Wednesday, September 12, 2001

Archaeology Project Will Recreate an Ancient Assyrian Palace Electronically By BROCK READ The Northwest Palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II served as a model for centuries of Assyrian architecture that followed it. Samuel Paley, a professor of classics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, hopes to create an archetype of similar importance with a project that aims to digitally recreate the palace. Mr. Paley is co-director the project, which will produce a virtual tour of Ashur-nasir-pal's palace, built in the ninth century B.C. in the ancient city of Nimrud, in what is now Iraq. The virtual palace will take years to complete -- especially, Mr. Paley says, because "we're inching along, raising money as we go" -- but prototypes and pieces of footage can be viewed at the university's Virtual Site Museum and at the Web site of Learning Sites, a company based in Williamstown, Mass., that produces digital-archaeology projects. Donald Sanders of Learning Sites conceived the project with Mr. Paley and has worked on the virtual rendering. The tour, it turns out, is more sophisticated than the computer-game environment one might anticipate. Users will be able to control avatars -- digital figures representing themselves -- that allow them to navigate the palace on their own, focusing on their particular areas of interest. Eventually, Mr. Paley says, the avatars should be able to speak, providing information about the surroundings in response to simple questions. Mr. Paley and Thenkurussi Kesavadas, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the university who directs the technological aspects of the project, are also adapting haptic tools more commonly used in flight training. Mr. Kesavadas has developed touch-sensitive gloves that could eventually allow users, through their avatars, to feel sculptures and reliefs, an opportunity Mr. Paley says would never be available in a conventional museum. Since the reconstruction has to be convincing not just visually but also to the touch, Mr. Paley places considerable importance on the accuracy and detail of the virtual palace. He is collecting information from many sources. Past expeditions to the site by British, Polish, and Iraqi groups have kept the palace's remains "fairly well preserved" and documented, but some of the reconstruction is still based on comparative study and speculation. "We've got a pretty good idea of what the roofs look like, using evidence from other palaces," Mr. Paley says. There's also plenty of legwork: Pieces of the palace are spread across 65 museums and collections worldwide. Mr. Paley has worked with Richard P. Sobolewski, a research assistant at the University of Warsaw's Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology, and Alison B. Snyder, a research assistant at the University of Oregon, to gain information about the site of the palace and about which museums hold which artifacts. The digital reconstruction, Mr. Paley says, is intended not just as a piece of scholarship, but also as a teaching tool. While the complete tour will most likely never be posted on the Internet, it will serve as the centerpiece of a DVD that will also feature texts, a bibliography, and a timeline detailing museums' acquisitions of pieces from the palace. Mr. Paley plans to produce DVD's in several different forms, which could be tailored to museums or primary or secondary schools. "A museum may come to us, and they might be able to get a video which centers on the reliefs they have," he says. This has already happened at the Williams College Museum of Art, which is currently showing a special exhibition of its two reliefs from the palace, augmented by video simulations showing their context in the structure as a whole. One of the greatest assets of virtual-archaeology projects such as this is their flexibility, Mr. Paley says. "When you do things digitally, if you make mistakes, you can go back and change them. Even in our own projects we can add information relatively easily, and bring people up to date as our research develops." He hopes that the project will become part of -- maybe even a model for -- a "blossoming" of digital archaeology. The project has also given Mr. Paley a new appreciation for Assyrian architecture. "I've been doing work on Assyrian reliefs and archaeology since the mid-1960's, and until I started doing this project I didn't realize how complex the whole process of creating such a building was," he says. "When you pass through doors and you see certain reliefs first, as they were meant to be seen, that helps expand your understanding of the relationship between the art and the architecture." Even more important, according to Mr. Paley, is digital archaeology's potential for protecting the past. Iraq is struggling to keep its few remaining ancient buildings in decent condition, Mr. Paley says, and that's where his work comes in: "It's a good way to record heritage." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Colleges cancel classes after terrorist attacks; Pace U. had program in World Trade Center U.S. should finance more stem-cell lines, National Academy of Sciences report urges Jordan revives its Ministry of Higher Education Archaeology project will recreate an ancient Assyrian palace electronically San Diego company quietly provides online courses to nearly 1,000 institutions