Beutner, Sabine
ication of Maria Reiche (Reiche, 1969), a german teacher and mathematician, which made them famous, together with
the books of Däniken.
Maria Reiche, who spend a large part of her life (1942 to 1998) on the harsh desert plateaus in the vicinity of the small
town of Nasca, was inspired by her mentor Paul Kosok, a historian, who, in 1941, after a flight over the pampa of Nasca,
came up as the first with the idea of these lines being pointers to star and sun constellations in the ancient sky, used by the
farmers to predict the arrival of the yearly flow of water from the Andes. As such they would have served as a huge
graphical calendar, similar to a sundial. There are many attempts to explain the geoglyphs (Kosok, Reiche, 1949; Hawk-
ins, 1969; Morrison,1978; Hadingham, 1987; Aveni, 1990; Reinhard, 1996) and a vast amount of popular literature on
the subject is available (Rohrbach, 1992; Dániken, 1970, 1997).
Figure 1. Geoglyphs of Palpa and San Ignacio. The image up left shows a line of minimal width (pocket-knife in the cen-
ter of the image shows the dimensions)
ss
However, the many investigations and attempts to verify particular hypotheses are of only fragmentary character. They
lack an element which is crucial for any scientific attempt to come up with an all-encompassing and convincing explana-
tion : A complete recording of the geoglyphs. Up to now, scientists were always concerned with only those parts of the
whole set of geoglyphs that seemed to support there individual hopotheses. This is understandable if one uses only tradi-
tional surveying equipment and techniques like theodolites and tapes. Modern technologies, like digital photogrammetry,
digital visualization and GIS enable us for the first time not only to record in 3-D all geoglyphs completely and precisely
in a joint coordinate system within a reasonable timeframe, but also provide for new analysis tools, which allow for à
more objective assessment with unbiased quantitative approaches. At the same time it is obvious that many of the
geoglyphs suffer from destruction, both through natural and human interference.
Although the pampa of Nasca is in the meantime included in the UNESCO World Heritage List and thus fairly well pro-
tected, other areas of high geoglyph concentration are totally open for human vandalism. Therefore it is high time for à
comprehensive recording of whatever is left over to the current day.
In cooperation with the Swiss-Liechtenstein Foundation for Archeological Studies Abroad (SLSA) a project was defined
that aimed (a) at the complete recording of the main geoglyph sites and (b) at the support of a team of archeologists who,
for the first time, would do excavations in the areas of geoglyphs in order to learn more about the ancient Nasca cultures
and their relations to the geoglyphs. There have been alraedy three archeological campaigns with significant findings
which also triggered great interest in the public (Reindel, 1997; Reindel, et al.,1998; Scagnet, 1998; Reindel, Isla Cuad-
rado, 1999; Schulz, 1999; Rehlünder, 2000). Also, early results of the photogrammetric processing and visualization
have been presented to the public on occasion of an exhibition in the Rietberg Museum, Zürich (Grün, 1999).
This presentation consisted of two parts: An interactive display of textured 3-D models on a SGI Onyx2 and a 3-D stereo
flyover on a 4x12 m? screen in the VisDome of ETH Zürich. In this paper we will report about the photogrammetric pa
of the project, including image acquisition, data processing and visualization of the results. This project comprises all the
elements and products of a modern project of digital photogrammetry, including
* Aerial image acquisition with kinematic GPS
* Ground control points with static GPS
* Scanning of aerial images
54 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B5. Amsterdam 2000.
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