Çatalhöyük 2012 and 4D GIS

I came back few weeks ago  from the archaeological excavation of Çatalhöyük, Turkey
where this year I tried  new experiments in the use of 3D technology to document and visualize ongoing archaeological excavations.
Last year I did tests on site using  Image Based Modeling techniques to document the investigation of the building 89, in that occasion the team of the university of California Merced directed by Maurizio Forte, were running similar experiments using instead a phase shift laser scanner, they got interesting results  and the use of both these techniques in the same excavation context gave us a very good feedback on how different technologies that produce similar results (resolute 3D model) obey to different work-flow of data capturing and post processing.

After this tests we gain a good knowledge on how making these tools compatible with ongoing excavations and how to manage the data in a reasonable time frame.
At the end of the first season (2011) It was possible to visualize in the same platform (MeshLab) the temporal sequence of most of the units found during the investigation, moreover  thanks to a total station grid provided by the survey team who operated during  that season, it was even possible to geo-reference all the models realized during the campaign.

The first year was very successful, especially  for what concern the creation of a functional work flow to use during the investigation process, but very few questions about archaeological methods came out. This happened probably because we could not visualized our models in the same  platform where all the other data were stored: the GIS system of the excavation.

After the first season of experiments we figured it out that  Image Based Modeling techniques represent today the best solution to generate 3D models of the ongoing investigation, in fact the accuracy and precision of this methods has been proved to be  more than enough  for any archaeological documentation, moreover using powerful laptops it has been possible to produce in few hours (sometime even in 45 minutes) complete 3D models of the buildings.

3D model of the Building 77 realized using Photoscan AgiSoft

Here some reference about  tests that we did in collaboration with Matteo Dellepiane and Marco Callieri from the Visual Computing Lab, CNR, ISTI, Pisa  about the use of image based modeling techniques to document archaeological excavations : Archaeological excavation monitoring using dense stereo matching techniques 


This year together with UCM we decided to mainly use this method (image modeling techniques) for the documentation of the ongoing excavation,  laser scanner technology instead was mainly employed for the documentation of the entire site with point's clouds.
From the very beginning  we decided to use Image  based modeling techniques on a larger scale, ...I was so much curious to understand if this method was efficent also in a such huge scale, after the first season this was obviously possible, but you know... theorizing something is not exactly the same of doing something... ;-)
 
The results were really interesting! In fact it has been possible to work on several buildings at the same time and geo-reference all of them in the same space, moreover with the help of Camilla Mazzucato,  researcher at the university of Oxford, we handle to transform the 3D models in features and finally visualize our work  into the GIS system of the excavation (Arcscene) connecting each other data coming from different seasons and different teams.
Together with James Taylor from the university of York, we started discussing how this will effect the field activities and we started brainstorming new workflows in order to integrate this approach into the documentation system in use in Catal.
At the same time an interesting  discussion started also with Scott Haddow from the osteology group that experimented  new ways to use this technique in osteology, here some reference from his blog.

 group of 3D buildings visualized in Arcscene

Before the beginning of the campaign I had the chance to discuss with Åsa Berggren and Björn Nilsson about several possible scenarios,  I think that  these results represent the best  starting point we could get to begin a new exciting research work.

The results of this experiment  open to new questions such as: how the use of this new tool will influence our way to perceive and interpret the data? How our work will effect the investigation of other archaeologists in the future? And... who will answer these question?

In order to have a deep understanding of the problem. I think it is fundamental to bring this work more and more into the field, Çatalhöyük is not just a FANTASTIC archaeological site, but a real experimental environment, where new ideas and discussions comes out constantly


/Nicolo' Dell'Unto

Some preliminary result from CatalHöyuK 2012

http://scotthaddow.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/catalhoyuk-2012-week-5/

MeshLab and the color projection in Pompeii

In collaboration with the Visual Computing Lab, we are developing the data from the last acquisition campaign in Pompeii and  we are  using MeshLab to manage  the entire workflow (from aligning to texturing). This is the first time that we experienced such a huge post processing of Laser scanner data,  during the last campaign we acquired almost 2 houses, several connected environments and the roads that surround half of the insula, but so far everything is going quite smooth.

The new color projection seems very good, during these days we are texturizing the Atrium of Casa del Torello di bronze, I hope to have one of the two houses ready  before summer.
This huge 3D model, once finished will be used for  archeological research, application for museums, teaching etc.  During Last mission we were able to acquire in few days  half of the insula, During the next season (probably next october) we hope to finish completely the acquisition.

Atrium of Casa del Torello di Bronzo, Insula V,1 meshing process

PhotoScan from the web

PhotoScan test 1 from Martin Roe on Vimeo.




we are working a lot with this tool and the results are relly incredible, soon I'll present some preliminary result of the work that we are doing in Catal.
 I think that this technology is the connection between 3D and field work

3D Modelling with AgiSoft PhotoScan

3D Modelling with AgiSoft PhotoScan

FARO Focus 3D scanner captures big 3D models from a tiny Lego trolly

Virtual POMPEII

Last week together with Matteo Dellepiane and Marco Callieri  from the ISTI, we (me, Stefan Lindgren and Carolina Larsson) started the digital acquisition of two houses in Pompeii: Casa del Torello and Casa di Cecilio Giocondo. These two amazing monuments have been (and are) studied by "The Swedish Pompeii Project",  with the goal of  [..]"filling the void of documentation lingering with this insula since its excavation"[..]. 
In this context we decided to use the laser scanner together with computer vision techniques in order to create a very detail 3D model of the entire studied area. The model will be generate in the next months and we hope it will increase the research and the communication of the entire Insula.

Faro scanner, in the republican garden
of Cecilio Giocondo's house

For the field work we employed two FARO scanner and a Canon Camera EOS550 with a wide angle lens. Despite the complexity of the structures and the extension of the area, in two days we were able to complete the planned field work realizing more than 70 scans.  The acquisition was incredibly fast and the portability of the new scanner allowed reaching the more tedious areas of the houses.
This instrument is really a new step in the domain of the laser, no cables, no laptop (it works in touch screen) a very long battery,  and the combination with computer vision allows an incredible flexibility in fields campaign. It was  a very successful acquisition and during the next weeks we will study a useful  pipeline to manage and post process such huge quantity of data with a sustainable methodology.  The documentation generated during the field work was very accurate and obviously different from the  projections (CAD or traditional drawings) realized during the excavation. The main question now  is: Does the use of such different data  will influence or change the way of building an  archaeological interpretation in the future?  This is not easy to foresee, because the development and the diffusion of this new methods depend by factors that do not stricktly belong to the archaeology as discipline.
What I think we can  hypothize is that using tools which allow describing an archaeological environments with such details, could help archaeologists to build a shared interpretation using an very precise platform, based on the "virtual" archaeoloogical material that define the investigated context.

Map of the Insula, in the picture the scanned area 

So far the feedback of my collegues was always very positive, but no enough experimentation and literature has been realized.  Now that the tools are ready and easy to use,  a work of investigation about the definition of new structured documentation methods in archaeology is required.