Cave Rock, located at Lake Tahoe in Nevada, is an important landscape feature to the communities of the Tahoe Basin and the focus of my Institute project. The prominent rock outcrop extends down from the Tahoe Basin rim into the water, and is a sentinel feature with important cultural associations both in the past and present. Several early 20th century Lincoln Highway tunnel projects were completed through the rock without input from the Native American that traditionally lived at Lake Tahoe, who believe that the rock cannot be altered without spiritual repercussions.
Project Context
Early last year, a rock slide on Cave Rock further altered the traditional appearance, and additional work will be needed to stabilize the rock face from future falls. This digital archaeology project will bring together the digital data being collected for that project, and the historical photos taken before the highway tunnel projects, recreating the appearance of the rock before the alterations. The historic photographs will be meshed over digital surfaces captured using several 3D technologies, and will be available to the public on a website. Website visitors will be able to interact with the 3D (and 4D) objects, experiencing the changes to the landscape over time, and will hopefully leave with a sense of the story of Cave Rock.
Bringing the Past to Light
Remember that last scene from the first Indiana Jones movie? The Lost Ark was boxed and stored in a dusty warehouse to be forgotten. The Cave Rock project is a wonderful chance to take information not readily available to the public and renew our view into the past. The hands-on training in digital methods and techniques through the Institute on Digital Archaeology Method and Practice open up new horizons for returning legacy data to the spotlight, instead of leaving the past on a forgotten shelf. I am looking forward to challenging our use of digital data this year, and probably failing and backing up a few times as I piece together the story of Cave Rock, both literally and figuratively.
Beth Smith, Lead Archaeologist
Nevada Department of Transportation