Thursday, November 21, 2013

Watch Your Step: You Are (Virtually) Here

Posted By on Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:00 PM

Almost anywhere you put your foot down here, especially anywhere downtown, you're in the footsteps of a good four or five thousand years of folks who led the way. Preservation archaeologist and digital-media specialist Doug Gann reveals what we know about what's underfoot in a presentation "You Are Here: Virtual Tucson" at 7 p.m. tonight at Maker House, 283 N. Stone Ave.

We don't call it the "Old Pueblo" for nothing. Pit houses and other signs of early civilization here may be buried under half our parking lots. Our downtown mountains—"A" and Tumamoc — sport blankets of centuries-old pot sherds and other signs of human life, even after decades of pillaging by souvenir-seekers.

Lifelong Tucsonan Doug Gann got the archaeology bug early, poking around adobe ruins near his childhood home on the Northwest side. For the past 25 years he's merged his passions for archaeology and computer technology to create a "digital time machine" to reveal what archaeology tells us about layers of civilization in the Southwest.

Gann's work for Archaeology Southwest gives us a vision of a virtual antiquity that brings it to life and makes it real.

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