3-dimensional scanners can aid museums and archaeologists

Most 3D scanners are used in industry or medicine. But there are plenty of applications for utilizing 3D digitization in archaeology, art history, and thus in museums. FLAAR is a research institute dedicated to applying digital imaging technology to the study of the Classical civilizations of prehispanic Mayan archaeological cultures of Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize.

At either FESPA 2005 in Munich or VisCom 2005 in Duesseldorf, there was a KonicaMinolta booth with impressive 3-dimensional scanners.

At Photokina trade show, every two years in Cologne, I have also seen fascinating 3-dimensional scanning systems. I do not see these at ISA, SGIA, or even PMA or PhotoPlus trade shows in the US.

At PMA 2006, however, KonicaMinolta announced it was getting out of the photographic market. So it is unclear whether the 3D scanners are continued at all. The trademarks on their 3D digitizer laser scanner websites are dated to 2004.

Alternative 3D scanners, digitizers, and software are listed by the website simple3d.

If time allows, we will look more closely at 3D scanners at Photokina 2006 and update this page at that time. Unfortunately this photography trade show in Germany is the same week as SGIA inkjet printer trade show in the far west of the US. In order to attend portions of both, we lose over an entire day even traveling between SGIA and Photokina.

In the meantime, curators, other museum personnel, and archaeologists working in the Maya, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Zapotec, Aztec, Classic Veracruz and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica should look further into how advances in digital imaging and CAD technology can assist their studies of ancient civilizations.

Regrettably BGSU has no museum and no anthropology department, and not a single other archaeologist in the huge campus. But FLAAR still strives to develop its research projects in digital imaging technology to benefit Mayan epigraphy, Mayan iconography, and general Maya archaeology.

First posted May 1, 2006