3D scanning a Maya figurine- or is that whistle or ocarina?

maddisenneuman
Jul 25, 2018
3 min read

For my very last semester of graduate school, I decided to take a 3D imaging course- mostly for fun and a little bit to learn a new skill. The best classes are those you take out of pure curiosity (like that time a took a dinosaur biology class in college). Because the professor, Dr. Heather McKillop, is a renowned Maya archaeologist, we were fortunate enough to be able to scan genuine Maya artifacts from her excavations in Belize. The Maya inhabited Central America as early as 1800 BC in what is now the coast of Guatemala.

The class scanned a different item almost every week, including a potsherd, stone tool (that was a doozy! My exceptionally thin stone tool scan was great- until it wasn’t. Thin, shiny, surfaces are difficult to scan!), hand bone, a piece of wet wood (kept wet for preservation purposes) and a final project scanning a Maya figurine that’s either a whistle or an ocarina.

Figurine, Whistle, or Ocarina- Oh My!

While deciding on what to call the artifact that was the subject of our final project may sound like a line from The Wizard of Oz, there is a little bit of explanation for the confusing terminology. Cameron Bourg (1) conducted thesis research about the Ancient Maya and their use of music. Bourg focused on ceramic aerophones, or wind instruments like flutes, ocarinas and whistles. Today, ceramic ocarinas and flutes can be played by scholars to understand the music of the Maya- imagine playing a thousand-year-old musical instrument!

A Maya ocarina is essentially a flute with a globular body capable of playing a variety of tones and pitches. Although historically referred to as whistles, the majority of Maya ocarinas produce two more notes than a whistle. Ocarinas are the most abundant Maya musical artifacts, but they are absent from vessel depictions, murals, and codices which suggests that the ocarinas were not an elite object. Effigy ocarinas and figurines of pregnant women suggest that ocarinas were used by the common class in agriculture and fertility rituals. Bourg proposes that the ocarina satisfied the need for music of a more common class; and that the ocarina was an essential part of music making for the ancient Maya culture.

Now we know how these ocarinas are distinguished from other Maya artifacts and what separates them from other musical instruments. While the figurine I was assigned doesn’t have any whistle holes (there’s probably a legitimate name for those...), it does have a globular body like Bourg described. It also appears to be a female figure, so I like to think that this figurine was used in some sort of harvest or fertility ritual.

Scan-tastic!

Get it? “Fantastic” but with “scan” at the front? No? One of those “had-to-be-there” things? Yeah. Anyway, now that we know a “Maya ocarina” is a flute-like instrument with a globular body, I think it’s safe to call my Maya artifact an ocarina and I can tell you how I scanned it!

The scanners available in the lab were NextEngines laser scanners equipped with ScanStudio software. I began by placing my figurine vertically on the NextEngine platform and held it in place with the stabilizing arm and set the scanner to do a 360° rotation, stopping eight times to scan the ocarina. Typically, five scans work well, but I wanted to make sure that the scanner was able to pick up the interior space of the figurine. After those scans were finished- you guessed it- I turned the figurine horizontally and followed the same procedures.

After the surfaces of the artifact have been scanned, unnecessary data points from the scanning platform and stabilizing arm can be trimmed away digitally. To align the scans, the scans are placed side-by-side on the screen and matching data points are picked from each scan that will help the ScanStudio software bring the two scans together. If multiple scans are taken, these steps will need to be done multiple times. Once satisfied with the alignment, the image can be fused in order to create a watertight image that can be shared into different files types. If 3D printing, this is the file that gets printed.

Thanks to a grant Dr. McKillop was awarded, the whole class was able to 3D print their figurines two ways- with gypsum and plastic. The gypsum is more true-to-life, but the plastic is more durable and great for teaching. Now, enough of the boring stuff. Check out the images of the scans! Tip: Hover over each photo to see a quikc description.