Images play a crucial role in archaeology. They come in various shapes and communicate diverse content. A special role is played by 3D media, which enjoy an ever increasing popularity in the field of archaeology. It offer vast possibilities for application and participate in generating a new understanding for archaeological research. Despite that, 3D methodologies are not as established as a fixed part yet as for example conventional 2D illustrations. In addition, there is still a lack of awareness in the archaeological community of what 3D modelling can actually achieve for research itself.
The project „Virtual Models in Archaeology“ aims at developing practice-oriented application examples of the 3D medium within archaeology and thus to establish it as a common tool to be used in research processes. Ideally this happens during assignments as part of a wider research project and in context of ongoing excavations, during which there is extra time given to experiment with the application of 3D visualisations – as was similar to have happened during the preceding master project.
The fundings of the „Junior Research in Design“ offered by ZHdK’s Institute for Design Research were used to write a project draft as well as a poster for the CHNT 2020 conference, but especially and to a large part for the development of a card set, which describes various types of visualisations commonly found in the field of archaeology. These cards call attention to the importance of scientific visualisations and their intentional use, and hence also to the work done by our department of „Knowledge Visualization“.