Sabbatical

The end of Adobe Flash corresponded with the beginning of my sabbatical. As a result, old galleries could not longer be used. In addition, in preparing the Final Report I wanted to update all galleries to HTML5 format, add new galleries, and sort through some 35,000 photos from the field.

I have completed the first step of this work by posting a new gallery of field photos for each day in the field between 2002 and 2019. For this project, I am using Adobe LightRoom. I have been able to correct white balance problems (especially from 2009 and 2010). I have removed less valuable photos. The photos are now in collections that I can more easily edit and annotate (and upload to the web site).

Next on my agenda is a paper for a regional conference on the herbs used in the diakonicon. Then, I return to the catalog of photos to build galleries of small finds — ceramics, metals, architectural elements, etc.

Over the last several weeks, I have been working to clean up the first complete lidar model of the site. The result is the following:

I solved a number of minor alignment problems and have rather comprehensive coverage. The model involves 146 scans with 384 links among the scans. There are close to 630 million points in the cloud.

The bundle is quite accurate, with an error of only 0.014 m.

One of the major tasks of the 2019 season was to build a lidar-based model of the NIP. Technological issues at the time and two delays of a sabbatical held off the completion of the model. But the scans are now merged!

The model requires some scrubbing. Then I will build a mesh from it. But, at long last, I am seeing results from the study season!

Although the first reconstruction attempt failed, I succeeded in recovering all the scan data from the southern section of the excavation area by manually loading the support files into a new project and taking them through a new registration process.

I will next use the same approach with the other major sections of the excavation with the hope that I can then merge all five sections into one project.

With this data recovered, I am sure I can build a lidar-based model for the excavation.

One of the challenges coming from the 2019 season is putting together all scan data into one common model. Unfortunately, the software had trouble in 2019 handling the scans from the south end of our excavation area… several Umayyad structures next to the Decumanus Maximus.

Updated software is allowing me to try and recover this data. Above is a 3D view of the area showing the positions of the scanners. Below is a point cloud preview for the same area (but from a higher angle).

I am reworking the registration and the indexing with the hopes of fully recovering the data.