The ancient Egyptian burial site of Saqqara has been studied for more than a century, due to the importance of the location for political, religious and architectural history. One of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, it is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.
由于地理位置在政治、宗教和建筑历史上的重要性，对古埃及塞加拉金字塔的研究已经超过一个世纪。作为该国最受欢迎的旅游目的地之一，它被联合国教科文组织列为世界遗产。
But a new “born-digital” publication by UC Santa Cruz associate history professor Elaine Sullivan takes a fresh look at the region to demonstrate how the site has evolved over more than 2,500 years.
但加州大学圣克鲁兹分校（UC Santa Cruz）的副教授Elaine Sullivan在新一期的《born-digital》出版物中，对该地区进行了全新的审视，展示该地区在2500多年的历史变迁中的变化。
Titled “Constructing the Sacred: Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis of Saqqara” — it has just been published by Stanford University Press, as part of their new series of monographs and scholarly publications.
这篇题为《构建神圣：埃及塞加拉金字塔的可见性和仪式景观》的文章刚刚由斯坦福大学出版社出版，作为他们新出版的一系列专著和学术出版物的一部分。
Sullivan’s project uses 3-D technologies to enhance Geographic Information Systems (GIS) — one of the prevalent formats for data organization in modern archaeology — in order to create interactive models that can be navigated through space and time to explore the Egyptian site.
Sullivan的项目使用3D技术来增强地理信息系统(GIS)——现代考古学中数据组织的流行格式之一——以创建交互模型，通过时空导航来探索埃及遗址。
“Ancient landscapes are a major focus of study in the field of archaeology, with dozens of publications appearing annually on the interaction between humans, culture, and the natural and built environment at sites around the world,” said Sullivan. “While clearly of great interest to scholars, these past places remain elusive. The archaeological sites we visit today are palimpsests — the result of thousands of years of change, both architectural and environmental.”
“古代景观是考古学领域的一个主要研究重点，每年都有数十份出版物发表，内容涉及人类、文化、世界各地遗址的自然和建筑环境之间的相互作用，” Sullivan说。尽管学者们显然对这些地方很感兴趣，但这些古老的地方仍然难以捉摸。我们今天参观的考古遗址是文明化的，这是数千年建筑和环境变化的结果。”
Sullivan noted that due to significant modification and degradation, direct field observation of embodied past spaces is often impossible today.
Sullivan指出，由于大量的改造和风化，让今天直接实地观察曾经的风貌变得不可行。
“Building superstructures have collapsed or been remodeled, monuments have been purposefully modified or destroyed, rivers have shifted, and lakes have disappeared,” said Sullivan. “In Egypt, for example, the Nile river has shifted course, and meters of sand from the Sahara Desert have covered ancient buildings. At most long-lived ancient sites, it is difficult to reimagine so many layers of change simultaneously. My born-digital monograph presents an innovative methodology for examining such landscape change at ancient sites — a view only possible to attain with the aid of new technologies.”
“建筑的上部结构已经倒塌或被重建，金字塔已经被有意修改或破坏，河流已经转移，湖泊已经消失，” Sullivan说。“例如，在埃及，尼罗河改道，来自撒哈拉沙漠的沙子覆盖了古迹。在大多数长存的古迹，很难一下重新想象这么多层面的变化。我在《born-digital》提出了一种创新的方法来研究古迹的景观变化——这种观点只有在新技术的帮助下才有可能实现。”
Sullivan pointed out that the 3-D environment in her project allows the researcher to examine the site from an explicitly human point-of-view, and to question how cultural symbolism or importance was embedded within the lived landscape.
Sullivan指出，在她的项目中，3D环境允许研究人员从明确的人类视角来审视场地，并质疑文化象征或重要性是如何嵌入到生活景观中的。
“I consider myself a 'digital humanist,' a scholar that is interested in exploring the potential of digital technologies for the Humanities,” said Sullivan. “As a historian, I'm focused on understanding the human experience in the past through the examination of text, art, architecture, and other forms of material culture. But although people in the past lived in a three-dimensional world, we generally communicate our research about them in 2-D. That leaves out a lot of important information.”
“我认为自己是一个‘数字人文主义者’，一个对探索数字技术对人文学科的潜力感兴趣的学者，” Sullivan说。“作为一名历史学家，我专注于通过研究文本、艺术、建筑和其他形式的物质文化来理解人类过去的经历。过去的人们生活在一个三维的世界里，但是我们通常用二维的方式来对他们进行研究。这就会导致很多重要信息的遗漏。”
“So a number of scholars have taken on the challenge of re-thinking aspects of the humanities to include a richer level of information that tries to incorporate three-dimensional objects and spaces and change over time,” she added. “I'm just one of many people experimenting with new ways to use digital tools to record and communicate aspects of history.”
“因此，许多学者已经重新开始思考人文学科，包括试图用更丰富的信息将三维物体和空间结合起来，理解它们随着时间推移而发生的改变，”她补充说。“很多人都在尝试使用数字工具来记录和认识历史，我只是其中之一。”
Sullivan joined the UC Santa Cruz faculty in 2013. Her field experience in Egypt includes five seasons of excavation with Johns Hopkins University at the temple of the goddess Mut (Luxor), as well as four seasons in the field with a UCLA project in the Egyptian Fayum, at the Greco-Roman town of Karanis.
Sullivan于2013年加入加州大学圣克鲁斯分校。她在埃及的野外工作经历包括与约翰·霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins University)在卢克索神庙(temple of the goddess Mut, Luxor)的五个季节的挖掘工作，以及与加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)在埃及法约姆(Fayum)的一个项目在卡拉尼斯(Karanis)的四个季节的野外工作。
She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Egyptian art and archaeology from Johns Hopkins University, and her B.A. in history from Duke University.
她在约翰霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins University）获得埃及艺术和考古学的硕士和博士学位，在杜克大学(Duke University)获得历史学学士学位。
“In my time at UC Santa Cruz, I've focused on building our Digital Humanities programs,” said Sullivan. “McHenry library now has a digital scholarship commons, where students from my undergraduate classes, for example, have used virtual reality headsets to walk through an Egyptian tomb we are studying in class. In spring quarter, I am co-teaching (with Professor Zac Zimmer in Literature) UC Santa Cruz's first graduate course in Digital Humanities. We want our graduate students to be engaged with these developments and ready to incorporate digital technologies into their own research, when appropriate.”
“我在加州大学圣克鲁斯分校（UCSC）的时候，一直专注于建设我们的数字人文项目，”Sullivan说。“麦克亨利图书馆（McHenry library）现在有一个数字奖学金共享地，例如，我的本科班学生使用虚拟现实头盔走进我们在课堂上学习的一座埃及金字塔。在春季学期，我与Zac Zimmer教授(文学教授)合作了加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的第一门数字人文学科的研究生课程。我们希望我们的研究生能够参与进来，并在适当的时候将数字技术融入到他们自己的研究中去。”
