Since 1980, the Vijayanagara Research Project (VRP), an international consortium of scholars, working in cooperation with Indian archaeologists, has been documenting the visible surface features of the central city. Although it is rare that the layout of extinct cities can be observed on their surface, at Vijayanagara it is possible to document not only routes of movement, but the distribution of buildings, domestic facilities, fortification walls, and gateways using techniques of surface archaeology that include surveying, drawing, photographing, writing descriptions, and compiling databases.

Working with a team of Indian surveyors during the 1980s, the VRP mapped the topographic and cultural features of the city center at a scale of 1:400. VRP’s 1:400 mapping program provided extensive coverage of the central city’s features, effectively showing the density, extent, and approximate form of structural remains over an area of some 1100 hectares. Over a period of more than two decades, VRP has produced a series of architectural drawings and photographs documenting all of the major monumental buildings within the Central City and compiled a database that contains entries on approximately 31,000 cultural features.

VRP’s architects and archaeologists have also documented a great number of specific ruined structures at a more accurate scale of 1:100 or 1:200 by using traditional methods, such as measuring with hand-held tapes. In the case of the more illustrious temples and royal building projects at Vijayanagara, the VRP was able to overcome the inaccuracies of using hand held tapes by employing an engineer to locate specific coordinates using a transit ­ a mechanical surveying instrument that is used to take angle measurements used in trigonometric calculations. This strategy provided a series of highly accurate measurements which were then correlated with hand taken measurements in order to map the buildings' ground plans. Such techniques are time-consuming, however, and have historically been proven unreliable over large distances.

Although the use of surveying instruments such as transits allows archeologists and architects to attain a high level of precision, their use at Vijayanagara has not been extensive. The form, components, and spatial relationships between many of the site’s less magnificent but equally historically significant remains have not yet been as precisely recorded and displayed as is now possible with more modern surveying technology and the proliferation of affordable computers. Recognizing this, in early 2000 John Fritz from the VRP began discussing co-directing a mapping project with Archaeos’ David Gimbel using technology similar to that employed by Archaeos at Tell Arbid in 1999.

Archaeos’ current project at Vijayanagara is intended as an extension of the VRP’s extensive two-decade-long documentation process, as well as an initial analysis of the principles of urban planning and the historical uses of space within a heavily destroyed area of the ancient city. By utilizing state of the art surveying technology, Archaeos has been able to bring a greater degree of accuracy to the ongoing documentation process.

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Methods and Results