3D reconstruction is especially helpful for aiding us with investigations of the visual aspects of ancient spaces, as the height, shape, color, or texture of many monuments that were originally carefully designed to impact the ancient viewer. But many of these features have been lost due to monument deflation or degradation because of human or environmental actions. In 3D GIS models, we can virtually “reconstruct” aspects of the ancient landscape to hypothesize on their appearance at their time of completion or use, assess whether structures were intentionally placed in locations to be visible (or invisible) from important locations, and reconstruct routes of movement through the site. We can incorporate the many aspects of human perception, including perspective, contrast, color, reflection, and light and shadow, in our consideration of human experience in ancient places.

While archaeologists have used 2D GIS mapping technologies for many decades to analyze ancient landscape features, they have long acknowledged the many limitations of the overhead, ‘birds-eye-view’ that traditional 2D GIS offers. Indeed, human lives are not lived on a flat surface or plane but are embedded within a three-dimensional world. Expanding GIS into a third dimension allows us to examine cultural issues in new ways, better replicating the perspective and aspects of the visual and physical experience of a real person walking through a multi-dimensional landscape. By shifting our digital maps from “top-down” to an explicitly human point-of-view, we can consider how cultural symbolism or meaning was embedded within the lived landscape.

Constructing the Sacred is published fully online, a new type of “born-digital” monograph that is meant to replace the traditional printed book format, allowing for new opportunities for the reader and author. Because the digital publishing platform seamlessly integrates the narrative text with the 3D content, I can explain the reconstructions, as well as discuss the many gaps in the archaeological record that must leave any model with varying degrees of uncertainty. In Section 2 of the volume, readers can interact dynamically with the 3D GIS model of Saqqara, and explore the site alongside the author’s commentary, or on their own, following their own interests. The interactive model includes basic information on each monument at the site (accessed by clicking on the selected structure in the model), so that readers can find out the history of the monument and its excavation quickly and easily. It acts as a type of “3D tour” of the site and could be used by those less interested in the academic arguments in other sections of the volume.

A full section of the work is devoted to documenting the model construction, and it provides the reader with information on the many choices made in the visualization of each monument. A lack of “metadata,” or the base information on which 3D models are created, is one of the most common critiques of 3D projects, and this detailed material is thus included in the volume to address such concerns.

Citations to primary and secondary sources in the text (as pop-ups) contain persistent links to those publications (when available), sending the reader to the sources in a single click. Perhaps most exciting, readers can download the individual 3D models of the monuments (posted with a Creative Commons license) and reuse them for learning, games, or teaching. I hope that such online publishing platforms will be used by other scholars to make the archaeology of sites like Saqqara more accessible, understandable, and relevant to the interested public.

Elaine Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

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