3D Scanning at Archaeological Excavations

[Devin Drake]

Anyone familiar or have experience with this. I am looking into it and am curious as to the benefits over traditional surveying at excavation sites. If anyone has any input, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Phil Marsh]

Firstly welcome to the forum, I hope you will find lots of useful information and members to answer all your questions and share their scanning experiences. We are also featured on a website called online-archaeology who also sometimes share their knowledge with us.

I have never scanned any of these sites myself but I can see a distinct advantage over traditional methods by been able to capture a lot more data at the scene to be able to undertake any further measurements etc once the field work is over.

http://www.online-archaeology.co.uk/Arc ... efault.asp

[pburrows145]

Hi Devin,

Welcome indeed!

I now work for Leica Geosystems HDS in the UK but I graduated from Bournemouth University in 2005 with a BSc (Hons) Archaeology and worked for HP VISTA at Birmingham University using laser scanning technology within archaeology and heritage.

If you take a look at the recent Heritage3D Project (A joint partnership between Newcastle Uni and EH) and the relevant PDF produced by them, which is on this site somewhere, there are a few case studies where laser scanning has been used to document sites, sections, stratigraphy etc.

I am of the belief that over the next few years, with larger, developer funded projects looming on the horizon, we may see a proliferation of 3D Laser scanning on archaeological sites with the intention of creating a detailed documental record of the site with the option to scan day-by-day to analyse soil extraction rates, investigate intensity values of soil sections and also to interrogate the data away from site, create 3D surface models etc etc.

As regards the benefits over traditional surveying - I would not abandon GPS/TPS, but combine all the datasets together, never fully relying on one solution (Laser Scanning would require control for geo-referencing the data for example).

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions do not hesitate to get in touch.


Best Regards
Paul Burrows

[GCavers]

See

http://www.arts-humanities.net/forum/be ... excavation

for discussion and

http://www.arts-humanities.net/blog/gra ... abase_keis

for one example. Paul is right to point to the Heritage3D project as the best starting point.
The short answer is - yes, there are lots of benefits, but you still need total stations and GPS for interpreted survey, among other purposes. One tool doesnt really replace the other...

G

[noorwiramaz]

Hi Devin, Hi everyone...,

This is one good web I found....you may go to http://archive.cyark.org/index.php

Have a nice day...

Thanks & Best Regards,

Noor Wira Masri,

Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.