How Can We Understand Past Human–Environment Interaction? Multiple Spatiotemporal 3D Reconstructions of Natural and Cultural Landscapes at the Dongzhao Site in Central China
摘要
Reconstructing the evolution of the site landscape is an effective approach for comprehending past human–environment interactions and ensuring the sustainability of cultural heritage. Nevertheless, multiple spatiotemporal 3D reconstructions that incorporate both natural and cultural landscapes remain scarce because of the absence of systematic reconstructive methods. Taking the Dongzhao Site—a Neolithic to Bronze Age archaeological site in central China—as the research object, this paper establishes a technical system featuring multi-source data integration, multimodal information extraction, classified individual modeling and multi-scale scene fusion, and systematically reconstructs the spatiotemporal evolution of the site’s natural landscapes and cultural landscapes. This study integrates multi‑source data such as UAV photogrammetry, LiDAR scanning, historical remote sensing imagery, archaeological survey and stratigraphic data. It adopts the SfM method to invert the topography and geomorphology of the site across different periods, uses SketchUp for accurate individual modeling of cultural landscapes, constructs paleovegetation models via image‑based modeling, and relies on ArcGIS Pro to achieve spatial registration, scale fusion and multi‑period 3D scene generation of natural and cultural landscape models. Finally, a series of 3D maps showing the multi‑period evolution of natural and cultural landscapes at the Dongzhao Site are generated, which vividly reveal the evolutionary process of the site’s landscapes and provide detailed data for interpreting the interactions between the natural environment and human activities in different periods. The multi‑spatiotemporal 3D reconstruction method for natural and cultural site landscapes proposed in this paper can provide a universal technical solution and important support for landscape 3D reconstruction, archaeological research, and the protection and utilization of similar archaeological sites.