PyLithics: A Python package for stone tool analysis

Gellis, Jason; Smith, C.; Foley, Robert

doi:10.21105/joss.03738

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…Since the introduction of Geometric Morphometrics methods in 2D, the analysis of outlines has become more common. Currently, standardized drawings can even be analyzed at the level of individual scars (Gellis et al, 2022). However, the analysis of 3D models in archaeology is still in its early stages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A valuable contribution to automated analysis of palaeolithic artefacts

Hageneuer

2024

PCI Archaeology

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Motivated by the concept of combining the archaeological practice of creating lithic artifact drawings with the potential of 3D mesh data, our goal in this project is not only to analyze the shape at the artifact level, but also to enable a more detailed analysis of stone tools at the scar and ridge level. For this purpose, we combine the archaeological interpretation, typically represented in 2D, with its corresponding 3D data. To achieve this goal, we propose a workflow that utilizes 3D datasets as the best means for shape analysis of lithic artifacts, which relies on one of the first open access repositories of 3D scannned lithic tools. In our four-step workflow, we start with a preprocessing in GigaMesh, followed by a scar segmentation using Morse theory-based algorithms, continue with a postprocessing and finally create a graph model-based representation of the lithic artifacts in 3D. This prototypical graph model can already be used to display and evaluate manual or parameterized operational sequences in 3D. The source code and the manually annotated ground truth data are available as open-access publications under a Creative Commons license.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A valuable contribution to automated analysis of palaeolithic artefacts

Hageneuer

2024

PCI Archaeology

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Time, the Middle Stone Age and lithic analyses following the Third Science Revolution

Basell,

Spinapolice

2024

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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Discrete Morse theory segmentation on high-resolution 3D lithic artifacts

Bullenkamp,

Kaiser,

Linsel

et al. 2024

It - Information Technology

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Motivated by the question of understanding the roots of tool making by anatomically modern humans and coexisting Neanderthals in the Paleolithic, a number of shape classification methods have been tested on photographs and drawings of stone tools. Since drawings contain interpretation and photographs fool both human and computational methods by color and shadows on the surface, we propose an approach using 3D datasets as best means for analyzing shape, and rely on first open access repositories on lithic tools. The goal is to not only analyze shape on an artifact level, but allow a more detailed analysis of stone tools on a scar and ridge level. A Morse-Smale complex (MS complex) extracted from the triangular mesh of a 3D model is a reduced skeleton consisting of linked lines on the mesh. Discrete Morse theory makes it possible to obtain such a MS complex from a scalar function. Thus, we begin with Multi-Scale Integral Invariant filtering on the meshes of lithic artifacts, which provides curvature measures for ridges, which are convex, and scars, which are concave. The resulting values on the vertices can be used as our discrete Morse function and the skeleton we get is build up from lines that will coincide with the ridges and, implicitly, contains the scars as enclosed regions of those lines on the mesh. As this requires a few parameters, we provide a graphical user interface (GUI) to allow altering the predefined parameters to quickly find a good result. In addition, a stone tool may have areas that do not belong to the scar/ridge class. These can be masked and we use conforming MS complexes to ensure that the skeleton keeps these areas whole. Finally, results are shown on real and open access datasets. The source code and manually annotated ground truth for the evaluation are provided as Open Access with a Creative Commons license.

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PyLithics: A Python package for stone tool analysis

Cited by 4 publications

References 5 publications

A valuable contribution to automated analysis of palaeolithic artefacts

A valuable contribution to automated analysis of palaeolithic artefacts

Time, the Middle Stone Age and lithic analyses following the Third Science Revolution

Discrete Morse theory segmentation on high-resolution 3D lithic artifacts

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