Investigating the Monumental Fortification Walls of the Vedi Fortress of Armenia through Digital 3D Reconstruction

Abstract

<p>The Vedi Fortress protects the entrance to the Vedi River Valley of Armenia along the southeastern edge of the Ararat Plain. Still visible on this site's surface are two lines of monumental fortification walls, together over 400 meters long. First constructed during the Late Bronze Age (LBA; ca 1550-1200 BCE) and reused in the Early Medieval (Late Antique; ca 450-650 CE) period, these fortifications are contributing new information about the emergence of LBA fortress culture in the Southern Caucasus. Several segments of the walls are well preserved, but others have deteriorated to varying degrees over time. This leaves us with many questions about how the walls interacted with the site’s topography, how certain areas of the site were enclosed, and how the walls would have originally appeared to people, including with features such as gates and towers. To address these questions, we combine careful field observation, high resolution 3D photogrammetric scanning by hand and by drone, and the painstaking 3D digital reconstruction of the walls. We are specifically foregrounding 3D modeling as a process for studying architecture given its exacting nature, which forces us to make explicit decisions on how each part of the walls would have looked in the past. This paper presents both our process and our results, the 3D model itself and our enhanced understanding of the site. Through this detailed investigation, we are gaining new perspectives on the purposes, functions, and the underlying community-formation processes that led to the construction of the Vedi Fortress. <br></p>