Visualizing Skyscapes: GIS-based 3D modelling and astronomical simulation
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-10-07

Computer-based visualization has become a powerful tool for both research on cultural heritage artefacts and dissemination of research results to a broader audience (Denard 2009). Virtual archaeology applies methods from virtual reality to recreate digital models of past landscapes with human settlements. Immersive applications allow the user to not only see reconstructed architecture from far away, but also to enter the recreated landscape in the first-person perspective and walk around and explore the site.
However, a proper simulation of any virtual landscape should also include the upper half, the sky dome with daylight and an accurately placed sun which can play a role for the simulation of light-and-shadow effects or epiphanies in sacred places, or for proper simulation of the nocturnal appearance, moon, stars and planets, the Milky Way and occasionally the Zodiacal light, thus recreating the complete historical skyscape (Zotti 2015).
Starting in 2010, the author has been improving the popular open-source desktop planetarium Stellarium to create the most versatile environment for historically accurate skyscape simulation, including the possibility of loading a 3D virtual model of a properly georeferenced landscape with reconstructions of buildings under the artificial sky (Zotti 2016). Moving through the architecture, the user can explore sight lines or temple axes and their possible targets (e.g., solstice sunrises) on the landscape horizon (Frischer et al., 2016), and light and shadow phenomena can be explored with the light of sun, moon or even the planet Venus. The presentation will show Stellarium in use as a simulation environment for both research and outreach to a wide audience.
References:
Denard, Hugh, 2009. The London Charter for the Computer-Based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage. 2009. Accessed November 2016. http://www.londoncharter.org/fileadmin/templates/main/docs/london_charter_2_1_en.pdf
Frischer, Bernard, Georg Zotti, Zaccaria Mari, Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, 2016. Archaeoastronomical experiments supported by virtual simulation environments: Celestial alignments in the Antinoeion at Hadrian's Villa (Tivoli, Italy). Digital Applications in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (DAACH) 3, July 2016. DOI: 10.1016/j.daach.2016.06.001. pp. 55–79.
Zotti, Georg, 2015. “Visualization Tools and Techniques”. In Clive L.N. Ruggles, editor, Handbook for Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, volume 1, chapter 29. New York: Springer Reference.
Georg Zotti. “Open-Source Virtual Archaeoastronomy”. In Vito F. Polcaro et al., editors, Proc. SEAC2015, Rome, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 16(4), 2016. pp.17-23 , in press.

Georg Zotti, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, Vienna, Austria