Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 29, 2016 20:50:50 GMT
The Conversation
In March 2001, the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, two of the tallest Buddha sculptures in the world.
This horrific attack on an important and beautiful example of the patrimony of central Asia shocked the world. It also forever changed the landscape of cultural preservation, archaeology and global heritage. Even back then we had some of the 3D scanning technologies that could have allowed us to digitally document and preserve the Buddhas. We did not yet anticipate the scale of destruction that would leave hundreds of global heritage sites damaged or obliterated in the 15 years since that event.
The loss of this cultural heritage has spurred teams of researchers and non-profit organisations to race to make 3D scans, architectural plans and detailed photographic records of heritage sites around the world, knowing they could be destroyed at any time. Advances in 3D scanning technologies, drone use and even tourists’ online posting of images are giving preservationists a new set of tools to prevent the permanent loss of cultural artefacts.
In the 1990s, several international heritage organisations were created to highlight the importance of cultural heritage to history, tourism and ethnic identity. One such group is Unesco’s World Heritage Centre, founded in 1992. The archaeological and heritage communities cheered these efforts at preservation of important places, sites, buildings and landscapes that were being threatened or destroyed by expanding cities, hydroelectric projects, coastal erosion and other perils.
They also acknowledged that heritage, largely for the first time, had become a target of military campaigns.
Once heritage sites became identified with particular cultures, beliefs or histories, those places became vulnerable to people, including the Taliban and the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, seeking to destroy those identities.
Just last week the destruction of a 6th-century Christian monastery in Iraq caught the attention of the world. This is just one in a long list of sites destroyed by the IS group that began in 2014, and caught the attention of the world with the February 2015 video release of the destruction of the Mosul Museum, where some of the most important early Assyrian sculptures were housed.
Project Mosul, created one week after the video was released, is the brainchild of Chance Coughenour and Matthew Vincent, PhD student researchers in Europe’s Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH). They scoured the internet for photographs of the sculptures and artefacts, crowd-sourced for tourist photos and collected images from US military personnel who had visited the museum. That material became the basis for the digital reconstruction of the destroyed artefacts using basic photogrammetry. This technique uses photos from multiple angles of the same object to construct a 3D model of it.
The destruction of Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan led to an early success in digital preservation: Dr Fabio Remondino, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, Italy, used photogrammetry, among other techniques, to digitally reconstruct the Bamiyan Buddhas.
The effort is spreading.
Full story: www.iol.co.za/capetimes/preserving-our-heritage-in-a-hostile-world-1976618
In March 2001, the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, two of the tallest Buddha sculptures in the world.
This horrific attack on an important and beautiful example of the patrimony of central Asia shocked the world. It also forever changed the landscape of cultural preservation, archaeology and global heritage. Even back then we had some of the 3D scanning technologies that could have allowed us to digitally document and preserve the Buddhas. We did not yet anticipate the scale of destruction that would leave hundreds of global heritage sites damaged or obliterated in the 15 years since that event.
The loss of this cultural heritage has spurred teams of researchers and non-profit organisations to race to make 3D scans, architectural plans and detailed photographic records of heritage sites around the world, knowing they could be destroyed at any time. Advances in 3D scanning technologies, drone use and even tourists’ online posting of images are giving preservationists a new set of tools to prevent the permanent loss of cultural artefacts.
In the 1990s, several international heritage organisations were created to highlight the importance of cultural heritage to history, tourism and ethnic identity. One such group is Unesco’s World Heritage Centre, founded in 1992. The archaeological and heritage communities cheered these efforts at preservation of important places, sites, buildings and landscapes that were being threatened or destroyed by expanding cities, hydroelectric projects, coastal erosion and other perils.
They also acknowledged that heritage, largely for the first time, had become a target of military campaigns.
Once heritage sites became identified with particular cultures, beliefs or histories, those places became vulnerable to people, including the Taliban and the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, seeking to destroy those identities.
Just last week the destruction of a 6th-century Christian monastery in Iraq caught the attention of the world. This is just one in a long list of sites destroyed by the IS group that began in 2014, and caught the attention of the world with the February 2015 video release of the destruction of the Mosul Museum, where some of the most important early Assyrian sculptures were housed.
Project Mosul, created one week after the video was released, is the brainchild of Chance Coughenour and Matthew Vincent, PhD student researchers in Europe’s Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH). They scoured the internet for photographs of the sculptures and artefacts, crowd-sourced for tourist photos and collected images from US military personnel who had visited the museum. That material became the basis for the digital reconstruction of the destroyed artefacts using basic photogrammetry. This technique uses photos from multiple angles of the same object to construct a 3D model of it.
The destruction of Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan led to an early success in digital preservation: Dr Fabio Remondino, of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, Italy, used photogrammetry, among other techniques, to digitally reconstruct the Bamiyan Buddhas.
The effort is spreading.
Full story: www.iol.co.za/capetimes/preserving-our-heritage-in-a-hostile-world-1976618