silos of information corresponding to each site. This hinders data integration and makes it difficult to analyze and understand the data in their completeness, which could prevent the main project goals from being properly reached. Currently, there are multiple and heterogenous datasets created and managed within the project (which include field data from different sites, 3D models, artifacts’ data, etc.) scattered across multiple locations, with or without proper backups and lacking an updated tracking or recording system. We are now facing a new problem: the management and preservation of a big (and growing) amount of data. We know positively that digital tools, techniques, and methods, although they may have been one of the causes of our current problems, are also the answer. However, it is clearer than ever that with great power comes great responsibility; an inappropriate implementation or a misunderstanding of their potential can do more harm than good, and the need to train ourselves to be able to adapt to the current challenges, and those yet to come, is becoming a crucial matter. In our presentation, we will describe and map our current workflow(s) exploring how this slow implementation of the emerging digital technologies has been shaping it during the past decade and reassessing it. We will also evaluate all the positive and negative aspects that the digitization of the archaeological recording methods have brought us, pondering over the experience accumulated during these years, trying to extract valuable lessons from our (both good and bad) experiences, and drawing some future improvement lines –either on paper or on digital tools. References Alegría, Walter; Sancho i Planas, Marta; Soler, Maria. (2019) “Mountain communities in the Catalan Pyrenees: 25 years of archaeological research“. In: Brady, N.; Teune, C. (eds.) Settlement Change Across Medieval Europe Old Paradigms and New Vistas (Ruralia XII). Leiden: Sideston Press, pp. 81–90. Costa, Xavier & Sancho, Marta [in press]. “La cartografía digital como herramienta dinámica E integrativa para el estudio del poblamiento medieval. La propuesta metodológica del proyecto Muntanya Viva”. Cuadernos de Arqueología de la Universidad de Navarra. Batlle, Sabina; Coso, Júlia & Vallverdú, Jordi (2022). “Fotogrametria aplicada al registre arqueològic d'època medieval. Avantatges i limitacions” [Conference presentation]. II Congrés Internacional IRCVM: Digitalitzar l’edat mitjana, Barcelona, Spain.

This volume brings together all the successful peer-reviewed papers that have been submitted for the proceedings of the 43rd conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology that took place in Siena (Italy) from March 31st to April 2nd 2015. The number of people who signed on for CAA 2015 really took us by surprise: 550 delegates registered for the conference, from many more places than we would ever have anticipated. Altogether, within the four days of the conference 280 papers were presented in 48 sections divided into ten macro topics, 113 posters, 7 roundtables and 12 workshops. That number, in itself, has prompted a thought or two. Above all it says to us that CAA is very much alive and kicking, that it is in robust good health, and that it remains a wholly relevant force in the scientific community, fully engaged with the questions of the day, and a continuing focal point for the profession. All of that speaks well for the motto of CAA 2015: KEEP THE REVOLUTION GOING Although the significance of our motto is obvious, we think it is worth some thoughts. Few would deny that in the past 30 years or so, digital technologies have profoundly revolutionised archaeology – in the office and laboratory, in the field and in the classroom. The progressive introduction of digital techniques in the archaeological process has of course led to a general increase in efficiency. But perhaps more importantly it has provided a spur to the discussion of methodology and through that has strongly influenced not only the way we go about things but also the outcomes that we have been able to achieve. The pioneering phase in the application of digital techniques in archaeological research has clearly been fruitful and today computer applications such as GIS, databases, remote sensing and spatial analysis as well as virtual and cyber archaeology are deeply embedded within our universities. This is all good, of course, but we must not assume that the task has been completed. An intrinsic revolutionary instinct towards technological development has been awakened. But it will only survive by virtue of the results that it brings about. Or using the words of our Chairman Prof Gary Lock: ‘Computers not only change the way we do things, but more importantly they change the way we think about what we do and why we do it’. The general thrust of this statement can be summed up and reinforced by recalling a quote from the philosopher Don Ihde, who has argued we should never forget that all technologies should be regarded as ‘cultural instruments’, which as well as strategies and methodologies implemented in our researches are also ‘non-neutral’. So KEEP THE REVOLUTION GOING is a motto that lays stress on the need to maintain innovation in archaeology through technological advances. But innovation must have at its root the fostering of critical thought and the framing of new archaeological questions. So there is much work still to be done, and fresh challenges to be faced in the months, years and decades ahead. One final thought. The date of this conference, and most of all the opening ceremony, has not come about by chance. The 30th of March, for the University of Siena and in particular for the human sciences and archaeology, represents a sad but enduring anniversary. Eight years ago on this day we lost a key figure in the Italian archaeological community of the last 50 years; a man who had an extraordinary influence on many aspects of medieval and archaeological studies. Not least we call to mind his role in the promotion and development of digital archaeology. Our thoughts and memories go therefore to our friend and mentor Professor Riccardo Francovich. He always inspired us to seek new horizons and without him we doubt that this conference would have found its way to Siena.

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