Archaeological reports are often illustrated with drawings
of artifacts, rather than photographs. Historically,
this may be due to the difficulty of taking photographs or the cost of
reproducing them. However, there are still at least two good reasons to use
drawings rather than (or at least in conjunction with) photographs. First,
drawings often reproduce better than photos; by the third copy of a copy, most
photos are incomprehensible blurs of pixels.
Second, even in an original, schematic drawings often do a better job of
presenting the characteristics of interest than photographs. For example, it’s quite difficult to take a
photograph that accurately presents the profile (cross section of the original
pot shape) of a sherd, but drawing one isn’t all that hard.
Following this general logic, we drew several examples of
each type in the Calixtlahuaca Project type collection. The drawing was a piecemeal process over
several field seasons, followed by an intensive push last summer to finish
things off. Especially during the last
season, students from UAEM’s Tenancingo archaeology program did much of the
drawing. Hopefully, this provided them
with a general idea of what Postclassic ceramics look like in the Toluca
Valley, and knowledge of how our project chose to classify that diversity.
Rosario and Edgar drawing in the lab at the Colegio Mexiquense |
Kea digitizing in the office at ASU |
1 comment:
Hey, shouldn't these dedicated student workers be named? At least those in the photos.
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