The Proyecto Arqueológico Cueca Mirador is the driving force behind the excavation and analysis of the Mirador Basin region of Guatemala, under the direction of Richard Hansen and Edgar Suyac. The National Museum of the American Indian travelled to Guatemala City to talk with Edgar, who is Co-Director of the project, and a pre-eminent scholar of Mayan descent.

I was overjoyed to be back in Guatemala City, and am tremendously thankful for the kindness and hospitality shown us by Edgar, his team of archeologists, and especially his protegé Enrique Hernández who took us on a tour of Guaté following our interview.

Enrique took us to some archeological sites that are associated with Kaminaljuyu, once one of the largest Mayan cities in the world, which now lies buried beneath present-day Guatemala City. Only a few exposed mounds remain of this once great urban center, and some excavations have revealed a rich and elaborate cityscape whose true grandeur may be lost to history forever. What still lives on, however, is the heartbeat of the Mayan people themselves, whose varied and rich culture is still thriving in this splendorous country of hardship and hospitality.

From there, we’ve launched ourselves into Lima, Peru; a dense urban landscape on the dry ocean plain of Peru’s Pacific coast. Tomorrow we have another interview, and then I will depart alone for the Northern Coast, where I hope to spend some time amongst the relics of the Moche culture that pre-dates the majesty of the Incan Empire by many centuries, perhaps visit Cajamarca in the Northern Highlands of the Peruvian Andes, and fit in some time to unwind!

It’s been awhile since I last posted an item to my blog, but I think there’s a new trip you might like to hear about!

Wednesday I’ll be leaving for Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. We’ll be shooting an interview there with Edgar Suyac, a Guatemalan archeologist, for an upcoming Smithsonian Exhibition called ‘Infinity of Nations.’ While there I hope to visit Antigua once again, which is one of my favorite Central American cities. It is a beautifully vibrant city located in the Central Highlands just a short trip from the capital that still bears the scars from a volcanic mudflow that devastated the city during the 16th century.

From there, we’ll be flying to Lima, Peru which will be my first time crossing into South America. We’ll buzz right over Costa Rica, which previously was the southernmost country I ever visited.

In Lima, we’ll be shooting an interview with a Quechua historian. The subject matter of this interview is a carved gourd from the Arica region (close to the Chilean border.)

After my work is done, I hope to explore the Northern section of Peru. I have heard terrible stories of deadly land-slides in the region of Cuzco and Machu Picchu, so I have decided to stay away. Transportation is reputedly impossible in some parts of this tourist mecca; and I wouldn’t want to strain an already overwhelmed infrastructure just for my sightseeing pleasures.

There are many interesting sights and experiences in the North: pre-Incan sites hidden in the cloud-forests of Chachapoyas, rich ancient tombs of the Sipán culture around the coastal city of Chiclayo, and the unique contemporary afro-peruvian culture of the Ecuadorian border region. Suffice to say, I am very excited about the journey, and thankful for the opportunity to see this fascinating part of the world.

Please keep an eye here, on my blog, and I will try my best to post updates from the road.

Photograph by Marlin Lum

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, or RTI, is a computational photographic technique that produces detailed computer models of surfaces from photographs. Typically, when capturing a sequence of RTI photographs, one places the camera on a stable platform and takes many pictures while moving a light source around the object one wants to model. From these photographs, computer software is able to analyze the subject and generate a topographical model. This model can then be interactively re-lit or manipulated to produce highly detailed images. Oftentimes the RTI model conveys far more information than any single photograph that went into its production. You can think of it as a powerful method of analyzing surfaces; more powerful than any photograph could possibly be.

For many fields of scientific or cultural inquiry, such robust analysis is exciting and meaningful. Think of a painting conservator able to see new detail in brushstrokes on the surface of a canvas; or an archeologist divining new insights into the methods used to produce a petroglyph far out in the field. Such new methods of seeing hold the potential to unlock new knowledge, and greatly facilitate important scholarship.

In the spirit of advancing these methods, the National Museum of the American Indian participated in a grant from the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training to bring the non-profit group Cultural Heritage Imaging to Washington DC for a week of hands-on instruction in RTI.

On June 8-11, 2009 I joined Mark Christal (Multimedia Co-ordinator for the NMAI), a group of conservators from our museum and the Museum Conservation Institute, and the staff of C-H-I to learn the techniques involved in capturing a good RTI sequence.

Cultural Heritage Imaging is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in California whose mission is to advance the use of advanced digital imaging techniques in the field of cultural preservation. C-H-I travels the world training archeologists, museum professionals, and material cultural documentation experts in RTI and other imaging techniques.

By the end of our week together, we had generated quite a few excellent RTI sequences which I hope to post to my website soon. Part of the NMAI’s role in the grant was to help generate educational materials for the C-H-I website, in order to facilitate future training. Mark and I spent the last day of training with C-H-I staff shooting video clips of the RTI process for the site. It is our hope that future students of RTI will be able to use the clips to better learn the technique.

After 30 minutes in the internet cafe, I have one photo online! Never fear, I have taken hundreds, and will be sorting and uploading them when I get home (which will be a huge job, as I already have taken so many, and I still have a few weeks to go…)

This is the view down the valley here, it’s a long way to the bottom. The streets in San Mateo are precipitously steep, yet children play soccer on them: that is a high-stakes game for sure! I can imagine many lost balls have come to rest far down this beautiful canyon.

This week I pack my bags, cross my ‘T’s, and dot my ‘I’s; Saturday I am leaving town, bound for Guatemala!

I’m not going alone, and I will be working; The Smithsonian is conducting a virtual museum workshop in the Chuj Mayan community of San Mateo Ixtatin in the mountainous western highlands (elevation 8500 feet) and I will be providing photography instruction along with two co-workers, Mark and Emily. Our goal is to give the students enough hands-on time with camera equipment and internet publishing software to create a virtual museum of their community for the web.

If you are interested in the school we’ll be visiting, you can see their website at http://www.ixtatan.org/

I want to keep people updated on our work, and what I’ll be up to. Please come back for more information and pictures from the trip. We will have internet access there, amazingly!

Meanwhile, I should really get back to packing.

Somewhere in an industrial maze near Bladensburg Maryland, there is a huge warehouse home to mad-scientist model makers who churn out 3D printed copies of human skulls, and eerie Abraham Lincoln ghost hands. I visited this place: a non-descript warehouse where Smithsonian Central employees design and create brilliantly crafted models and displays that give life to museum exhibits. They craft amazing things here using traditional sculpture and craft techniques; and also do some really amazing things with high-tech CNC milling machines and 3D printers (also called Rapid Prototype Machines.) They are currently using data from laser scanners and medical CAT scan machines to quickly make perfect copies of objects from the Smithsonian collection.

Here is an incredible example of some close-up detail on a human skull printed one a new generation 3D printer:

Here is a print of Abraham Lincoln’s hand taken from a plaster cast impression:

There are more pictures in my Flickr set too, it was a great tour!

My former boss, who is a multimedia guru, and I are hoping to get a digital imaging working group going at the museum which would include things like laser scanning and close-range photogrammetry. One of the things we’d love to use 3D imaging for is documenting Incan stonework for the upcoming ‘Inca Road’ exhibit…