Archfield : a digital application for real-time acquisition and dissemination - from the field to the virtual museum

Part of : Mediterranean archaeology & archaeometry : international journal ; Vol.14, No.4, 2014, pages 65-74

Issue:
Pages:
65-74
Author:
Abstract:
The lack of efficient digital data processing tools during field excavations is a major bottleneck affecting the delay between data collection and dissemination in archaeology. In this paper, we outline the fundamental methodology of ArchField, an integrated digital field recording solution developed to overcome this bottleneck and translate field excavations to virtual museums in real-time. ArchField records sub-centimetre accurate three-dimensional coordinates from Total Stations and RTK GPS units. Recorded field data and measured 3D coordinates are digitally processed to produce auto-generated daily GIS top plans. The processing pipeline enables the generation of publishable online maps from the first day of excavation to the last. It is interoperable with many different GIS viewers and stores data in an online PostGIS database. Digitization of archaeological data in the field is streamlined to facilitate standardization, redundancy and storage that can be immediately made accessible online to the digital community. Consequently, ArchField integrates features such as synchronization, data formatting, re-projection, dynamic labeling and symbolization. It provides immediate online accessibility of field excavations for virtual museums of the future. ArchField enables any archaeological project to inexpensively adopt real-time 3D digital recording techniques in their field methods.
Subject:
Subject (LC):
Keywords:
GIS, real-time, southern Jordan, LiDAR, SfM
Notes:
Corresponding author: Neil Smith (neil.smith@kaust.edu.sa)
References (1):
  1. P. Allen, et al. (2004) Digitally modeling, visualizing and preserving archaeological sites. Proc. Joint Conference on Digital Libraries 2004 (JCDL 2004). Tuscon, AZ. June 7–11, 2004, 2004.Fabricatore, G. and F. Cantone. (2007) Pushing the Archaeological Interpretation by Ana-lysing Workflow Protocols: The “Variable Transparency Image Stacker” and DATARCH© Archaeological Data Management System . Layers of Perception – CAA 2007.Forte, M. (2013) Virtual Reality, Cyberarchaeology, Teleimmersive Archaeology. In Cam-pana S., Remondino F., 3D surveying and modeling in archaeology and cultural heritage. Theory and best practices. BAR ARCHAEOPRESS, Winter, 2013.Gay, E., K. Galor, D. B. Cooper, A. Willis, B. B. Kimia, S. Karumuri, G. Taubin, W. Doutre, D. Sanders, and S. Liu (2010) REVEAL Intermediate Report. Proceedings of CVPR Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision in Archaeology (ACVA'10), June, 2010.Gidding A., Y. Matsui, T. E. Levy, T. DeFanti, and F. Kuester. (2013) ArchaeoSTOR: A Data Curation System for Research on the Archaeological Frontier. Future Genera-tion Computer Systems 29:2117 – 2127.Gorton D., R. Shen, N. Srinivas Vemuri, W. Fan, E. A. Fox. (2006) ETANA-GIS: GIS for Archaeological Digital Libraries. In JCDL'06, June 11–15, 2006, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.Green D., J. Cosmas, T. Itagaki, M. Waelkens, R. Degeest, E. Grabczewski. (2002) A real time 3d stratigraphic visual simulation system for archaeological analysis and hypothesis testing. In Virtual Archaeology Proceedings of the VAST2000 Euroconference held in Arezzo, November 2000.Oxford, Archaeopress.Harrower, M. J. (2010) Geographic Information Systems (GIS) hydrological modeling in archaeology: an example from the origins of irrigation in Southwest Arabia (Yemen). Journal of Archaeological Science 37:1447-1452.Al-Kheder, S., Y. Al-shawabkeh, and N. Haala. (2009) Developing a documentation system for desert palaces in Jordan using 3D laser scanning and digital photogrammetry. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:537-546Levy, T. and N.G. Smith. (2007) On-site digital archaeology: GIS-based excavation recording in southern Jordan. In Crossing Jordan--North American Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan, T. E. Levy, M. Daviau, R. Younker and M. M. Shaer, Eds. London: Equinox, pp. 47-58.Montesinos, J.F, C.L. Lopez, F. M. Rangel Pardo. (2010) ArchaeoloGIS: Using Geographic Information Systems to Support Archaeological Research. In COM.Geo 2010, June 21-23, 2010 Washington, DC, USA.Petrovic, V. A., A. Gidding, T. Wypych, F. Kuester, T. A. DeFanti, and T. E. Levy. Dealing with archaeology's data avalanche. IEEE Computer Society, July 2011, pp. 56-60.Pollefeys, M., L. Van Gool, M. Vergauwen, K. Cornelis, F. verbiest, J. Tops. (2003) Image-based 3D Recording for Archaeological Field Work. Computer Graphics and Applications (CGA). 23(3): 20-27.Ross, K.A, A. Janevski, and J. Stoyanovich. (2005) A Faceted Query Engine Applied to Archaeology. In Proceedings of the 31st VLDB Conference, Trondheim, Norway, 2005.Smith NG, and Levy TE. (2012) Real-time 3D archaeological field recording: ArchField, an open-source GIS system pioneered in Jordan. Antiquity 85(331):on-line http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/smith331/.Smith, N. S., K. Knabb, C. DeFanti, P. Weber, J. Schulze, A. Prudhomme, F. Kuester, T. Levy, and T. DeFanti. (2013) ArtifactVis2: Managing real-time archaeological data in immersive 3D environments. Proceedings of IEEE 19th Int’l Conference on Vir-tual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM 2013).L. Van Gool, M. Pollefeys, M. Proesmans, A. Zalesny. (2002) The MURALE project: image-based 3D modeling for archaeology. In Virtual Archaeology Proceedings of the VAST2000 Euroconference held in Arezzo, November 2000.Oxford, Archaeopress.