Digital Documentation of Ancestral Pueblo Architecture and Rock Art in SW Colorado, USA: Heritage Management, Education, and Visualization

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The sandstone multilevel architecture (including famous cliff dwellings) from the central Mesa Verde region, southwestern Colorado in the US Southwest, together with rock art represents Ancestral Pueblo occupation in the prehispanic times. This poster shows the application of various digital techniques for detailed documentation, visualization, and reconstruction of Castle Rock Community, one of the Ancestral Pueblo settlement clusters from the thirteenth century AD in this area. Different digital methods were applied: architecture within rock alcoves and beyond were documented using terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and photogrammetry; terrain either by TLS and photogrammetry from a drone (UAV) as well as geophysical research; 3D models have been used to generate final 2D documentation and to interpret details of faint rock art panels (RTI/Reflectance Transformation Imaging technique). Research also focused on data integration and visualization for learning the relation between settlements, rock art, and the landscape using Digital Elevation Models, GIS, and even game engines. All these methods were partly presented in an educational digital platform that presents the Ancestral Pueblo heritage: e-sandcanyon.org and as a part of the exhibit displayed in the Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center & Museum (Colorado) and Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum (Utah).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37088.0