Week 6

3-D Elevation Model

This process showed me about not only the process of creating elevation models, but the number of models that can be created through Arc Scene and Arc Map.  As this was my first encounter with Arc Scene, it was exciting to see a 3-D model come together easily.  This has a lot of potential for archaeological purposes; oftentimes, the geography around the sites we are studying was seen as important, and we need a visually stimulating way to presenting that data.  Arc Scene is definitely a good program to use for this purpose.  For Arc Map, it is useful to display the slope and aspect layers, as the slope layer gives the viewer a concrete idea of the elevations in relation to the surrounding raster cells, and the aspect layer serves to dramatize these elevation changes.  Overall, the process of creating elevation models not only allowed me to experiment with the Arc Map and Arc Scene programs, but helped me learn about tools that I will be using in the future.