Digital ruins: exploring digital heritage methods in the Ottoman and British colonial landscape of TAESP

Tracy Ireland of the University of Canberra presents an experimental project, conducted with PhD student Tessa Bell and collaborator Neil Urwin, that re-examines Ottoman and British colonial remains documented during the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP). Between 2000 and 2005, TAESP, a joint project of the University of Glasgow, the University of Cyprus, and Oregon State University co-directed by Michael Given, Bernard Knapp, Jay Noller, and Vasiliki Kassianidou, surveyed the northern Troodos foothills.

Ireland first outlines the theoretical premise of her "Digital Ruins" project, questioning the optimism surrounding 3D scanning and "preservation by record" promoted by organisations such as CyArk. Citing critiques by Sarah May and William Kilbride of the Digital Preservation Coalition, she distinguishes digital data capture from genuine digital preservation, noting problems of technological obsolescence, corporate abandonment, and what some scholars term digital colonialism. Drawing on Bruno Latour's concept of "black boxing" and the archaeological and digital ethnography of Yannis Hamilakis, Michael Shanks, and Sarah Pink, Ireland approaches consumer-grade photogrammetry software (Agisoft Photoscan Pro) as an ethnographic field site where human choices, movements, and interpretations remain embedded in what appear to be objective models.

She then turns to her earlier TAESP historical archaeology fieldwork at the abandoned seasonal villages of Asinou and Mandres, occupied from the 18th to the early 20th century across the transition from Ottoman to British rule. Challenging British colonial stereotypes of backward Cypriot peasantry, TAESP argued that these settlements, threshing floors, and watermills reflect intensive Ottoman agricultural production later disrupted when British infrastructure projects and the Skouriotissa copper mine drew villagers into wage labour. At Asinou, overlooking the church of Panagia Forviotissa, Ireland recorded mud-mortared walls and flat mud roofs built and patched over three centuries, containing eroding pithos, medieval sgraffito, and Roman amphora sherds.

Returning in November 2017 alongside Erin Gibson's community fieldwork, Ireland's team generated 3D models of a watermill at Nikitari and the overgrown ruins of Asinou. Unlike the sanitized, vegetation-free models typical of online repositories like Sketchfab, the software struggled with Asinou's collapsed walls, caper bushes, and wild olives, exposing the subjective authorship behind 3D visualisations. In the discussion that follows, participants address software obsolescence (including early digital walkthroughs of the Paphos theatre that no longer run), the risk that digital recording replaces physical conservation, and how these methods might apply to ancient ruins.