News & Updates
Of Software and Ceramics: 3D Digital Modeling and Community Collaboration in Oaxaca, Mexico
By Janet Simons
December 9, 2015
Dec 14, 12:00 Noon
DHi, CJ 102
Lunch Provided
Most people have heard of the ancient Aztecs and Maya, but many other great civilizations flourished in Pre-Columbian Mexico as well. Few are as important and enigmatic as that of the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico. The Zapotecs built a great capitol, Monte Albán, which rose and fell long before the Spanish invasion of 1519 CE. Since the Zapotec glyphic script was no longer in use by the sixteenth century, and has not been deciphered fully, the culture’s deepest beliefs and values are hard to discern. While we do not have written texts, we can try to interpret the more multivalent messages communicated through the patterns of objects and their placement in ritual spaces of the Zapotecs. One particularly important such space is the subterranean tombs, sited under the houses of the living Zapotecs who resided at Monte Albán. Undisturbed tombs, for the archaeologist, are like time capsules ready to reveal ways of death — and life — for ancient peoples.
However, those revelations can only occur with a critical evaluation of such spaces. The archaeologist in charge of Monte Albán’s early excavations, Alfonso Caso, excavated about 175 tombs at the site in the 1930s and 40s. He planned to fully publish his work, but was pressed into bureaucratic service and eventually died without creating a cohesive description of the tombs’ contents. Decades later, I found thousands of his catalogue cards, made long before the advent of computers, but seemingly crying out for use in a database. After digitization, I was able to extract information to make diagrams of many of the tombs, and eventually worked to create interactive 3D digital models of the tombs. This talk explores two aspects of the search to give ancient tombs new life. First, examining the tombs as teaching tools for undergraduates, who not only participated in learning software and creating the digital models but also raised important new questions about these spaces. Second, in more recent work, the team this summer provided 3D printed models of some of these objects to the small community museum in San Juan Guelavía, a Zapotec-speaking town near to Monte Albán. The lecture will discuss some of the issues of return of digital and printed 3D models, the opportunities and challenges that multiple iterations provide.
Ellen Hoobler, Assistant Professor of Art History at Cornell College, has been voted one of the "40 Under 40" of "Professors Who Inspire" by the website NerdScholar.com. In 2014, she was one of the co-Directors of NEH Digital Humanities Startup Grant HD51944, "Dangerous Embodiments: Theories, Methods, and Best Practices for Historical Character Modeling in Humanities 3D Environments." Ellen has extensive experience in Latin America, particularly Mexico, and her field of specific expertise is pre-Columbian art of Mexico.
FALL 2015 SPEAKER SERIES
DHi Lecture & Workshop Series 2015-2016
“Global DH: Key Issues in Digital Scholarship”
Event co-sponsored by the Cinema & Media Studies Program, the American Studies Program, and Hamilton’s Dean of Faculty
More information at: www.dhinitiative.org/community/events
The Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) is a collaboratory funded by Hamilton College and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
