3D-Digging at Çatalhöyük: from Digital Documentation to VR Visualization in Archaeology

The project ¿3D-Digging at Çatalhöyük¿ began in 2010 thanks to collaboration between Stanford University (Archaeological Center)& the University of California Merced. The scope is to record, document¿with different digital technologies¿and visualize all the phases of archaeological excavation of a Neolithic building in the World Heritage site of Çatalhöyük, in Central Anatolia, Turkey. Duke University¿s Dig@Lab joined the project in 2013 with the goal to enhance the employed digital documentation workflow and produce a tridimensional real-time visualization suitable for the DiVE and other commodity virtual reality devices (e.g. Oculus Rift, Z-space). Researchers involved in the project developed a digital workflow able to record in 3D the stratigraphy of Building 89 and capture and process point clouds of large-scale areas via laser scanning. The digital recording involves different technologies and methods: Geographical Information System (GIS), Image-based 3D Modeling, Terrestrial Laser Scanning, Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), tablet-based field drawings, and semi-automatic feature extraction and segmentation. The real-time visualization involves Unity 3D and custom scripting developed with the contribution of Bass Connections fellows and Duke undergraduate students. The talk exposes key features and preliminary results of the ¿3D-Digging at Çatalhöyük¿ project while seeks to generate a discussion on new perspectives on data visualization and dissemination in archaeology.