Proceedings 18 th International Symposium CIPA 2001
Potsdam (Germany), September 18 - 21, 2001
ROCK ART PHOTOGRAMMETRY -
THE BEAR AT FONTE GRANDE II CANYON - UIBAÌ - BAHIA, BRAZIL
Gilson Dimenstein Koatz 1
Herbert J. B. Erwes 1
Hanns J. C. von Studnitz 2
Maria da Concei^ào de Moraes Coutinho Beltrào 3
1 K2 Fotografia, Arte e Precisào Ltda. - Rua Nina Rodrigues, 69/302 - Rio de Janeiro 22461-100 Brazil
e-mail: gkoatz@terra .com.br
2 Aerofoto Cruzeiro S.A. - Av. Almte. Frontin, 381 - Ramos - Rio de Janeiro 21030-040 Brazil
e-mail: aerofoto.cruzeiro@biohard.com.br
Dept. de Geologia e Paleontologia - Museu Nacional - Universidade Federai do Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
KEY WORDS: Rock Art, Brazil, Close-Range Photogrammetry, Archaeology
1. INTRODUCTION
Brazil have an expressive number of archeological sites in which the rock art paintings reveal how ancient and complex was the
astronomic knowledge of the primitive Brazilian men. Photogrammetric techniques can be employed as a reliable tool to the
archeologists to add accuracy to the documents obtained by tracing over the pictographs. This study is part of the Central Project
supported by the Museu Nacional of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro that covers 250 municipalities over an area of about
270.000 knr. Using a simple method of Close Range Photogrammetry, due to difficulties to access the site, we took three different
photos of a part of a 400nr painted wall with 4 know targets. The main subject on the wall is a bear (Arctodus Brasiliensis) covered
by four apparent trajectories of the sun during the four seasons of the year.
2. METHOD: PHOTOGRAPHY AND SIMPLIFIED GROUND CONTROL
To do the documentation of this canyon we used a Nikon F2AS camera equipped with a 35mm / 2.8 Nikkor lens and negative color
film Fuji Value with speed of 200 ISO. The camera was mounted on a tripod. The photographs were taken, around 01:00 PM, and
quickly, once the sun started to project shadows over the wall.
The canyon of Fonte Grande II, in the municipality of Uibai, Bahia, is located in a region with hard access, after a walk mountain up
of about two and half hours we reached the site. Therefore, it was impossible to transport the traditional topographic equipments,
besides of the photographic equipment, with our little team.
So, we decided to employ a simplified ground control system to determine the coordinates of the points, with the following
configuration:
- Four targets have been placed at the extremities of the area to define an approximate plane.
- Six measurements in between of these 4 points have been taken.
An arbitrary system of coordinates have been adopted with the Z plane constant, with its origin at point 14, and abscissa axis
formed by points 14 and 15., (Figure 1).
- The coordinates X and Y were calculated by known formulae, and the results are shown in the table below:
Point number
X
14
50.000
15
52.506
16
52.617
17
50.174
Y Z
10.000
20.000
10.000
20.000
10.516
20.000
10.686
20.000
