Rock Art 3D Modeling: Documentation and Presentation of Federal Sites

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rock art documentation strategies often focus on extracting individual panels out from the whole of a rock art site to photograph, document, and study the site. This approach has provided the majority of rock art site documentation on Bureau of Land Management public lands for decades. However, as Archaeology and technology have progressed, these strategies are no longer the best approach towards complete documentation. It is becoming increasingly evident that individual panels and murals are not the only components necessary to understand the entirety of a rock art site. The California BLM Bakersfield Field Office archaeological staff have begun utilizing recent technology and documentation practices to fully document entire rock art sites. Full-scale 3D modeling of these sites, with the focus of preserving an accurate representation of the entire space, provides a better record of the rock art murals, panels, and site at the time. Additionally, detailed site documentation at this level can be obtained using readily available technology allowing on-the-go documentation of sites that previously would not have been easily achievable. Lastly, site documentation in this fashion allows for interpretive avenues that offer an improvement to previous interpretive methods that do not do adequate justice to these amazing sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Value of Rock Art: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Current Rock Art Documentation, Research and Analysis Part II

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52048