Modelling Rome’s Maritime Facade
Jari Pakkanen and Peter Rose
Royal Holloway, University of London
The visualisation carried out as part of the 3D-Bridge sub-project is an integral part of the larger research project The Evolution of Rome’s Maritime Facade: Archaeology & Geomorphology at Castelporziano being conducted at the Department of Classics, Royal Holloway, University of London and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The 3D-Bridge project Modelling Rome’s Maritime Facade: Villa Architecture at Castelporziano employs directly the data collected in previous fieldwork at the site and the new archaeological studies of Castelporziano.
The presidential estate of Castelporziano/Capocotta includes seven kilometres of ancient coastline to the south of the ancient port city of Ostia; in the Roman period (100 BC – AD 500) the shore was a favoured location for the Roman aristocracy to construct a series of villas on the seafront. In the 3D-Bridge project we have taken a short stretch of this coastline under closer scrutiny and started building a three-dimensional model which can be used to explore and explain the relationship between the excavated archaeological remains, current surface features and what once stood on the site. The model has been designed in such a way that it can take into account how villa architecture responded to the continuing evolution of the coastline and to the environmental changes associated with this development.
The fieldwork seasons in September 2005 and April 2006 concentrated on collecting data for a high-precision topographic model of an area of 600 by 150 metres starting at the northern boundary of the estate (‘Villa del Confine’) and stretching to the south-east side of the vicus, the small coastal town serving the series of villas. Since the site is heavily forested, the most feasible way of recording the surface co-ordinates is using a total station and a prism: the dense foliage creates difficulties in the use of a reflectorless laser setting for the total station, differential global positioning system and also remotely sensed images. The measured 11,500 points have been used to create a three-dimensional digital elevation model (DEM) in the geographic information system ArcView. The model maps both the archaeological and natural features of the area, and it can be used to explore and explain how the architecture of the Roman villas, the associated vicus and a possible harbour responded to the continuing evolution of the coastline and to the environmental changes associated with this development. The DEM has already highlighted several areas which require further investigation by other means, such as test trenches, geophysical survey and geomorphological coring. The covered area can also act as test case for deriving a more extensive though less precise elevation model of the rest of the ancient coast line from satellite images. Work on integrating the three-dimensional data of the previously recorded archaeological features and new reconstructions into the model is currently ongoing: this phase is carried out in CAD and the resulting models are imported to ArcScene.
During the April 2006 fieldwork data was also collected for the first case studies of digital photogrammetry at Castelporziano. The method has been previously employed at Ostia by Peter Rose in the modelling and analysis of standing buildings where the approach has offered great advantages over traditional building survey and recording methods. It permits an objective visualisation of the structures in their present state; reconstructions can be produced from these visualisations and used in more detailed analyses. The approach has proven to be both an accurate and easy way of capturing a large amount of data in a short period of time.
