Iman KULITZ1 / Peter FERSCHIN1 / Florian HOLLWEGER1 / Klaus KUHLMANN2 / Andreas JONAS1
(1Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Architectural Sciences, Digital Architecture and Planning / 2German Archaeological Institute, Department Cairo, Egypt)
The digital reconstruction process in archaeology is very often a time consuming process as reconstruction itself deals with a lot of questions that arise only when the process of reconstruction advances in time. As there is usually a team of experts from different scientific disciplines involved (archaeology, geodetics, gis experts, architects, computer graphics experts, etc.), who work with different modern digital documentation methods: map making, photographs, videos, 3d surveying etc.
A common media of exchange is necessary which enables the integration of these different media together with the support of collaborative work from different places.
In this project we will provide an example how the reconstruction process was documented at the ongoing reconstruction of the oracle temple in Siwa/Egypt.
Even though main parts of the temple still exist, there are several open questions about construction and shape of other parts of the temple with not enough archaeological evidence. Therefore several hypothetical assumptions were made that have to be visualized together with the argumentations of the involved experts to clarify the reconstruction process. Hereby virtual reconstructed parts of the temple are indicated in the 3D-model; images, bibliographical references and information about the building material, corresponding reference examples of other temples have been implemented as well as panoramic images that show the recent site situation. Video and audio annotations that were taken from onsite inspections are geo-referenced and transferred together with the 3D-model to a geo publishing system, which can be viewed by various geo browser systems (e.g. Google Earth) to observe and discuss the intermediate steps and also the possible variations of the virtual reconstruction.
Keywords: Archaeological Reconstruction, Visualization, Multimedia, Google Earth