Documenting Urbanism in an Ancient Nomadic Landscape in Mongolia through Digital Archaeological Methods

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The incorporation of photogrammetric documentation methods at archaeological sites has been a growing interest in research across various regions of the world. In 2024, Statistical Research, Inc. in collaboration with the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology, initiated the first phase of a multi-year project focused on historic preservation and research on the development and role of urbanism and social complexity in a nomadic landscape. We employed survey and test excavations incorporating aerial and terrestrial photogrammetric methods of documentation to obtain a more complete and accurate assessment of architecture and the spatial distribution of cultural material at two 8th Century urban centers—Tsagaan Sumiin and Biibulag Balgas—built by the Uyghur Empire. As historic preservation is an important aspect of the Uyghur Cultural Heritage Project, we created a digital record of the remaining standing walls, stela, and other monuments utilizing Polycam, Drone Deploy, and Agisoft Metashape Pro. This poster demonstrates how the combination of photogrammetry and GIS is the most effective way to document a site’s full spatial context. The results created three-dimensional models of both sites and georeferenced drawings in ArcGIS that captured their architectural layout and preserved a detailed digital record of their fragile structure.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53840