59. Caves as Cultural Heritage: 3D Documentation of Dikteon Andron in Crete

The significant role that caves play in the preservation of cultural heritage and archaeology has been long recognised. This paper describes the use of 3D digital surveying for the geometric documentation and modelling of the Dikteon Andron Cave in Crete. As it stands today, the cave consists of five chambers with an upper and lower section. The difficult environmental conditions of caves and the presence of a complex geometry (free-form shapes) require dedicated geomatic techniques which involve proper field procedures to collect data and good processing techniques to obtain the maximum content of information. The approach used to implement a 3D geometric documentation of the entire volume of the cavity of the upper cave and the external part of the cave using a number of appropriate sensors and techniques, such as terrestrial laser scanning and conventional surveying, is described. The results of this study demonstrate the important advantages of geomatics technologies in bringing “visual protection” of cultural heritage objects, such as caves that are unstable in the geological timescale.