Visualization, Depiction and Interpretation: An ongoing conversation about engaging with landscape
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-05-04

Full title: Visualization, Depiction and Interpretation: An ongoing conversation about engaging with landscape topography

This paper explores a tension at the heart of landscape archaeological field practice. Digital topographic data (3D) are proliferating rapidly. Powerful ways of looking at digital topography have emerged, drawing on data visualization and enhancement techniques to highlight features in ways not possible in the field. However, this does not equate to interpreting such data, for example by determining and representing sequences of features. In contrast, traditional archaeological survey of earthworks draws on over 100 years of practice and an established means of representing interpretations of archaeological features. This is an approach that has archaeological experience, field observation and visual representation at its core, working on site to understand and depict the observer’s archaeological interpretation of features, often using the long-established convention of hachures. There are clear synergies between the traditional field- and experience-based approaches to understanding and depicting earthworks and the multiplicity of analytical tools and visualisations afforded by digital 3D environments. This paper will discuss connections between our visual engagement with the landscape through traditional archaeological earthwork survey and hachure drawing and digital engagements through visualizing remotely sensed 3D data. It will consider the impact of the various mechanisms and modalities available and the potential for hybrid approaches. 

Rachel Opitz (University of Glasgow)