Former preservation student in Greece
documenting sites in ancient Corinth

A former Texas A&M architecture student is spending his spring helping unlock the secrets of an ancient city in Greece.

Douglas Mullen, who earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree from Texas A&M in 2007 and a Master of Architecture degree with a graduate certificate in historic preservation in 2009, is in ancient Corinth, which for five centuries was one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean world.

"I have just finished a surveying and documenting project of a Roman market and remains from Greek and Turkish periods just to the north of the Temple of Apollo," said Mullen, who's working with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which has been performing excavations at Corinth since 1896.

The school's Corinthian investigations focus on the area surrounding the temple, which was established in the mid-6th century B.C.

Mullen said he used a total station for the project, an instrument which uses a distance measurement and a known angle to calculate coordinates of an area; the data can be used in a computer-aided drawing program to produce 2-D drawings or 3-D models of a site.

The data he gathered, he said, was combined with various state documents from different periods of excavation to provide a more comprehensive plan of the area.

Mullen said he's also been using CAD and photography in an effort to determine the locations from which traveler's drawings from the early half of the 18th century were made.

"The idea is that once those locations are established, I will be able to find locations of the drawings' reoccurring buildings by plotting the site lines of the various drawings," he said.

Two other possible projects on the horizon, he said, are the documentation of a recently excavated Turkish house and a reconstruction of a platform for public addresses in the ancient city's forum.

"It is definitely an eye-opening and mind-broadening experience," said Mullen, who arrived in January and is hoping to stay through April. "I am learning a lot."

- Posted: Mar. 17, 2010-