3d Recording of Underwater Antiquities in the South Euboean Gulf

Abstract

An underwater archaeological survey was initiated in 2006 by the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology in collaboration with the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of Greece, in the South Euboean Gulf. The survey is being conducted under the direction of the archaeologist Dr G. Koutsouflakis and in the course of the project important shipwrecks of Classical, Roman, and Byzantine periods have been brought to light, adding tangible evidence on ancient seafaring and maritime trade. The South Euboean Gulf archaeological survey has presented many challenges to the documentation team of H.I.M.A, and has served as a case-study for 3D recording applied on ancient wrecks, found at medium depths (22-47m) and under the conditions that are imposed during an archaeological survey of a certain geographical region. This paper focuses on the implementation of photogrammetric and geodetic techniques used for acquisition and processing of collected data, in order to generate 3D models for six different wrecks, resulting in a fast, reliable and cost efficient method to record underwater archaeological sites.

Tools to Perform Local Dense 3D Reconstruction of Shallow Water Seabed

“…Apart from the Aqua prototype, these platforms, designed for greater depths, are most of the time oversized when dealing with small, shallow water study areas (≲2000 m ) and often involve heavy logistics [ 25 ]. For these operational reasons, scientific work in shallow water mostly resorts to divers [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. However, in doing so, the systematic nature of the automatic acquisition is lost, despite its importance for data completeness or acquisition process reproducibility.…”

“…In the literature, most underwater dense pipelines are based on the geometric criterion [ 21 , 26 , 32 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. Some studies also employed this criterion [ 37 , 39 , 40 , 41 ] through the use of software developed for the air environment such as the open-source software MicMac [ 57 ] or the proprietary software Photoscan (Agisoft). The spatio-temporal criterion is rarely used in this context but is nonetheless often found in structure-from-motion (SFM) strategies because of its tracking capabilities [ 26 ].…”

Survey and photogrammetry in underwater archaeological contexts at low visibility in the Venice lagoon

“…The extensive use at different scales and in different sectors of expertise has permitted researchers and archaeologists to acquire more technical and practical knowledge, without the support of specialized technicians, offering a tool that is easy to use, fast and economic. The versatility of multi-image photogrammetry permits to employ this technique in many archaeological sites and different environmental conditions, such as good or bad visibility, shallow and high water (Skarlatos et al, 2012;Diamanti and Vlachaki 2015;Drap et al, 2013), and in various archaeological context, such as shipwrecks, cargos of amphoras, underwater structures, harbours and isolated (Demesticha et al, 2014;Yamafume et al, 2016). Furthermore, and most importantly, this tool brings the study and analysis to exceptional results, from the viewpoint of both scientific and disseminative outcomes.…”

Synchronization of Picam Cameras for Three-Dimensional Study of Dynamic Multi-Domains Natural Scenes

“…• Consumer DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) cameras: EOS 5D Mark II, M, 600D and 550D from Canon (Nicosevici, Garcia, 2008, O'Byrne et al, 2015, Rossi et al, 2017, Germanese et al, 2019, K5 from Pentax (Burns et al, 2015), A700 from Sony (Diamanti, Vlachaki, 2015) or D70, D200, D300, D700, D750 and D7000 from Nikon (Barazzetti et al, 2010, Bianco et al, 2011, Drap, 2012, Gintert et al, 2012, Menna et al, 2018.…”