Ancient Artifacts Research Articles

Assessment of imaging performance for metal alloys of the first Italian neutron imaging beamline NICHE (Pavia, Italy)

In this paper, the imaging capabilities and performance of the new neutron imaging beamline developed at the LENA facility of Pavia (Italy) in the framework of the NICHE project (Neutron Imaging in Cultural HEritage) are presented. For this purpose, the estimation of bronze and brass alloys attenuation coefficient has been obtained through imaging analysis of a set of Cu-based alloy reference samples produced ad-hoc with chemical composition similar to ancient artefacts. In addition, some samples were realised using a different cooling ramp in order to test the influence of the alloy production procedures in neutron attenuation. Moreover, the tomographic capabilities of the beamline were tested for different metallic and plastic materials.

Utilization of a natural language processing-based approach to determine the composition of artifact residues

BackgroundDetermining the composition of artifact residues is a central problem in ancient residue metabolomics. This is done by comparing mass spectral features in common with an experimental artifact and an ancient artifact (standard method). While this method is simple and straightforward, we sought to increase the accuracy of predicting which plant species had been used in which artifacts.ResultsHere, we introduce an algorithm (new method) based on ideas from the field of natural language processing (NLP) to solve this problem. We tested our strategy on a set of modern clay pipes. To limit biases, we were not provided information on which plant species had been smoked in which clay pipes. The results indicate that our new method performed 12.5% better than the standard method in predicting the plant species smoked in each artifact.ConclusionsUtilizing an NLP-based approach, we developed a robust algorithm for characterizing the composition of artifact residues. This work also discusses other general applications in which our algorithm could be used in the field of metabolomics, such as datasets where there are a limited number of replicates.

Trade signs in antiquity

AbstractThe paper discusses the inscriptions of two ancient artifacts, the fragment of an Egyptian wine jug (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), and a terra sigillata bowl made by Pacatus (Aquincum Museum, Budapest), and seeks to situate them in the history of trade signs. In ancient Egypt, signs predominantly indicated details such as the place and date of production, and the quality of the product, while in Rome trade signs conveyed information concerning the origin of the product through the craftsman or workshop.

A REVIEW ON MOTHER GODDESS PARADOX IN LYDIAN SYNCRETISM

The cultural mosaic of the Lydian civilization manifests itself most intensely in its religious structure. Many gods and goddesses attract attention in Lydian syncretism. While goddesses stand out with their different characteristics, the problem of the mother goddess has long been a subject of curiosity for today's researchers. This situation has the nature of a paradox as there is no consensus on this situation with different opinions. Lydian goddesses of Anatolian and Greek origin stood out with their different characteristics and spheres of influence. However, which one is the mother goddess remains a mystery. Artemis, Demeter, Kore, Kybele and Athena are the goddesses most frequently mentioned in ancient sources and most frequently depicted in visual finds. In this case, the Greek goddesses, who are numerous in number, and the famous Anatolian goddess Kybele, whose sphere of influence is quite wide and in a powerful position, face each other in the same pantheon. In this study, an evaluation was made by considering the influence areas of Lydian goddesses and their frequency of reflection in existing epigraphic and numismatic finds. In this evaluation of the mother goddess paradox in Lydian syncretism, ancient artifacts, Sardis inscriptions and coins were mainly examined.

Advancing Ancient Artifact Character Image Augmentation through Styleformer-ART for Sustainable Knowledge Preservation

The accurate detection of ancient artifacts is very crucial in recognizing and tracking the origin of these relics. The methodologies used in engraving characters onto these objects are different from the ones used in the modern era, prompting the need to develop tools that are accurately tailored to detect these characters. The challenge encountered in developing an object character recognition model for this purpose is the lack of sufficient data needed to train these models. In this work, we propose Styleformer-ART to augment the ancient artifact character images. To show the performance of Styleformer-ART, we compared Styleformer-ART with different state-of-the-art data augmentation techniques. To make a conclusion on the best augmentation method for this special dataset, we evaluated all the augmentation methods employed in this work using the Frétchet inception distance (FID) score between the reference images and the generated images. The methods were also evaluated on the recognition accuracy of a CNN model. The Styleformer-ART model achieved the best FID score of 210.72, and Styleformer-ART-generated images achieved a recognition accuracy with the CNN model of 84%, which is better than all the other reviewed image-generation models.

Optimized approach for blood vessel excavation within liver parenchyma

The most practical approach for dissecting the liver parenchyma involves first visualizing and subsequently addressing the blood vessels within the parenchyma while maintaining a dry operative field. This process is similar to “excavation” of ancient artifacts from soil without causing any damage. To excavate the blood vessels in a dry operative field during liver parenchymal dissection, proficiency in both blood flow control and parenchymal dissection techniques is mandatory. For blood flow management, inflow control is achieved using an externally applied Pringle maneuver, whereas outflow control is achieved by decreasing the central venous pressure. Precision in parenchymal dissection lies in dissecting the liver parenchyma in areas devoid of the Glissonean branch, such as the intersegmental plane, using the back-scoring technique with a cavitron ultrasonic surgical aspirator (CUSA) to read the grain of the blood vessels.

A two-way analytical investigation of ancient gold coins: Elemental and colorimetric description of precious materials

The investigation of ancient artifacts is often constrained by their scarce availability and high protection and custody protocols. Among these, coinage represents an especially valuable kind-of-samples given their uniqueness and the subjacent information that is hidden behind their composition. Their analysis are often carried out using non-destructive techniques in order to avoid any alteration of the samples. In the field of Cultural Heritage analysis, smartphone-based methodologies have experienced a significant increase during the last few years, given their wide availability and ability to yield fast results. However, their analytical application demands a thorough and careful tuning during the methodology optimization. In this work, 21 historical gold and golden coins spanning a historical period of more than 2000 years have been analytically investigated. To that end, a two-fold approach has been implemented: first, the elemental composition has been analysed using portable X-ray fluorescence; and second, an innovative smartphone-based imaging method has been applied to measure their colour. Results allowed to describe the coins from their elemental profile, identifying some potentially debased ones, as well as some others not containing any gold. When possible, the results have been compared to previously reported cases, but our samples include some previously unreported cases representing new insights. All in all, this article provides new analytical data on unanalysed unique historical samples, in terms of their elemental profile and colorimetric properties, making use of an innovative, non-invasive nor destructive, fast and affordable colorimetric smartphone-based method to characterise historical coins.

Isolation and Identification of Carbonoclastic Fungi Causing Damage to Prehistoric Paintings in the Maros-Pangkep Karst Area

The carbonoclastic fungi known as a fungi that can produce calcium carbonate crystals (CaCO3) through the urease enzyme produced to hydrolysis of urea contained in the substrate or growth medium. The presence of carbonoclastic fungi is frequently observed in the karst areas cave wall painting, which are a type of ancient artifact. The destruction to the ancient cave artwork is brought on by the fungus. The purpose of this study was to obtain and determine the types of carbonoclastic fungi that cause damage to cave wall paintings in the Maros-Pangkep karst area. Isolation and selection of carbonoclastic fungi were carried out using Christensen Urea Agar medium. The CaCO3 precipitate potential test was carried out by calculating the mass CaCO3 precipitates formed and analysis of ammonia levels and cell biomass produced during the growth period. Fungi identification was performed using the 18S rRNA gene molecular markers. Twenty four fungi isolates obtained from swab samples in Parewe and Bulu Sipong caves, 7 positive isolated belonged to carbonoclastic fungi. The results of CaCO3 precipitates, namely isolate Ps3 producing precipitates of 80,30 mg with ammonia content value of 701,7064 ppm and cell biomass of 333,80 mg. The identification results showed that Ps3 isolate belongs to Aspergillus sp. strain BW1.

РЕЗЬБА ПО КАМНЮ В ДЕКОРАТИВНО-ПРИКЛАДНОМ ИСКУССТВЕ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БУРЯТИЯ

The article is devoted to stone carving. The material considers ancient artifacts connected with stone carving and its technological features. The anal-ysis of data on stone-сutting art has been made with the use of synthesis, ob-servation and comparison methods. The authors have studied the conditions for the formation of stone-cutting art in the Republic of Buryatia. The charac-teristics of nephritis, the main ornamental stone, are given. The items made of nephritis, presented at the exhibitions «The Conception of rebirth: Nephritis. Cyclicality» in the Art Museum of Ts.S. Sampilov, «The Far East Street» at the Eastern Economic Forum, have been studied. On the basis of the data ob-tained the assessment of the conditions for the development of stone-cutting art in the Republic of Buryatia is made.

Revolutionizing cultural heritage preservation: an innovative IoT-based framework for protecting historical buildings

Italy offers a cultural heritage of considerable value that needs to be protected. Indeed, natural deterioration linked to the passage of time affects ancient artifacts and buildings. Sometimes, the deterioration compromises the functionality of cultural assets, pushing them toward decay. In this scenario, effective intervention seems impossible on the various critical points because of the wide variability of factors involved and the wide range of possible treatments. However, the spread of low-cost technologies has led to the possibility of having different devices and sensors able to communicate and interact with each other and humans: the Internet of Things (IoT). In this scenario, the IoT paradigm makes it possible to map reality by defining a coherent virtual representation (Digital Twin), which could help preserve Cultural Heritage. This work introduces an IoT-based system combining monitoring, predictive maintenance, and decision-making regarding the implementable interventions for protecting cultural heritage buildings. For this purpose, deep and machine learning techniques allow for the detection and classification of damages on specific materials. The experimental phase consists of two phases: the first aims to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed architecture, and the second exploits a prototype capable of interacting with expert users. The results of the experimental campaign are promising.

Convolutional Autoencoder for Reconstruction of Historical Document Images: Ancient Manuscript Babad Lombok

The Babad Lombok is an ancient literary or manuscripts document that generally contains stories about the origins of the people of Lombok. This document is written on a lontar leaf, which in the past was used to write manuscripts, letters, and documents. At present, the Babad Lombok document can be seen in the form of photos or scans, so it can be viewed without having to go to a museum or cultural heritage site where the document is usually exhibited. However, because this document is an ancient artifact that has been around for hundreds of years, it has naturally experienced fading in the original document or its scanned versions. This makes the text inside less clear. This paper proposes to automatically reconstruct/repair the Babad Lombok document using a neural network. The type of neural network used is an Autoencoder or Convolutional Autoencoder (CAE). The CAE model is built sequentially and trained using original images of Babad Lombok as its training data and manually corrected images of Babad Lombok as the target or ground truth data. In the process, the two types of data are iteratively cropped to a size of 64x64 along the original size of the Babad Lombok image. This process results in input and target data for the CAE training process in this research, each consisting of 48,288 images. Testing the trained autoencoder model shows that the Babad images have been successfully repaired, making the text quality clearer before reconstruction. Ultimately, the proposed CAE has achieved training and validation accuracies of 89.09% and 94.57%, with corresponding loss values of 0.0418 and 0.0226.

Bacchic Batman?: Batman: Killing Time and Euripides’ Bacchae

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the ways that Tom King’s Batman: Killing Time (2022) blends a telling of Euripides’ Bacchae with the more traditional story of a super-villain bank heist. The heist mobilises characters such as Catwoman and the Riddler against Batman as they try to secure possession of an ancient artefact. This artefact turns out to have ancient Greek provenance and allows King to emphasise how his tale evokes and responds to Euripides’ play. By quoting extensively from the Bacchae and interspersing scenes from the play that resonate with the action in and around Gotham City, King makes the actions of Batman and the supervillains embody the tenets of Classical reception. The shifting interpretations of the characters and the various representations of the ancient artefact reflect the ways that individual readers come to understand a literary or artistic work. The conflict over the artefact mirrors critics’ conflicting interpretations of a text, and Killing Time can be seen as a large-scale interpretation of Euripides’ tragedy. This sequential graphic narrative acts as a creative response to Euripides’ Bacchae and questions that play’s conception of madness, reason, sight, and insight, while fruitfully putting into dialogue the myths of ancient Greece with those of the DC Universe.

The tin content of lead inclusions in ancient tin-bronze artifacts: a time-dependent process?

In antiquity, Pb was a common element added in the production of large bronze artifacts, especially large statues, to impart fluidity to the casting process. As Pb does not form a solid solution with pure Cu or with the Sn–Cu alloy phases, it is normally observed in the metal matrix as globular droplets embedded within or in interstitial positions among the crystals of Sn-bronze (normally the α phase) as the last crystallizing phase during the cooling process of the Cu–Sn–Pb ternary melt. The disequilibrium Sn content of the Pb droplets has recently been suggested as a viable parameter to detect modern materials [Shilstein, Berner, Feldman, Shalev & Rosenberg (2019). STAR Sci. Tech. Archaeol. Res. 5, 29–35]. The application assumes a time-dependent process, with a timescale of hundreds of years, estimated on the basis of the diffusion coefficient of Sn in Pb over a length of a few micrometres [Oberschmidt, Kim & Gupta (1982). J. Appl. Phys. 53, 5672–5677]. Therefore, Pb inclusions in recent Sn-bronze artifacts are actually a metastable solid solution of Pb–Sn containing ∼3% atomic Sn. In contrast, in ancient artifacts, unmixing processes and diffusion of Sn from the micro- and nano-inclusions of Pb to the matrix occur, resulting in the Pb inclusions containing a substantially lower or negligible amount of Sn. The Sn content in the Pb inclusions relies on accurate measurement of the lattice parameter of the phase in the Pb–Sn solid solution, since for low Sn values it closely follows Vegard's law. Here, several new measurements on modern and ancient samples are presented and discussed in order to verify the applicability of the method to the detection of modern artwork pretending to be ancient.

Cross-shaped pendants of the ‟scandinavian” type as markers of ethnocultural processes: a new look at an old problem

Medieval cruciform pendants of this “Scandinavian” type are associated with the Norse hird culture; however, as material finds from various regions accumulated, most researchers were inclined to believe that this phenomenon originated in Old Rus’, if not in even more southern realms. At the same time, the connection of problems of this type with Eastern Christian ancient doubts, since ancient artifacts of Byzantine types are quite far from the ‟Scandinavian” ones. It is suggested that the Western Sarmatian type crosses served as the prototype of the remaining crosses, which arose with the solar or plant sacred world of the ancient nomads rather than with the Christian cult. The subsequent appearance of pendants of the ‟Scandinavian” type, first among the Merovingian antiquities, complements the ideas of the Germanic-Sarmatian cultural symbiosis known to archaeologists. Increased distribution of pendants in the Crimea and the basin reflects ethnic migrations, advancement into East Slavic lands and Scandinavia – obviously confessional and cultural processes, as the symbolism of the Sarmatian cross gradually acquired a Christian character.

Machine Learning for the Semi-Automatic 3D Decay Segmentation and Mapping of Heritage Assets

ABSTRACT In Architectural Heritage (AH), diagnostics represent a key topic, related to the assessment of the state of conservation, for a well-structured and integrated knowledge about the artefact. This is of paramount importance for buildings denoted by historic-artistic interest, often in widespread damaged conditions. Digital technologies could represent a valuable alternative, for the creation, processing, and analysis of 2D images or reality-capture 3D data. Indeed, image processing and artificial intelligence are spreading in the AH domain, for both documentation and conservation purposes. The present research proposes a novel methodological approach, based on the application of machine learning systems, for the assessment and mapping of decay evidence in an ancient artefact, within the diagnostic process. An unsupervised hierarchical clustering of point clouds has been validated and compared against a state-of-the-art supervised random forest. The presented pipeline has been tested on a plurality of case studies, representative of the territorial historic built heritage, qualified by a great variety, in terms of age, building type, surface, and lighting conditions. For most of the classes, the cloud-based unsupervised approach consents to accomplish better performances.

Insights into ancient ceramic technology: a comprehensive analysis of mineralogy, chemistry and firing conditions

The intensive integration of Azerbaijan into the global economy, mainly through international gas and oil pipeline construction, has led to significant archaeological research in the past two decades. The construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (BTC) and the Southern Caucasus Pipeline gas pipeline (SCP) prompted a four-year archaeological fieldwork program, followed by a six-year post-excavation program. The current work applied an interdisciplinary approach using various instrumental methods for studying ancient artifacts found during those projects. The thermogravimetric method and differential thermal analysis were employed to obtain insights into the production technology of the ancient pottery and information about the mineralogy of the ceramic sherds. The complex processes involved in firing the ceramic paste have been studied extensively, and patterns in mass loss ratios during different temperature ranges have been established. In total, 15 samples were investigated, and the thermogravimetric analysis of ceramic shards revealed that the firing temperature of the samples was in the range of 700 °C. XRD analysis confirmed the presence of quartz, feldspar, and clay minerals in the ceramic samples. The presence of calcite and other specific minerals is subject to the origin of the ceramic materials. The results obtained from this multidisciplinary approach provide insights into the firing technology and the origin of the ceramic samples.

Retracted: Morphological Bias of Ancient Artifacts: A Case Study of Incense Burners in Ming and Qing Dynasties

Retracted: Morphological Bias of Ancient Artifacts: A Case Study of Incense Burners in Ming and Qing Dynasties

Effects of Ancient Artifacts on Contemporary Art

Effects of Ancient Artifacts on Contemporary Art

Story about an Ancient Artifact and Eskimo Customs, Written for Three Voices

Story about an Ancient Artifact and Eskimo Customs, Written for Three Voices

In situ detection of silk fibroin using a dual recognition strategy with a flexible pressure immunosensor.

Silk is a symbol of ancient Chinese civilization that has made an indelible contribution to the development of world civilization. However, because ancient artifacts are often contaminated or degraded, it is difficult to detect the presence of silk therein, and the true origin of silk thus remains a mystery. Therefore, this work presents a flexible pressure immunosensor that was designed based on 3D polypyrrole (PPy) foams for the trace detection of silk fibroin at archaeological sites. Initially, silk fibroin (SF) was conjugated with antibody-functionalized copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) and carboxylated magnetic beads (MBs) to form a sandwich immune complex. Then, the sandwich immune complex was added to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) by magnetic separation to catalyse the generation of oxygen (O2), which converted the antigen-antibody specific recognition signal to gas pressure. As the pressure within the device increases, the 3D PPy foam, as the sensing layer resistance was 150 Ω, undergoes extrusion and deformation. This deformation leads to alterations in the foam resistance. The flexible pressure immunosensor can sensitively monitor the change in electrical resistance in the system and quantitatively detect silk fibroin. With optimization, the flexible pressure immunosensor demonstrates a dynamic range of operation spanning from 10 ng mL-1 to 100 μg mL-1, exhibiting a remarkable detection limit of 10.58 ng mL-1 specifically for silk fibroin. Notably, this immunosensor surpasses enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in terms of superior reproducibility, specificity, and accuracy. Therefore, this application provides a new method and technical support for silk detection.