Digging in excavation diaries: digital re-assessment of stratigraphy in 3D GIS
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 01/09/2019

The Ayia Irini (Cyprus) sanctuary was excavated by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition in 1929, who identified seven periods of use, from the end of Late Cypriot III (ca. 1200 BC) to the Cypro-Archaic II (ca. 500 BC) periods, and suggested that the area was flooded several times. It consists of a temenos with small buildings around an open court where, around the altar and in semi-circular setting, more than 2000 terracotta statues and figurines of humans, animals, chariots, minotaurs, varying in size and shape, were found. The site is under Turkish military occupation since 1974 and thus inaccessible to further archaeological investigations. Scholars focus therefore on reviewing published and unpublished excavated material and analysis of artefacts and a better understanding of the site’s stratigraphy and related chronological sequence. A recent effort concentrates on 3D semantic and shape based analysis of figurines. The current paper presents a digital reassessment of the site’s stratigraphy using 3D GIS, by corroborating published material with data extracted from the original excavation diaries. The obtained maps question the positioning of finds and their setting within the sanctuary, the existence of natural versus human made features and the possible impact of flooding episodes. Such a stratigraphic re-assessment is based on the 3D re-alignment of statuettes, according to drawings and notes from the original excavation diaries, their location and orientation related to the other features of the sanctuary and a re-evaluation of the nature of features described in the excavation diaries and related to the statuettes.

(Valentina Vassallo, Giacomo Landeschi, Nicolò Dell'Unto, Sorin Hermon)