Abstract
From archaeological excavations, huge quantities of material are recovered, usually in the form of fragments. Their correct interpretation and classification are laborious and time-consuming and requires measurement, analysis and comparison of several items. Basing these activities on quantitative methods that process 3D digital data from experimental measurements allows optimizing the entire restoration process, making it faster, more accurate and cheaper. The 3D point clouds, captured by the scanning process, are raw data that must be properly processed to be used in automatic systems for the analysis of archeological finds. This paper focuses on the integration of a shape feature recognizer, able to support the semantic decomposition of the ancient artifact into archaeological features, with a structured database, able to query the large amount of information extracted. Through the automatic measurement of the dimensional attributes of the various features, it is possible to facilitate the comparative analyses between archaeological artifacts and the inferences of the archaeologist and to reduce the routine work. Here, a dedicated database has been proposed, able to store the information extracted from huge quantities of archaeological material using a specific shape feature recognizer. This information is useful for making comparisons but also to improve the archaeological knowledge. The database has been implemented and used for the identification of pottery fragments and the reconstruction of archaeological vessels. Reconstruction, in particular, often requires the solution of complex problems, especially when it involves types of potsherds that cannot be treated with traditional methods.
Highlights
The dimensional evaluation of an object measured by a 3D scanner is a non-trivial task that requires special processing of the point cloud, which is just a raw reproduction of the real object
In order to test capabilities of the application, a case study is considered, relating to Roman ceramics found in fragments at the archaeological sitesite of Alba to Roman ceramics found in fragments at the archaeological of Alba
Information on shape and morphology may be uncertain and incomplete, because only a part of the fragments found in a site is fully studied
Summary
The dimensional evaluation of an object measured by a 3D scanner is a non-trivial task that requires special processing of the point cloud, which is just a raw reproduction of the real object. Direct measurements on point clouds are generally limited to evaluating two-point distances or spherical sizes, quantified as the diameter of the maximum sphere inscribed [1] These measurements, are quite far from determining the characteristic dimensional attributes usually considered, which are associated with specific shape features of the object to be measured (e.g., the diameter of a cylinder or the distance between two parallel opposite planes). The evaluation of the maximum diameter or the thickness of an archaeological fragment needs the preliminary extraction of the external wall (that is, a shape feature) and the identification of its axis of revolution Through this recognition process, 3D raw data experimentally acquired from the real object can be segmented into a set of surface patches. These are high-level semantic entities to which some meanings, defined in a specific context, can be associated
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