HigH Definition Digital Documentation at tHe crystal river arcHaeological site (8ci1) Lori D. CoLLins 1 anD Travis F. Doering 2 Alliance for Integrated Spatial Technologies and the Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620 E-mail: 1 lcollins@cas.usf.edu, 2 tdoering@cas.usf.edu voL. 62(1) The FLoriDa anThropoLogisT MarCh-2009 introduction This report details the initial data collection and processing segment of an on-going study that involves three-dimensional spatial recording and conventional mapping procedures that is being undertaken at the Crystal River archaeological site (8CI1) in Citrus County, Florida (Figure 1). This opening phase of the project (2006-2007) was conducted for the purpose of creating highly accurate two-dimensional projections and three-dimensional representations of the site and its topographic features. It is also the irst documented technical mapping survey of the site since Clarence Bloomield (C. B.) Moore’s effort in 1903. The product of this opening segment of the project serves as a spatially correct, fully georeferenced baseline of the site with the resulting data providing a vertical and horizontal control network with better than 1 cm accuracy (Collins and Doering 2007). This established control network is available to all future archaeological investigations at the site including aerial or subsurface remote sensing surveys, excavations, and restorations. The Crystal River site was selected for this project for a number of reasons. Weisman (1995a:1) states, “The Crystal River archaeological site…is an enduring cultural monument to the achievements of aboriginal societies long vanished from the Gulf coastal wetlands of north peninsular Florida.” Yet, despite investigations initiated in the early 1900s which clearly demonstrated the signiicance of the settlement and its surrounding support zone to archaeological research in the Southeast United States, only sporadic examinations have occurred since. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, this prominent Florida archaeological site has not been adequately studied or documented. Ripley Bullen (1951) described the site as “enigmatic,” meaning not easily explained, perplexing, or obscure. Fundamental baseline data remained incomplete and inaccurate and “[u]ncertainties exist at every level of archaeological inference” (Weisman 1995a:1). As an initial step toward addressing these uncertainties and deiciencies, and to provide an accurate spatial foundation on which future investigations could build, our project will record the Crystal River mound complex and associated archaeological features using High Deinition Digital Documentation (H3D) techniques. H3D is an approach that entails the acquisition, processing, and visualization of exceedingly rich and highly accurate, three-dimensional spatial data through a combination of conventional, progressive, and cutting-edge methods. Through an H3D approach, the archaeological record can be documented and archived at multiple scales: artifact, feature, site, and landscape. The spatial arrangement of the site, its features and landscape components are connected to a real-world coordinate system and, once the complete data are captured, analysis can take place in a near ‘virtual’ environment. The resultant spatial control database will be adaptable for archaeological and cultural heritage preservation programs and future research initiatives. This project is a recent event in a continuum of spatial documentation for the purpose of archaeological analysis that began in the American Southeast in the nineteenth century using compass and ield survey chains (Moore 1903; Squire and Davis 1848). The objectives of this current project are comparable to those of the earlier surveys, to acquire and incorporate accurate spatial data into the analysis of mound groups, settlement patterns, and other human modiications of the landscape across space and time. The importance of these spatial analyses for understanding and interpreting human behaviors was recognized early on and expressed in the seminal study of mound groups conducted by Squier and Davis (1848:61). Gordon Willey was immersed in the archaeology of Florida and the southeast United States between 1936 and 1950 (see Milanich 2007 for an extensive listing of Willey’s publications on his work in Florida). His 1948 publication, Archeology of the Florida Gulf Coast, has remained a “mainstay” for any archaeological investigation in the Southeast for more than half a century (Milanich 2007:15). His years of examining site types and settlement patterns in the southeast United States played a signiicant role in his pioneering work on settlement patterns in the Virú Valley of Peru that he later applied to numerous other archaeological regions (Willey 1953, 1956, 1974, 1999; Willey and Phillips 1958). He concluded that “[s]ettlement patterns are, to a large extent, directly shaped by widely held cultural needs, they offer a strategic starting point for the functional interpretation of archaeological cultures” (Willey 1953:1). Another major contribution of his work was to examine archaeological evidence on a broader landscape or regional scale instead of a restricted intersite focus. Instead of looking at a site in isolation, his work suggested that to better understand the prehistory of a site would require a consideration of the larger regional context.