GIS for Archaeology and CRM

The Bosnian Pyramid [site link, GE Link ] finally got a Google Earth model. I guess when visual suggestion is the only evidence in your favor; you use all the tools in the shed. (please pardon the cynicism)

If you are unfamiliar with the topic, the Bosnian Pyramid is the latest and greatest of Indiana Jones meets the Underwater World of Atlantis archaeological mysteries. Headed by Sam Semir Osmanagich, a Bosnian native Texas businessman, the government backed 5 year excavation seeks to prove that the 700 foot hill towering over the town of Visoko, Bosnia (43.98889, 18.17806), is indeed the world’s largest manmade pyramid.

According to Osmanagich, the truth is self evident and undeniable. According to the vast majority of archaeologists, in both Bosnia and elsewhere, the pyramids are a hoax of mammoth proportions. The evidence presented by Osmanagich and his team consists of the pyramid like shape of Visocica Hill and the “man made” blocks that have been found through relatively shallow excavations. He supports this claim with the backing of “leading” geologists and archaeologists. Against Osmanagich are geologic studies demonstrating that the shape of Visocica is defined by faulting and uplift; very common geologic processes. Furthermore, world archaeological history offers no evidence for such monumental architecture at this place and time, as well as, a lack of archaeological artifacts from the excavations. Osmanagich likes to compare his pyramid to those of Central and South America, but compare the typical artifact assemblage of a large pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula to that of Visoko and it is entirely clear that these are not the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a hater of anything that goes against the grain. I am not discounting this because it is the cool thing to do. And I do support the nationalistic sense of hope that this is providing many Bosnians, but the evidence simply is not there. I have read the geologic reports that are provided by Osmanagich and they do not in any way provide any geologic evidence for the possibility of a non-natural structure. Saying that something looks “man made” is not geologic support.

Time will tell whether Osamagich’s excavations turn out to be a wild goose chase or the next wonder of the world. If it turns out to be the latter, I am all for it, but at this point, the evidence is nil. Until then, decide for yourself. Check out the Google Earth model of the pyramid and the other Google Earth overlays provided at the excavation’s site.

At the end of last week, the Google Earth Blog wrote about a ver cool KML of the tomb of Tutankhamen. The underground tomb is designed with a very cool box model technique. Frank Taylor at the GEB has posted a good deal on the use of techniques such as this in Google Earth. Notably, Frank points to the work of Valery Hronusov from Russia’s Academy of Science in Perm. Valery has created a set of tools to integrate GIS data with Google Earth. From a look at the institute’s site and example projects, the software (KMLer) looks very powerful and quite affordable.

Back to Egypt… After reading the GEB post about the tomb of Tutankhamen model, created by ‘atf’ at the Google Earth Community, I went on a small hunt for other Egyptian archaeological KML examples.

There are a number of renditions of the Pyramids at Giza. Most that I have seen are pretty general and not at the proper elevation. Though, this model that only contains the Pyramid of Khfare is quite detailed and correctly placed.

Of course no Great Pyramid is complete without a Great Sphinx. This model is a low polygon rendering of the sphinx.

Also, here is a great model of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. This lighthouse is estimated as having stood nearly 450 feet tall. For many millennia, this was the tallest structure on earth. This world wonder was constructed on the island of Pharos just off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Underwater archaeology is still going on today to try and solve the mystery of where the lighthouse precisely stood and how it met its demise.

Keep and eye on the Google Earth Community for more Egyptian models as well as numerous place marks and imagery overlays of Egyptian sights both past and present.

A quick post from a current project. This is a SketchUp interpretation of a

historic structure from archaeological field data and historic records. Without going into too much detail, this is a quick image of a reconstructed 19th century paper mill that once stood in front of George Washington’s headquarters in Valley Forge, PA. While Washington was in tenure, the mill works included a Grist Mill and Saw Mill. In the 1840’s the Grist Mill burned and was rebuilt close to the original spot. Then in the 1860’s, the much larger paper mill was constructed, which encompassed the previous structures.The Model of Washington’s Headquarters is accurate to the modern standing reconstruction. Apparently, the building has been remodeled to its historic image at least three times.

Google Maps Link to Area

Google Earth Link to Area (sorry, no models)

Posted by Jeff Thurston at Vector One, here are the full-text [pdf] proceedings from the 2005, Italy-Canada workshop on 3D Digital Imaging and Modeling Applications of Heritage, Industry, Medicine and Land” held in Padova, Italy, May 17th and 18th.

Taking a quick look at the keywords and paper titles, there are no less than 10 references to Cultural Heritage and 5 each for Archaeology and Architecture. There are also a handful of papers discussing 3D techniques with Geomorphology.

Reading back a few posts to my coverage of the CAA conference, there were a few references to the presence of the 3D community at the conference. One observation that struck me is that the all of the companies (~6 to 8 ) in the exhibitor’s hall served some aspect of 3D data collection or visualization. Mostly, these companies focused on 3D laser scanning. Further, the conference CAA program had a symposium on 3D data acquisition. This symposium functioned as a kind of Q&A showcase for the 3D companies.

The strong presence of the commercial 3D laser camp got me thinking. Is there a huge demand from Cultural Heritage and Archaeology that draws in these companies? Companies that are more traditionally focused on mechanical, medial, and industrial applications; projects that generally have bigger budgets that an archaeology dig. Or, do the 3D companies see a fertile ground for broadening their application base? Perhaps the heavy 3D marketing in Cultural Heritage is just the 3D companies getting their foot in the door, something that is plenty common at other industries, but not as much so in Archaeology and Heritage Management.

This is a topic to keep an eye on. If the 3D acquisition technology continues to become more affordable, or CR project’s budgets make room for these technologies, it is certainly something of use. The industry behind it has a good history and is full of really smart and innovative people.

Coincidently, I am working on a project this week that involves 3D laser scanned data and archaeology. This is my first project that integrates 3D laser data, archaeological field data, traditional GIS data, and interpretative visualization. There have been some bumpy paths leading to the coherent integration of all these data sets. When finished I plan to share some of the results.

Point cloud image from: http://www.lupos3d.de/

That is what Google said about the 3D Warehouse and at this point, I believe them.

The 3D warehouse, as described in the post below, it Google/SketchUps new 3D data housing format and model search portal. As described by Google:

“Click here to download the 3D Warehouse network link. With this file Geo-referenced SketchUp models in the 3D Warehouse become available for viewing within Google Earth. Virtual world builders, start modeling!”

Virtual World Builders… Very cool.
In a days work, I was able to take CAD footprints, photos, and a hand drawn archaeology map and produce a georeferenced, downloadable, and sharable models of insitu archaeological structural components (walls) and detailed surrounding standing structures. I hope my boss does not find out how productive I can be when Google does cool things like this.

Okay, here is a rundown of the online end of the 3D Warehouse. By clicking the “Share Model” icon, a Google window pops up that ties into your own Google account. (What else did you think you were going to do with those 2 gigs for each of the 10 Gmail accounts you have?). Type in a bunch of info about your model, including the Tags, and the upload begins.

You model is loaded in to your “My Models” page. From here, you can search the tags and filename of others people models. For instance, this is the return from the search for “Building”.
When you find a model you like, you can download to either Sketchup or Google Earth. Simple as that.

It seems pretty obvious that Google wants a copy of Google Earth and SketchUp installed onto every able bodied computer. They want to see a legion of modelers “SketchIng” their favorite places, tagging them, and sharing them. Content of the world, built by the world, for the world. (or at least the 20% that have access to computers.)

Yup, you heard it correctly, the recently acquired @Last team has worked with Google to produce a free version of their very popular 3D architecture and landscape program, SketchUp. (FREE download Here) As of now, SketchUp is the most commonly used program to create 3D models to be placed in Google Earth.

The free Google SketchUp version is windows only. There is also a Pro version which can be purchased for $495. This is much more like the original and at the original SketchUp price.

SO what are the new features!? Well, the Free version appears to have a similar tool selection as the original without some features like realtime shadow modeling and, most noteably, the ability to export in formates other than the Google 3D warehouse. What? Did you say Google 3D warehouse?

Yes, there is a new Kml housing format called a 3D warehouse. Although my download has not completed yet, I have messed with it a little from a link on the ogle earth blog. Save your models to a 3D warehouse and when put on a server, you point people to a 3D warehouse network link, much like a KMZ. When the link is opened in Google Earth, the Places menu will display the locations of the 3D models. Also, on the virtual globe itself, a icon appears at the location of the model or a icon will appear for an “object collection”, a group of models.

The models are not directly downloaded with the 3D warehouse network link. By clicking on a model name/location in the Places menu or clicking on the icon, a popup window will give you details about the model and ask if you would like to download it.

On this popup, details such as model name, size, and complexity are given. Also TAGS!!! Yes, Google has employed tags into the models. Let the Metaverse begin!!!! From here, you may download the model to either Google Earth of Google Sketchup.

At this moment, textures are still not supported in Google Earth. I suspect, as well as many others, that this will change soon.

Here is a list of features the separate the Pro version from the Free version:

		Print and export raster images at higher-than-screen resolution.
		Access to the following 3D export formats: DWG, DXF, 3DS, OBJ, XSI, VRML and FBX.
		Export animations and walkthroughs as MOV (Mac) or AVI (Windows) files.
		Use the Sandbox Tools (for organic modeling of terrain, etc) and the Film & Stage Tools (for pre-viz work).
		Have access to free email tech support for two years from purchase.

This story has been scooped this morning on a number of other blogs (Cartography, Google Earth Blog, All Points Blog, ogle Earth). Get out there and make some models!!!!

Okay, a little late, but here are my notes from CAA Day 4…

On the final day of presentations at the CAA, I drifted around to a variety of sessions and caught a bunch of great papers. Here is a brief summary of the topics I found interesting.

Google Earth for Archaeological Aerial Prospection

Dr. Scott Madry, of the University of North Carolina, was back with another paper demonstrating an applied and successful technique. Based on Madry’s extensive history in aerial survey, he decided to make a project out of Google Earth as a tool for remote sensing. Over the past year, there has been a number of stories of successfully using Google Earth to identify archaeology sites, particularly in Europe. Madry’s project is now added to this list.

Searching a study area in Burgundy France, which is represented with 1m resolution aerials, Madry set to work. From his office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Madry located 3 significant sites within the first thirty minutes. Completely elated, yet surprised with his initial success, he continued through the study area to find a total of 3 major road segments and 101 possible structures represented by circles and squares evident in agricultural fields.

Shortly after his initial remote success, Madry took a trip to the study area with a colleague to field check his results. The field verification proved that through Google Earth, Madry could successfully locate archaeological sites within his study area. The three major sites he initially found turn out to be prerecorded by the local authority, but this only serves as further verification. A large number of additional, unrecorded sites were also discovered. Shortly, I will try to get a few screen shots or KMLs from Dr. Madry to give more detail about his finds.

Quantitative Clustering Method for Pottery Vessel Lots

One of the afternoon sessions was full of a number of interesting papers discussing quantitative approaches to classification. As this holds true with any topic related to typology, this session was full of debate and perhaps a little contention.

One of the great papers in this group was on a project by Angela Labrador of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Angela is in the process of devising a technique to automate the extremely laborious task of ceramic attribution and assignment into vessel lots. At the heart of Labrador’’s new tool kit is knowledge discovery methodology that uses Mclust with the free statistics program R to perform a hierarchical clustering analysis on a database of ceramic attributes. This clustering technique also employs Bayesian statistics to help find the optimum clustering level and make the best assignment of the ceramic sherds into the appropriate number of vessel lots.

Labrador’’s intention is to fine-tune her methodology and then create a standalone, open-source application that incorporates a PostgreSQL backend with the Mclust and R routines, all designed in Ruby on Rails. Way cool!

According to Labrador, this application is a product of a larger research agenda to study the influence of typology on our discussion and nomenclature within the archaeology of the Eastern United States. The Lighthouse Cove Site, a Bushkill Phase site in the Hudson Valley of eastern New York, is the basis of her dataset.

Angela has created a site (down on April 23rd) where you can follow the progress of this project.

3D City Modeling from Archaeological Data

In another fantastic project by Tijl Vereenooghe of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, he seeks to bridge the gap from virtual 3D landscape/cityscape construction to archaeologically correct recreations.

Researching the lack of 3D models that accurately portray the less popular domestic areas of well-known archaeological sites, Tijl and his team have developed a way to produce 3D models of entire cities, such as Pompeii and the Mayan city of Xkipche (9km South of Uxmal), based on city plans and socioeconomic maps derived from archaeological excavation. The end result is a model, which can be recreated with adjusted parameters, which displays accurately placed structures built to mimic the interpreted function for that location.

Using a virtual cityscape engine called City Engine System (I do not think this is yet available from the author), Tijl developed a method for substituting archaeological base maps, building footprints, and functional interpretations as the engines inputs. Shape grammars are developed to address how the facades of buildings with different functions should look. The output data from the City Engine System can then be modeled in many of the high-end 3D packages. For this study, Tijl used Maya to produce his results.

Stills and an animated walk through of the Pompeii and Xkipche reconstructions show that Tijl’s methodology is in very good order. The reconstructions looked better than most virtual attempts and serve as a research tool since they are based on archaeological data and can be created in a series of permutations based on adjusting parameter inputs.

Future considerations are the modeling of building interiors, the application of scanned facade maps, avatar populations, and ultimately the ability to produce models from geophysical data.

The last day of the CAA did notdisappointt! The quality of papers was astounding. As with the past posts of the CAA, I apologize for any errors or misconceptions I have published about these papers. If the author of the paper or any other reader pick up on my mistakes, please let me know so that I can correct them. My intention is to reflect the author’s intent.

Althought blogging etiqutte seems to be a taboo topic, there must be some rule against blogging after a night of free wine and beer. The folks of Fargo have certainly rolled out the red carpet for this conference; it has been a great time so far.

Since the wine flowed like, well, wine… I will have to confine myself to a quick recap of today’s events.

3D Data acquisition
3D data acquisition papers covered a few interesting topics. First, Mark Mudge and Carla Schroer at Cultural Heritage Imaging discussed their method of Reflection Transformation Imaging (RTI). This very cool 3D’ish data capture uses a fixed camera taking approximately 16 pictures with individual light sources set up at different coordinate locations. The output is a series of images that are synthesized into a single image where each 2D pixel encodes the 3D data in the form of illumination direction and lighting characteristics (normals). The RTI viewer displays the 2D image, but allows the user to control the location of the light source with the movement of the mouse. In essence, this displays the topography based on the surface normals. This technique works great for small and fragile objects. The team is working on extending the capabilities so that the RTI map can be applied to a passively collected 3D geometry and viewed with adjustable and accurate lighting with a very low file size. Also, the team had developed an open source, Java based viewer.

Secondly, there was a great 3D acquisition project from the folks at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technology (CAST) at the University of Arkansas. Briefly, this team used an optics long range, time of flight laser scanner to perform a High Density Survey of Machu Pichu, Peru and Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Basically, the research group conducted over 225 different scans which included over 150 million points in 13 days (non-consecutive). The resulting point clouds are downloadable, along with a free viewer from polyworks, at www.cast.uark.edu/invirmet
Check it out!

Agent Based Modeling
Agent Based Modeling (ABM) is a topic close to my heart and something I wish to talk about more. Today, I saw few papers on ABM, here is a quick overview of two different approaches. First, Luke Premo, from the University of Arizona, discussed an exploritory ABM for the Plio-Pleistocene of Africa. The intention of Premo’s model is not to create a realistic rendition of real world condition (topography, climate, soils, geology). Instead, his intention is to create a simple model to test (falsify) a contemporary hypothesis. The hypothesis is the Central Place Foraging (CPF) model as applied to early Hominids in East Africa. Premo created a model, entitled SHARE (Simulated Hominid Altruism Research Environment), that embeds rules of food consumption and hominid movement based on a patchwork grassland/forest environment. In the end, Premo replicates the general patterns of artifact distribution (called patches and scatters) that are currently attributed to CPF based on the location of the forest patches. At first glance, it seems obvious that the model would produce a patchwork distribution that corresponds to the patchwork of the forest, therefore making dubious results. But this is primarily what Premo is getting at. In the past, this pattern has been attributed soley to CPF as a consequence of modern ethnographic analogy. His simple model shows that CFP is not the only method that can lead to such an artifact distribution. Not that CFP is falsified, but the SHARE model shows that other things may be at work and that modern ethnographic analogs are not the only correlation. Interesting!

On the other side of the coin, John Murphy, also of the University of Arizona, detailed the Dynamic Interface Architecture System (DIAS). This system is a framework for the development of integrative ABM models that share data inputs and actions. The DIAS framework can take models of different systems and link them as modules into a large and more conclusive model. For instance, Murphy discussed the ENKIMDU model (a cultural based model of Mesopotamia) and showed how models of climate, soils, and cow herding behavior, which were create for different reasons, could be plugged in using the DIAS system, to the ENKIMDU model. This framework gives the power to take specialized models, created by experts in that field, and plug them in, seamlessly, to your model. According to Premo, this model would be included in the Emulation class of ABMs.

Mobile Applications
And finally, Claus Dam of the Danish Heritage Agency, Denmark, displayed the cell phone based locative technology they have developed. In short, this system, Nordic Handscape, is broken into two aspects. One part of this project is a system for tourists to retrieve museum data, while the other is for professionals and the public to retrieve data on archaeological sites based on their GPS location or their geocoded address. I do not want to see these projects short, but given the time, I will say that they did everything I could have asked them to do. It knows you location, and it will push you the location, data, and interpretation of archaeological sites within a given radius. The part that I find most appealing about his project is that it has a individual interpretation and data collecting aspect that nears social networking. Each user has their own website with their preferences on which the user can upload photos of sites and tell their own stories about these sites. At the end of the talk, there was a very interesting discussion based on this social aspect. One audience member asked what will happen when we allow lay people to edit out “professional” interpretations of archaeological sites? Other audience members jumped to the defense of the democratization of data and welcomed the wiki’esqu nature of the system. I agree with the wiki folks and would enjoy reading interpretations derived from non-archaeologists. The topic of democratized data has been an undertone.

I would love to delve deeper into the topic of what social networks and massively distributed archaeological interpretations could do for our discipline, but that is another day.

Way past my bedtime… Talk to you all tomorrow.