Welcome to the Urban Archaeology blog. Chiz Harward provides a range of archaeological services including desk-based assessments, evaluations, excavations, watching briefs and post-excavation services, training and development work, and archaeological illustration. This weblog will carry news of projects as and when they happen as well as wider thoughts on archaeological issues, especially recording, stratigraphy and training.



Animated fly-through of Khasa Malla nauli


I've just finished processing some of the record shots from the recent fieldwork in Nepal. I'm using Autodesk 123D Catch to stitch digital photographs and create 3-D photogrammetric models of a sample of the monuments so we can see if this is a viable way of recording monuments quickly and accurately. An added advantage is you can easily create animated fly-throughs of the models that give a 3-D impression of the actual monument which is great and has lots of potential uses within a project that aims to help enable heritage tourism.

This 3-D model was created using standard archaeological record shots, for a full 3-D model we'd have needed to take many more photos to cover all the angles, still it gives a good idea of what is possible given a bit of time and a digital camera.

The featured monument is a nauli or waterpoint at Bhurti in Dailekh, West Nepal. It is 20 yards or so from the major Khasa Malla temple site of Bhurti, which has 22 intact temples, plus the remains of potentially many more. I'll add some more fly-throughs as and when I get them processed.