Contour-shape based reconstruction of fragmented, 1600 BC wall paintings

Abstract

A novel general methodology is introduced for the computer-aided reconstruction of the magnificent wall paintings of the Greek island Thera (Santorini), which were painted in the middle of the second millennium BC. These wall paintings have been excavated in fragments, and as a result, their reconstruction is a painstaking and a time-consuming process. Therefore, in order to facilitate and expedite this process, a proper system has been developed based on the introduced methodology. According to this methodology, each fragment is photographed, its picture is introduced to the computer, its contour is obtained, and, subsequently, all of the fragments contours are compared in a manner proposed herein. Both the system and the methodology presented here extract the maximum possible information from the contour shape of fragments of an arbitrary initially unbroken plane object to point out possible fragment matching. This methodology has been applied to two excavated fragmented wall paintings consisting of 262 fragments with full success, but most important, it has been used to reconstruct, for the first time, unpublished parts of wall paintings from a set of 936 fragments.