How We Can Help You

High-quality visuals are a must for delivering your message. Whether you are starting from a detailed diagram that needs only a few adjustments to be perfect, a doodle sketched on a napkin, or any point between, our graphic designers and artists bring your ideas and data to life.

We create a variety of images—maps, data interpretations, infographics, illustrations, photos, and more—that that can be tailored to any format of hard copy or electronic media. Consulting on publication design and layout is available. Universal design principles can be accommodated to make your product accessible to the widest audience possible.

Communication with clients is the first step in producing a great visual. Our designers and artists will meet with you to discuss your needs and then keep you in the loop during the creative process. Whether you know exactly what you want at the beginning or are giving us ideas as a starting point, we draw on years of experience with archaeology, history, geography, and data presentation to deliver on your project.

Maps, graphics, artistic reconstructions, and illustrations tailored to any format:

• Research and academic journals, technical reports, and professional papers
• Dissertations and theses
• Book figures
• Annual reports
• Newsletters
• Popular publications
• Website images
• PowerPoint presentations
• Signage
• Visitor’s guides
• Posters
• Restoration and enhancement of photographs and slides

Explore our graphic services

To learn more about what we can do for you and how we do it, explore the other sections on this page, and then visit our blog to read about Rob Ciaccio’s archaeological reconstructions and Catherine Gilman’s work in interpretive graphics.

Contracting information

Please contact us to request permission to commission new art or to reuse existing images.

Aerial Photography

Aerial photography provides invaluable documentary data, as well as being one of the best tools available for communicating to a variety of audiences. We provide cost-effective, high-resolution aerial photography of job sites, archaeological sites, survey areas, and project areas.

Photographs are tailored to the individual needs of the project for use in project planning, project reports, professional presentations, communication with the public and project sponsors, and promotional material. We work from the platform (helicopter, fixed wing crewed aircraft, or UAV) that best suits client needs and have the equipment to provide outstanding image quality.

Henry D. Wallace has 30 years of photography experience. His images have been published in a wide range of publications, including the Arizona Daily Star newspaper, books, magazines, and many professional reports.

Andrew Vaughan and Caleb Ferbrache are FAA certified remote airmen, and flight missions comply with Part 107 of the Federal Aviation Regulations governing commercial UAV use.

Services include:

• High-resolution oblique aerial photography
• High-resolution vertical photography
• Helicopter, fixed-wing, UAV platforms

Gallery (click to enlarge and zoom)

Dramatic Hohokam ballcourt in the San Pedro Valley, Arizona, dwarfs nearby ranch house (by Henry Wallace).

2,500 year old agricultural field system (marked with paint) at Las Capas in Tucson (by Henry Wallace).

Early Agricultural period (circa 800 B.C.) pithouse foundations in downtown Tucson beneath an old parking lot (by Henry Wallace).

The I-10/Santa Cruz River Corridor through the northern Tucson Basin (by Henry Wallace).

A portion of a very large Hohokam rock art site near Picacho (by Henry Wallace).

Unexcavated ancient Hohokam ballcourt on a village site near Gila Bend, Arizona (by Henry Wallace).

Residential locus at the 3,000-year-old Las Capas site excavated by Desert Archaeology for Pima County as part of improvements made at the Ina Road wastewater treatment facility in Tucson (by Henry Wallace).

Locus of Paleoindian (10,000-12,000 years ago) occupation in a canyon in central Sonora, Mexico (by Henry Wallace).

Low-level aerial photograph of the Big House at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona (by Henry Wallace).

Large Hohokam village near Florence, Arizona. Note the ballcourt near the center of the image (by Henry Wallace).

Basketmaker village excavated by Desert Archaeology, Inc. for ADOT in advance of improvements being made to the highway north of Snowflake, Arizona (by Henry Wallace).

Contracting information:

Please contact us to commission photography or to discuss the fees and permissions for reuse of existing photos.

Archaeological Reconstructions

Artist-in-residence Robert B. Ciaccio creates vivid reconstructions of past lifeways based on environmental, architectural, biological, and material cultural data. His artistic process, detailed in this blog post, is driven by research and collaboration with subject matter experts to deliver on the client’s vision.

Examples of archaeological reconstructions:

• Biological reconstructions | Images of individuals, based on skeletal remains, put faces to the people of the past.
• Architectural reconstructions | Based on excavation data, these images show architectural details and can depict construction sequences.
• Domestic life | Scenes of daily life incorporate architectural data and diagnostic artifacts to present a comprehensive picture of how individuals interacted with each other, their technology, their built environment, and their natural setting.

Reconstructed individual appearances and domestic scenes communicate integrated information about the lifeways of past peoples to any audience in an intuitive and approachable manner. This unique type of artwork is ideal for websites, book covers, frontispieces, foldouts, posters, and signage.

Gallery (click to enlarge and zoom)

Biological Reconstruction

Reconstruction of members of a pre-Hispanic family, all displaying tabular oblique cranial modification. This image is based on individuals from the El Cementerio site, located along the middle Rio Yaqui in central Sonora, Mexico. This image is featured in Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 30, No. 3), as well as an exhibit in the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, Sonora (by Robert Ciaccio).

Architectural Reconstruction

Cutaway view of an Early Agricultural period pithouse (by Robert Ciaccio).

Architectural reconstruction of a platform mound surrounded by a 7-foot wall, for Casa Grande Ruins Wayside # 13, “Earthen Platform Mounds” (by Robert Ciaccio).

Domestic Life

Reconstruction of villagers preparing offerings for a burial in the Kayenta homeland , for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 3) (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of a moment in time at Honey Bee Village, a Hohokam settlement occupied between A.D.850 and 1000, for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 27, No. 1) (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of food preparation and storage by the Fremont people, for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 29, No. 4) (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of village life in an Early Agricultural period settlement at the base of Tucson’s A-Mountain (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of an Early Agricultural period couple building a pithouse at the base of Sentinel Peak (A-Mountain) in Tucson (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of irrigated fields near an Early Agricultural period settlement near the Santa Cruz River, Tucson, Arizona (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstructed domestic scene for a signage project at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument: Wayside #4, “Daily Life Within the Walls” (by Robert Ciaccio).

Artist’s conception of the building of the Great House at Casa Grande, for Casa Grande Ruins Wayside #5, “Engineered to Last” (by Robert Ciaccio).

Reconstruction of artisans at work and other activities occurring within the lively plaza at Casa Grande, for Casa Grande Ruins Wayside #9, “Not Just Survival—A Place for the Arts” (by Robert Ciaccio).

Contracting information:

Contact us to contract Rob’s services or to inquire about licensing fees for existing artwork.

Artifact Illustration

We produce publication-quality artifact and specimen illustrations in the medium that best suits your needs.

Desert Archaeology staff can be contracted to visually record individual artifacts, biological specimens, or entire collections, as well as to create depictions of past lifeways. Available illustration methods include the pencil and/or ink drawings that are often required for mortuary artifacts, high-resolution digital scanning, and digital and film photography.

Robert B. Ciaccio also has more than 15 years of experience photographing and hand-illustrating artifacts of all material types. On request, he can create roll-out views of ceramic designs, as well as profiles extrapolated from partial vessels.

R. Jane Sliva creates traditional hand-drawn ink illustrations of flaked stone artifacts, specializing in projectile points. She also uses high-resolution digital scanning to produce publication-quality images that can provide magnified views and enhanced detail of stone, shell, and bone artifacts from non-mortuary contexts. She has 25 years of experience in hand-illustrating flaked stone artifacts from a range of archaeological cultures located in the U.S. Southwest, South America, the Levant, Belgium, and Tibet.

Gallery (click to enlarge and zoom)

Rollout illustration of design on Hohokam vessel from site near Fort Lowell, Tucson, by Robert Ciaccio.

Corn cob from Las Capas, Tucson, by Robert Ciaccio.

Historic era projectile points from the Gila River Indian Community, by Robert Ciaccio.

Hohokam beads from AZ AA:12:46 (ASM), Tucson, by Robert Ciaccio.

Polychrome bowl from Point of Pines, San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, by Robert Ciaccio.

Wooden sandal-shaped object from Aztec Ruin, New Mexico, by Robert Ciaccio.

Basin metate from a site near San Isidro, Arizona, by Robert Ciaccio.

Carved-stone censer with human figures from Snaketown, Gila River Indian Community, by Robert Ciaccio.

Hohokam basket fragments from the Yuma Wash site, Tucson, by Robert Ciaccio.

Stone pestle from the Amazon Basin, Brazil, by R. J. Sliva.

Stone flakes and projectile points from the Amazon Basin, Brazil, by R. J. Sliva.

Pencil rendering of a retouched flake from the Avra Valley, by R. J. Sliva.

Schematic drawing showing use-wear on utilized flakes from the Avra Valley, by R. J. Sliva.

Cienega points from southern Arizona, by R. J. Sliva.

Contracting information:

Contact us to contract artifact illustration services or to inquire about licensing fees for existing artwork.

Interpretive Graphics

Visual communication is in our wheelhouse. Do you need an explanatory figure for a journal article or company annual report? An attention-grabbing slide for a PowerPoint presentation? We turn data into visually appealing graphics that convey your results while capturing your audience’s attention.

Our graphics professionals work with both professional and academic clients to create visuals that enhance reports, proposals, and public outreach products in every medium. From traditional printed books to websites to posters to signs, we make your project come alive in your audience’s eyes.

Examples of interpretive graphics:

• Explanatory illustrations of research models and results | Our innovative designs convey richly nuanced ideas that spark curiosity and engage your audience.
• Stylized site structure models | Let a picture replace a thousand words.
• Timelines | Timelines with pictures and maps allow the reader to consider the full context of events in time and space.
• Charts | If you do science, you do charts. We make them appealing.
• Slides | We can avoid bullet-pointed text and bar graphs in favor of explicatory images. And if pie charts and Venn diagrams are the best options, we take care to make them pleasing to the eye.
• Posters | A poster is an opportunity to share current work with colleagues, promote a company, or display a lifetime of research.
• Photo enhancement | Vital details often need to be digitally teased from original images, along with rotation, color correction, annotation, and sharpness. We work with a variety of original images, including historic slides, scans, TIFs, JPEGs, and RAW camera files.

Our creative team will work with you to construct the final figure that is best suited to your communication needs and format requirements.

Gallery (click to enlarge and zoom)

Explanatory Illustrations of Research

Ancient resource zones in the area of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a profile of the Rio Grande valley. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Sources of polychrome wares in the southwestern United States, with photographed examples. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Stylized Site Structure Models

A comparison of Mogollon and Hohokam house types at two villages using photos and plan views. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Three detailed views of Kayenta site structure atop canyon ledges. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Timelines

A horizontal, linear timeline with photos and descriptions of life on Cedar Mesa, UT covering 12,000 years. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

A timeline as a stopwatch, and a spiral of maps depicting phases of occupation upon a single hillshaded landscape at the Colorado-Arizona border. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Charts

A depiction of charcoal deposition over time at two coring locations in New Mexico, with date correlation. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

A remodeling of a dendrochronologist’s chart for the general reader. Prepared for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Slides

Softening bullet-pointed text with photographic imagery in a proposal presentation (by Catherine Gilman).

Bringing color and organization to maize consumption comparisons for a conference presentation (by Catherine Gilman).

Signage

A sign design for the Los Morteros Conservation area, Tucson, Arizona, utilizing annotated aerial photography, photos of artifacts, a stylized plan of the village (by Catherine Gilman, illustration at right by Rob Ciaccio).

A map showing 28 areas of interest, currently mounted at the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson Museum (by Catherine Gilman).

Posters

A preservation conference poster showing aspects of ancient occupation in Oro Valley, Arizona, with plan views of villages, routes along a tilted Google Earth scene, mapping of agricultural features on aerial imagery (by Catherine Gilman, illustration at lower left by Rob Ciaccio).

A poster describing a prehistoric cultural landscape, with photos, annotated aerial photography (by Catherine Gilman, illustration of village life at center by Rob Ciaccio).

Photo Enhancement

An aerial photo of Los Capas waffle gardens under excavation, Tucson, Arizona, enhanced to highlight painted outlines of field cells.

1940s lantern slide of a rail-modified Model-T in Mexico, original scan (top) and enhanced version (bottom).

Contracting information:

Contact us to discuss your project’s visual communication needs.

Mapping

Maps are invaluable for placing your information into a spatial context your readers, clients, or customers can easily understand. We create visually compelling maps that seamlessly integrate geography with planning and analytical data at any scale. Whether your map will cover the endpapers of a coffee table book, or illustrate an online article, we shape the design to reflect the context of your publication.

We specialize in visualizing land use, from minimalist maps showing site locations and major natural features to maps showing the intricate curves of streambeds, and mountains and valleys in color-shaded relief. We can produce maps with underlays of georeferenced historical maps (Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, General Land Office survey plats), USGS topographic maps of all scales, orthoimagery (from Google Earth or any other source), hillshaded relief (with customized colorization), street and highway data, municipal and county boundaries, topographic contour lines, and original illustrations.

Do you need to query a spatial dataset to verify objectives or discover fresh insights into research possibilities? Provide us your tabular attribute data and spatial entities (mapping or location data as points, lines or polygons) and we will build a GIS project for your queries. Results can be delivered in a wide variety formats.

No starter map or GIS data? No problem. Our mapping team provides full cartographic, GIS, and aerial photogrammetry services that seamlessly coordinate with our graphics production process. We design flexible strategies to meet project-specific needs with a high-precision system that can incorporate either ground-based or uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) airborne mapping techniques.

Examples of maps

• Location maps  | Choose your scale: hemispheric, national, state, county, municipal, tribal reservation, project site, eco-zone, commercial area of interest.
• Research study area maps | Large regions and small detailed views of any place in the world can be created with your choice of background.
• Archaeological site maps | Go beyond clunky software templates and colors not found in nature. Have your site professionally digitized for details at any scale and allow your figures to be pleasingly informative.
• Archaeological feature maps and profiles | Plan views and cross-sections are drawn to standardized conventions of your choosing.
• GIS analysis | You provide the data, we’ll create a GIS you can query, and then we’ll work together to produce your results in formats you can use.
• Orthophotography and underlays | Orthoimages, or georeferenced aerial views, have become essential in municipal projects as well as in spotting archaeological features on barren landscapes. A bird’s eye view places the reader just above the scene and orients their perspective.
• Geological maps | Draping the boundaries of geological units over the terrain of a large region can identify the originating sources of specific minerals found in pottery temper. But you might have other reasons, besides petrographic analysis, for wanting to know the geology of an area. We can help.
• Planning and analysis maps | When stakeholders prepare documents for planning purposes, a series of maps can show steps already taken and outline future plans of action. When researchers need to exhibit the results of analysis over time and space, there’s no better way to show their discoveries than with maps.
• Tourist/visitor/conference maps | Show people where to go and what they might find along the way. These maps can be provided in a variety of formats.

Gallery (click to enlarge and zoom)

For purposes of archaeological site preservation, site names and detailed views of “at risk” site locations have been obscured or removed from online illustrations. To discourage the copying of online images, the resolution of each image has been reduced, and translucent watermarks of the words “Desert Archaeology, Inc.” may have been superimposed.

Location Maps

Draft of Arctic village locations done in a requested “watercolor” style (by Catherine Gilman). Prepared for and used with the permission of sapiens.org.

An illustration for an article on Kashmir, with a map of the area of concern, an inset of the greater area, and an annotated Google Earth image (by Catherine Gilman). Prepared for and used with the permission of sapiens.org.

Research Study Areas

Low relief on an overview map and high-definition relief on a detail for a figure within a proposal for the designation of Great Bend of the Gila National Monument (by Catherine Gilman).

Ancient homelands in the Four Corners region on high-definition hillshaded relief, for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Archaeological Site Maps

A site map with topographic contours, for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Archaeological features by stratum at Las Capas, Arizona, with detail inset, for Anthropological Paper No. 50 (by Catherine Gilman).

Archaeological Feature Maps and Profiles

A scanned hand-drawn vellum field map from Honey Bee Village, Arizona, showing three superimposed pithouses in plan view with two cross-sections, and the resulting published figure in Desert Archaeology’s Anthropological Paper No. 48 (by Catherine Gilman).

The transformation of a hand-drawn plan view of a pithouse at Honey Bee Village to the final version published in Desert Archaeology’s Anthropological Paper No. 48 (by Catherine Gilman).

GIS

Two examples of GIS analyses (density contours and the spatial organization of clustered features by type) of archaeological features at Las Capas, Arizona, published in Desert Archaeology’s Anthropological Paper No. 50 (by Catherine Gilman).

Large region spatial connectivity analysis showing site proximity and commonality of ceramic wares through time, for Archaeology Southwest Magazine (by Catherine Gilman).

Orthophotography and Underlays

Outline of parcels on an annotated 1919 Sanborn Fire Insurance map and a Google Earth image, published in a historical archaeology technical report on excavations of a city block in Tucson (by Catherine Gilman).

Orthoimagery underlying translucent features for a proposed plan of work for a city block in Tucson (by Catherine Gilman).

Geological Maps

Sand sample locations and geological units on hillshaded relief, for an Arizona petrofacies report (by Catherine Gilman).

Sand sample locations and geological units on hillshaded relief, for a Utah petrofacies report (by Catherine Gilman).

Planning and Analysis Maps

Population density analysis for a particular phase of San Pedro River valley occupation, for Anthropological Paper No. 45 on the San Pedro River, Arizona (by Catherine Gilman).

Map locating the proposed Modern Streetcar alignment through Tucson, with historic districts, for an intensive study of existing buildings along the route for a City of Tucson planning document (by Catherine Gilman).

Tours, Brochures, and Endpapers

Map of the Four Corners region used as front and back endpapers for a large-format book (by Catherine Gilman).

Tour guide map for the 1776 Tucson Presidio area superimposed on muted orthoimagery showing modern architecture (by Catherine Gilman).

Contracting information:

Contact us to arrange a consultation for your map production needs.