There is no doubt that the graphic documentation of artifacts and excavation contexts holds considerable importance in archaeological research. Even before the emergence of scientific archaeology, there was both the desire and the endeavour to give graphic elements a significant place in the reports of travellers and enthusiasts of antiquities. However, these only meet the requirements of scholars of our time to a limited extent.
The monograph From Photography to 3D Models and Beyond: Visualizations in Archaeology looks specifically at the different roles, nature and forms that graphic representations can take in scientific archaeology. An archaeologist as well as an architect and architectural historian by training, Donald H. Sanders has a long and varied experience in the field of scientifically principled documentation and graphic rendering of archaeological contexts.
In the brief and informative preface to this volume, the author introduces himself and his pioneering work in the field of virtual heritage, first in collaboration with William Riseman Jr. before his premature death, and then with the founding of the company Learning Sites, Inc. (1996). The rest of the volume is made up of six chapters, an introduction, the bibliography and the analytic index. Misprints are rare, while the illustrations and captions are expressive, numerous and of high quality.
Chapter 1 swiftly explains the issues and requirements of proper data recording and storage during an archaeological excavation. Within this frame Virtual Reality (VR), 3D modeling and a number of digital technologies for field mapping and architectural data collection are also introduced. Here REVEAL is also presented to the reader: an “open-source software toolkit for archaeological fieldwork recording, documentation, and automated interactive 3D model generation.” This serves to introduce some topics and suggestions which will be covered later, particularly in the final chapter of the volume. Unfortunately, however, none of these are really explored in depth, nor is the interesting experiment of REVEAL (briefly recalled in the fourth chapter) explained in detail. The remarkable potential of VR and Augmented Reality (AR) for fieldwork organization, research, education and data dissemination is — nevertheless — fairly well illustrated, and is appropriately referred to in several other passages of the book.
Chapter 2 presents the long tradition of the “sacred triad of drawings” — plan, section and elevation — which has been in use for centuries to document architecture. It is an interesting and intriguing chapter, but is really too short. It is unfortunate that this part of the historical account has not been given more space to develop further insights, and the absence of important citations with reference to the topics covered (e.g. James Mellaart’s work on Çatalhöyük or Rossi 2003 on Ancient Egypt) is a surprise. At the end of the chapter, the author mentions a theme that is taken up later in the volume, particularly in Chapter 5: the fact that new technologies take time to be truly understood and accepted by the majority of the population. Again, as in all other passages involving issues of perception and new and old digital technologies, an opportunity is missed for adding insights from anthropology of communication (at least the famous treatises of McLuhan 1964, and Kerckhove 1991 and 1995 would have been worthy of citation).
Chapter 3 introduces the topic of photography and its use in archaeological fieldwork and publications. Examining these historical and technological dynamics provides the author with the opportunity to draw parallels between the emergence of photography in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the much more recent emergence of three-dimensional modeling of objects, architecture and environments. This parallel also crops up elsewhere in the volume. The author shows how techniques of photographic representation attracted the attention of archaeologists and antiquarians early on, in spite of the considerable difficulties involved in their use. This contrasts sharply with the difficulty in reception that VR and three-dimensional digital reproduction techniques still encounter in the field of ancient studies today — an issue discussed in depth later in chapters 4 and 5. In any case, then as now, in the early stages of adoption most users tend to employ the new technology by comparing it ideally to other, pre-existing, technologies which might intuitively seem analogous. Early photographic representations, for example, were often conceived and produced on the basis of the logic of engravings, as the history of nineteenth century archaeology shows. Finally, in the mid-twentieth century, general principles for the optimal use of photography in archaeology were formalized. With great care, the author acknowledges, in this regard, the theoretical and methodological contributions of archaeologists Robert F. Heizer and R. E. Mortimer Wheeler. Then, a few years later, the first examples of computer graphics began to appear in the USA in the guise of the groundbreaking experiments of Ivan Sutherland.
The fascinating history of these preliminary steps and the subsequent developments that led to complex 3D graphics, human-machine interactivity, and finally to the birth of VR are the subject of Chapter 4. The interest of archeologists in these new technologies developed both slowly and fairly late (from the mid-1980s onwards). Their limited enthusiasm for such things was more attracted by the potential for processing, storing and integrating information, rather than the graphics made possible by the new machines. As Sanders himself points out, a major reason for such a lukewarm reception is the poor accuracy or low definition of detail that has long characterized computer graphics. This type of rendering, while well-suited to the needs of architectural or industrial design, was not sufficient for the needs of archaeologists, who have to document complex contexts with irregular and unpredictable geometries. The mid-1990s marked a turning point, by which time Sanders was already a major player in early experimental elaborations of virtual ancient worlds. Significant strides have been made in the ensuing decades. In addition to the logic and sequence of events that have led to the most recent developments in 3D graphics and VR, the author describes well the significance and role that these technologies can play in archaeology, if properly understood. It is striking that there are almost no observations on potential criticisms and no assessment of the possible negative repercussions of these technologies on the daily work of the archaeologist, both on and off the excavation site (see the comments above on Chapter 2).
In Chapter 5 the author expresses his arguments and impressions about the phenomena that often (if not always) occur with the introduction and use of new technologies. Clearly one of the main objectives of these reflections is to understand the reasons why archaeologists were so resistant to adopt interactive and multisensory digital tools with immersive three-dimensional models. The proposed examples are fascinating and valuable, but the chapter has some weaknesses. First, the title — “When New Technology Replaces Old Technology” — is rather unfortunate, since the cases considered here do not imply true technological replacement, with the exception of a few specific situations. As the author himself notes, in archaeology many related technologies can be used in parallel: for instance, drawing, engraving and photography. As the decades have passed, engraving has all but fallen into disuse, but its role in archaeology is only partially overlapping with that of photography. Drawing is still widely used in various forms, especially because it has different cognitive and documentary values to photography. Moreover, purely digital drawing is not comparable to manual drawing on a sensory and cognitive level.
Throughout, Sanders makes comparisons (and contrasts) between how innovative materials are adopted in architectural and furniture design and how new modes of visual representation are adopted in communication. This, though, may be a misleading parallel. In the first case (aesthetics in design), the essential factors that come into play are primarily expressive-symbolic, and perhaps even — broadly speaking — ritualistic. In the second case (technologies of representation and communication), functional, cognitive, and technical issues particularly intervene. For this reason, the proposed descriptions should be accompanied by appropriate and correct semiotic remarks. Considering the evidence presented by Sanders, for example, in terms of aesthetics in design, an implicit and multifaceted potential symbolism underlay the plant forms that could inspire the aesthetic of stone architectures in Egypt, or similarly, an allusive potential was one of the basic reasons for the wood surface color and motifs of Formica-coated furniture, which in part aimed to evoke and stimulate qualitative and emotional values associated with wood (as evident in the advertisement shown in Figure 5.3). These phenomena were largely intentional. On the other hand, the inappropriate use of new communication technologies (such as photography or computer design) according to “old” logics (e.g., those of hand drawing) is partly made impossible by the nature of the new tools themselves, and it is largely due to unconscious processes that become less significant and influential the more intense the use of the new tools is (with the corresponding perceptual and cognitive repercussions).
In the sixth and final chapter, Sanders takes up the discussion of the advantages and benefits that the introduction of digital graphics, VR and AR can bring to archaeology. The author rightly notes both to what little use these new technologies have yet been put in archaeology, and how far we are from fully exploiting their heuristic and communicative potential. He explains this potential clearly and thoroughly, and offers his own prediction of how archaeological field and laboratory research practices will evolve in the future. Sanders’ predictions are well grounded and appear to be realistic, limited to the concrete expression of those technologies that are and will be available, but they risk revealing themselves to be somewhat utopian with regard to the possible diffusion and sharing of certain standards in the world of archaeological research. The main problem in fact doesn’t stem from an unadaptive or conservative mindset of a few archaeologists, but rather from the limitations that have characterized the electronics and computer industry for some fifty years now.
The value of the important reflections concluding the monograph remains remarkable. The accuracy and wealth of information that new technologies provide in field documentation operations is unquestionable. The support they can provide for the integration of missing data is eminent, as are the opportunities they offer to analyse and examine research hypotheses in depth and to stimulate new questions. The non-destructive archaeology predicted by Sanders will, very probably, eventually be practised, but it is unlikely in the foreseeable future. One of the other potential drivers of change in 3D visualization, VR, and AR in archaeology — the use of Artificial Intelligence — is introduced, but not explored in depth: a topic perhaps best left for discussion and reflection in other venues.
All in all, the explanation of how accurate 3D models allow hypotheses to be tested and research results to be communicated to both scientific audiences and non-experts is well developed throughout the volume. Actual examples and the discussion of historical developments of technologies and mentalities adopted in archaeological data recording and representation are fairly clear and numerous. This publication would work well both as an introduction and as a reference tool for specialists who want to explore history and current trends of visualization in archaeology. Despite the absence of any mention of free software applications, the volume could also work as a manual for university classes, but it would be much better served by a glossary of technical terms and an explanation of the general principles of the various digital imaging techniques and their tools (at least those of photogrammetry and Lidar).
Bibliography
de Kerckhove, Derrick. 1991. Brainframes. Technology, Mind and Business. Utrecht.
de Kerckhove, Derrick. 1995. The Skin of Culture. Toronto.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. New York.
Rossi, Corinna. 2003. Architecture and Mathematics in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge.