Visualizing the past: 3D visual display of archaeological material related to food from a Formative settlement in the Lake Titicaca Basin
Christine Hastorf, Professor
Anthropology
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2023 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2024.
UC Berkeley's McCown archaeobotany laboratory completes a range of archaeological analyses and research. This project will focus on visualizing the archaeological plant and animal remains that have been excavated across an early residential settlement using ARCGIS to create three dimensional distribution maps of the ecofacts to study past foodways and plant use. These images will visualize and help to better understand subsistence and resiliency in the early farming times at a core location of domestication in the Titicaca Basin.
Role: Adding botanical and faunal data sets into a GIS database so that we can plot the excavated material into three-dimensional maps. This research hopes to generate heat map densities of archaeological materials through ARC GIS modeling. With this database, we will create a sequence of plots that will visualize the material across use areas. This research will take place within the UC Berkeley McCown Archaeobotanical Laboratory in the Anthropology Department.
Qualifications: Experience with ARC GIS is essential, in order to plot data counts and weights in three dimensions. An interest in archaeology, foodways, or plants and animals is appreciated but not essential.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Venicia Slotten
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Social Sciences Mathematical and Physical Sciences