REVEAL: One future for heritage documentation

Abstract

It can be frustrating to ensure that cultural heritage work, from archaeological excavations to historic surveys, is documented fully and that the evidence is recorded properly and thoroughly. Automated computer-based documentation and research tools would seem to offer many benefits. They can be more accurate and cost effective, saving time and ensuring that all finds and their contexts are appropriately and fully recorded. And if designed well, new digital field data acquisition systems can enable new types of hypothesis testing, new insight into the past, and new visualizations that in turn can lead to a paradigm shift in how heritage sites are managed and information disseminated. There have been many computer-based data collection systems for heritage management; many databases, many digital archives, and many digital publication options. REVEAL is special. REVEAL (Reconstruction and Exploratory Visualization: Engineering meets ArchaeoLogy), is the product of a US National Science Foundation collaboration among the Institute for the Visualization of History, Brown University's Division of Engineering, Laboratory for Man/Machine Systems, and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The project uses computer-vision, pattern-recognition, and machine-learning research to augment applications for archaeology and the humanities. REVEAL is a single piece of (free and open-source) software that coordinates all data types (e.g., photos, drawings, 3D models, and tabular information) with semi-automated tools for documenting sites, trenches and objects, recording excavation and site-evaluation progress, researching and analyzing the collected evidence, and creating 3D models and virtual worlds. Search and retrieval, building interactive visualizations, and testing hypo