Hydrologic and Feature-Based Surface Analysis for Tool Mark Investigation on Archaeological Finds

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The improvement of detailed surface documentation methods provides unique tool mark-study opportunities in the field of archaeological researches. One of these data collection techniques is short-range laser scanning, which creates a digital copy of the object's morphological characteristics from high-resolution datasets. The aim of our work was the accurate documentation of a Bronze Age sluice box from Mitterberg, Austria with a spatial resolution of 0.2 mm. Furthermore, the investigation of the entirely preserved tool marks on the surface of this archaeological find was also accomplished by these datasets. The methodology of this tool mark-study can be summarized in the following way: At first, a local hydrologic analysis has been applied to separate the various patterns of tools on the finds' surface. As a result, the XYZ coordinates of the special points, which represent the edge lines of the sliding tool marks, were calculated by buffer operations in a GIS environment. During the second part of the workflow, these edge points were utilized to manually clip the triangle meshes of these patterns in reverse engineering software. Finally, circle features were generated and analysed to determine the different sections along these sliding tool marks. In conclusion, the movement of the hand tool could be reproduced by the spatial analysis of the created features, since the horizontal and vertical position of the defined circle centre points indicated the various phases of the movements. This research shows an exact workflow to determine the fine morphological structures on the surface of the archaeological find.

Interpretation of Hand Tool Movement's Trajectories by Spatial Analysis of Bronze Age Tool Marks

“…For this reason, an exact integration of GIS-based hydrological and aspect investigation techniques can offer userindependent and repeatable tool mark recognition workflow. This method has already been discussed in two previous publications of the authors ( [5], [13]). 2.4.…”

Automatic Tool Mark Identification and Comparison With Known Bronze Age Hand Tool Replicas

“…These three criteria are the following: The specification of the individual characteristic number, which could offer a positive identification at the evidence investigation; the requirement of an exactly defined evaluation workflow and that the results of these exact studies must be repeatable as well (Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community, National Research Council 2009). Based on these conditions, the aims of this tool mark-study can be summarized as "user-independent tool mark identification and implementation of automated methods for tool mark comparison and evaluation" (Kovács et al 2012). Photographic documentation was used to analyse the sliding tool marks on the wooden objects during an important archaeological research in the 1990's (Sands 1997).…”

“…For this reason, the investigation of the entirely preserved sliding tool marks on the surface of a Bronze Age sluice box could be accomplished during the last years within the HiMAT (History of Mining Activities in the Tyrol and Adjacent AreasImpact on Environment and Human Societies) project. These thirty-one wooden objects from Mitterberg, Austria were scanned with a spatial resolution of 0.2 mm and the post processing workflow for the tool mark recognition was established in Geographic Information System (GIS) environment (Kovács et al 2012). The evaluation of this advanced method was carried out after the documentation of various Bronze Age hand tool replicas and their test tool marks on a wooden object.…”