3D Archaeology of Archaeology: remote sensing and digital mapping to rediscover the ancient Greek city of Heloros (Sicily)

Davide Tanasi
Professor, Department of History, University of South Florida

This talk is sponsored jointly by the AIA Charlottesville, Department of Anthropology, and the Department of Art

Heloros, located on Sicily’s Ionian shore, is believed to be the first sub-colony of the Greek city of Syracuse. Despite its historical significance, it remains relatively obscure. The Heloros Advanced Digital Exploration and Surveying (HADES) project seeks to clarify the site’s architectural and topographical evolution from its uncertain foundation in the late 8th century BCE to its heyday, in the Late Hellenistic period, and beyond. By digitizing and verifying legacy data and integrating them with newly acquired 3D geospatial documentation—employing global positioning, digital photogrammetry, drones, LIDAR, and ground-penetrating radar—this project reveals new insights into Heloros' history, including its pre-Greek occupation and revised interpretations of key structures. Using Heloros as a case study, this talk illustrates how the 'digital excavation' approach can yield substantial archaeological knowledge without new physical digs. The process of datafication, which involves creating new data through the layered collection of natively digital and digitized legacy data, guided the efforts for virtual reconstruction and future planning. This methodology resurfaced unpublished or previously unknown information about the site, verified interpretative hypotheses, and generated significant new data to rewrite the history of this important yet little-known Greek city.