Photogrammetry as a New Scientific Tool in Archaeology: Worldwide Research Trends

Abstract

Archaeology has made significant advances in the last 20 years. This can be seen by the remarkable increase in specialised literature on all archaeology-related disciplines. These advances have made it a science with links to many other sciences, both in the field of experimental sciences and in the use of techniques from other disciplines such as engineering. Within this last issue it is important to highlight the great advance that the use of photogrammetry has brought for archaeology. In this research, through a systematic study with bibliometric techniques, the main institutions and countries that are carrying them out and the main interests of the scientific community in archaeology related to photogrammetry have been identified. The main increase in this field has been observed since 2010, especially the contribution of UAVs that have reduced the cost of photogrammetric flights for reduced areas. The main lines of research in photogrammetry applied to archaeology are close-range photogrammetry, aerial photogrammetry (UAV), cultural heritage, excavation, cameras, GPS, laser scan, and virtual reconstruction including 3D printing.

Graphic Engineering in the Sustainable Preservation of the Municipal Heritage of Montilla (Cordoba, Spain) from the 18th Century: Master Builder Vicente López Cardera in Montilla

“…The preservation of the architectural and cultural heritage of cities is a matter of great importance, particularly the preservation of those elements that are under some type of historical-artistic protection [21][22][23]. As Go-Eum [21] says, heritage assets are not only part of the culture and history of the people, they also provide historical spaces for future generations, contributing to their sustainable availability through the application of photogrammetric techniques or 3D scanning, among others [24][25][26]. Within this process, an archival study and analysis of the documentation related to the heritage must be the starting point, valuing not only the buildings or infrastructures themselves, but also the history and the most relevant characters related to them, which in turn are part of such heritage.…”

La recuperación de los punzones de rúbrica de la terra sigillata hispánica del alfar romano de Isturgi (Los Villares de Andújar, Jaén) a partir de su digitalización, reconstrucción e impresión 3D

“…Para ello, decidimos emplear la fotogrametría Structure from Motion (SfM), una técnica que ha demostrado con creces su potencial, siendo incluso superior a otras herramientas de digitalización como el láser de luz estructurada (Benavides, 2017;Maldonado, 2020). Dado que ya existen en literatura científica suficientes obras que desglosan pormenorizadamente los entresijos de la documentación mediante fotogrametría convergente (Antón, Medjdoub, Shrahily & Moyano, 2018;Barreau et al, 2014;Benavides, 2017;Boyd et al, 2021;Maldonado & Fernández-García, 2020a, 2020bMarín-Buzón et al, 2021;Remondino, 2011, Remondino, Nocerino, Toschi & Menna 2017, nos centraremos en aportar los datos más relevantes del sistema de captura fotográfica empleado. En este sentido, buscábamos un sistema de trabajo que nos permitiese aislar, con una precisión milimétrica, las marcas grabadas en estos productos cerámicos, algunas de ellas bastante pequeñas, y obtener de ellas modelos fotogramétricos de alta resolución.…”

Computer Vision Meets Image Processing and UAS PhotoGrammetric Data Integration: From HBIM to the eXtended Reality Project of Arco della Pace in Milan and Its Decorative Complexity

“…In recent years, drone photogrammetry has become part of the daily life of many professionals in many different sectors. The main application fields are cultural heritage [1], archaeology [2], geology [3], technical and thematic cartography [4], crime and accident scene [5], human bodies survey [6], and rapid survey photogrammetry from video [7]. The starting data is always a set of photographs and therefore a set of two-dimensional digital images that are processed by the software to extract three-dimensional data.…”