Digital protection and inheritance of ancient villages in southwest minority areas under the strategy of rural revitalization

Abstract The growth in urbanization leads to a decline in traditional agriculture in Asia, and consequently, may result in the loss of cultural heritage. The central task of developers and researchers is to obtain and preserve as much reliable information on the heritage item as possible so that it could be recreated in the future. Digital technologies may not only determine the dimensional features of an object but also collect information about its structure and composition. This work offers a novel method to examine the cultural heritage sites, which combines synchronized laser triangulation and laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The results obtained through the application of this method revealed that LIBS was as accurate in detecting the composition of dyes as the IR spectrometry. The proposed method provides complete information of the historical relics (i.e., color, surface reliefs, and chemical composition). Furthermore, the technology is suitable for examining large complex objects in field conditions. This possibility will be addressed in future works.