Using visual simulations to tie the past and the future

In 1997 the UCLA CVRLab launched a 6-year project on Visualizing Statues in the Late Antique Roman Forum to digitally recreate the Roman forums from the year 400A.D. and to study the spatial information of Rome at the time and the kinetic physical motions of the Romans who considered walking through the city an important activity. The digital model included over 20 features such as buildings and monuments of the Roman Forum, an important center of ancient Rome. When the project was finished their project was shared on their website not only so that anyone can easily view the digital Rome but more importantly to provide the resources and guidance for the future digital studies in archaeology and antiquities.

 

Upon entering their website the users can view an interactive timemap where they can select each building or monuments, by just viewing the building plan, an aerial photo with the timeline, or just the digital model itself, as the construction changes with the timeline cursor moves horizontally on the top of the image. The lab also provides geospatial data in x, y, z values to find the grid per each construction, as well as resources per building to specifically provide evidences and sources of their project.

Such effort of the CVR Lab has provided a strong foundation for the current and future studies of digital modeling of archaeology, antiquities and beyond, practicing every resources and technology there is for digital humanities research, ranging from the data and resource aggregation based on timeline and secondary research materials to geospatial technology.