Welcome to Shanga, a Swahili Stone Town in northern Kenya abandoned in the 14th century. Auburn students are using SketchUp to reconstruct the town, structure by structure, using line drawings in the official excavation report by archaeologist Mark Horton et al. Students are researching materials, the uses of each room, and artifacts that would have been found on the site. The project goal is to recreate the Swahili Stone Town as a Virtual World to be used in African History and World History classes.
Phase I: 6 Swahili Homes
Starting in Spring 2019, five teams (and one professor) rebuilt structures 11, 12, 20, 65, 98, and 106, highlighted below on the Shanga's site plan.
Research
Professor Ray provided research articles from anthropologists and archaeologists about how Swahili used spaces in towns and homes. He also provided dozens of photos of Swahili coral buildings (abandoned and occupied) that he took in Pate, Ukunda, Mombasa, Lamu, Ras Mkumbuu, Zanzibar, and Chwake, as well as black and white images and line drawings from Horton's published excavation report of Shanga.
Students noted the use of specific rooms in the houses, what the location of the house in relation to other town features might indicate about the families that occupied them, and the materials that builders used to construct buildings at Shanga.
Construction
Students completed These tasks During and between five Class sessions
- Step 1: Import, scale, and trace floorplan
- Step 2: Raise the walls
- Step 3: Add flooring and ceiling
- Step 4: Add roof
- Step 5: Add textures and materials to the model surfaces
- Step 6: Include one complex feature or object in the house
Curation
Students documented the process of building the Swahili house models and some of their research findings about their houses in an Adobe Spark website. They presented these on the final day of class. You can read about their work at the following websites:
Websites
Virtual Reality APP
Prof. Ray then loaded all the final models into a single SketchUp file with each house placed in its historical location at Shanga. This file was loaded to a trial version of Sentio VR, an Oculus Go app for viewing digital models in Virtual Reality. We found the app distorted many of the walls in our models. So either they need more fine tuning or we need to find another app for viewing in VR during construction.
The next step is to build an interactive Oculus Go app for exploring Shanga town in Unity. Besides moving through the town, we hope to offer mini-presentations on town features, artifacts, and history, as well as an interactive archaeological dig.
Stay tuned for future phases...