Reimag(in)ing the Past

Abstract

The excavation of the site of Kom W in the Fayum region of Egypt during the 1920s by Caton-Thompson and Gardner resulted in the loss of the original surface topography. Detailed section drawings recorded the surface and bottom of excavation, but it was previously difficult to interpret the published images. This article reports on the use of these images to create a three-dimensional representation of the site as it was before and after excavation in the 1920s. This visualization aids the interpretation of the formation processes that shaped Kom W in ways that were previously unachievable due to limitations in the original data. Archaeological sites are under increasing threat of destruction, especially in the Near East. This method could be applied to legacy data in order to reconstruct a site with the data available.

A Comparison of Volumetric Reconstruction Methods of Archaeological Deposits Using Point-Cloud Data from Ahuahu, Aotearoa New Zealand

“…Interpreting stratigraphic relationships is one of the more frequently cited reasons for creating 3D excavation data [45] and certainly has utility [6,46]. In addition, 3D data can be used to create deposit volumes for understanding differential patterning in artifact distributions.…”

“…Idealized volumes use surface data of the top and bottom surfaces with a straight relationship established between them. Such interpretations are made when using archival data [46,63] but also when data are visualized generally (e.g., [7]). These visualizations also occur when volumes are constructed from two 2.5D rasters or layer surfaces [6,11,64].…”