According to my sabbatical plan, I was to complete the first draft of the Final Report (both volumes) by 1 October (nine months into the sabbatical). Mission accomplished! I now move to the editorial process, followed by printing and posting.
As work shifts from writing to editing the final report on the excavation, we will also be shifting to a new URL:
My plan is that the old URL will redirect to the new one once the transition has been made.
BTW, our colleagues from Haifa have also announced a new URL:
We are pleased to announce a new association with Open Heritage 3D. Open Heritage 3D makes primary 3D cultural heritage data open and accessible. Our model is now viewable and downloadable under a Creative Commons license BY-NC-ND.
See the model here.
OpenHeritage3D writes:
As 3D data capture becomes an increasingly common method for the documentation of cultural heritage there has emerged a growing need to assist with the distribution and open access of this growing library of 3D data while maintaining scientific rigor, respecting cultural and ethical sensitivities, enhancing discoverability, and addressing data longevity and archival standards. In response to these areas of need, the Open Heritage 3D project was developed to make primary 3D cultural heritage data open and accessible and remove the barriers for content producers to publish their data. CyArk along with other founding organizations Historic Environment Scotland and the University of South Florida Libraries committed in 2019 to make available their significant repositories of data from legacy as well as new 3D documentation projects. Since then other organizations have joined the initiative, contributing over 200 datasets and we invite others to join the Open Heritage 3D project and contribute their datasets to this growing library of data.
https://openheritage3d.org/about
The Northeast Insulae Project is pleased to join datasets from around the world in preserving and presenting our cultural heritages.
After several weeks of writing, I have this week focused on moving the lidar-based model into a final form. The first finalized iteration includes the entire point cloud and show the northeast insulae in the context of surrounding features.
I then spent several days cropping and cleaning up the point cloud to show only the northeast insulae.
One can orbit and zoom in the model to get at details of the excavation.
Even fine details are viewable.
There are two ways of building 3D models that we use on the excavation. These examples are made using the lidar methodology. Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote-sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure ranges (variable distances) to an object. These light pulses generate precise, three-dimensional information about the object.
The second method is photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images. It extracts three-dimensional measurements from two-dimensional data (i.e. images); for example, the distance between two points that lie on a plane parallel to the photographic image plane can be determined by measuring their distance on the image.
Here are two examples of each, the first produced with lidar and the second produced with photogrammetry.
The lidar model moves more easily into CAD applications
141 scan worlds are used to create the lidar model.
The registration report attests to the reliability of the end products.
As June ends, I have finished a draft of the Excavation of the Northeast Insulae, a history of the project. Beginning with the annual reports from each of the seasons, I rewrote the material for consistency of terminology and presentation. I added additional images, and I double-checked all footnotes by putting them into a Zotero database and building the citations and bibliography from that database. This book-length document has twenty pages of introductory material and 269 pages of content including the bibliography.
I will soon turn my attention to the second volume of this Final Report that will provide context for and conclusions from the work done by the Concordia Team at Hippos of the Decapolis.
