Virtual reconstruction of archaeological vessels using expert priors &amp;amp; surface markings

Arévalo

2018

Oxford J Archaeology

Summary The present study aims to show the effectiveness of a methodological procedure to estimate the volumetric capacity of archaeological ceramic vessels and the net and gross weights of their probable contents. This method can be easily applied, independently of cultural or chronological contexts, and, alongside other historical and economic conclusions, might serve to verify the possible existence of typological and metrological standardizations of domestic or commercial containers. This study gives a detailed description of a simple methodological protocol which uses profile drawings to calculate the approximate volume of any vessel, thus enabling assessment of its conformity to ancient weight systems. This article will illustrate the strength of the method using a sample of Ramon T‐11213 amphorae made in the Bay of Cadiz during the fifth century BC, which, given its quantitative and qualitative strengths, proves to be an exemplary case study and a valid pilot.

Section: From the Archaeological Record To Mathematical Calculationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

From Traditional to Computational Archaeology. An Interdisciplinary Method and New Approach to Volume and Weight Quantification

Arévalo

2018

Oxford J Archaeology

2011 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV)

“…The work by Cooper, Willis and Andrews [15], for example, assumes that the objects are rotationally symmetric. Similarly, the work by Cohen et al [4] utilizes a set of expert-defined generic object models. Under such assumptions, the alignment transformation between pieces can be estimated based on the hypothesized shape of the vessel.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

Aligning surfaces without aligning surfaces

Oxholm

Nishino

2011

We introduce a novel method for matching and aligning 3D surfaces that do not have any overlapping surface information. When two matching surfaces do not overlap, all that remains in common between them is a thin strip along their borders. Aligning such fragments is challenging but crucial for various applications, such as reassembly of thin-shell ceramics from their broken pieces. Past work approach this problem by heavily relying on simplistic assumptions about the shape of the object, or its texture. Our method makes no such assumptions; instead, we leverage the geometric and photometric similarity of the matching surfaces along the break-line. We first encode the shape and color of the boundary contour of each fragment at various scales in a novel 2D representation. Reformulating contour matching as 2D image registration based on these scale-space images enables efficient and accurate breakline matching. We then align the fragments by estimating the rotation around the break-line through maximizing the geometric continuity across it with a least-squares minimization. We evaluate our method on real-word colonial artifacts recently excavated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Our system dramatically increases the ease and efficiency at which users reassemble artifacts as we demonstrate on three different vessels.

“…Karasik 25 assumed that the pottery sherds were from spherically symmetric vessels and used this shape prior for fragment classification and 3D reconstruction. Other than fragment classification, many previous works 16,26 were focused on developing algorithms to assemble sherds into larger pottery pieces, or the whole vessel, by fitting the boundary shape of sherds.…”

Section: Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying designs from incomplete, fragmented cultural heritage objects by curve-pattern matching

Zhou

Smith

et al. 2017

J. Electron. Imaging

Study of cultural-heritage objects with embellished realistic and abstract designs made up of connected and intertwined curves crosscuts a number of related disciplines, including archaeology, art history, and heritage management. However, many objects, such as pottery sherds found in the archaeological record, are fragmentary, making the underlying complete designs unknowable at the scale of the sherd fragment. The challenge to reconstruct and study complete designs is stymied because 1) most fragmentary cultural-heritage objects contain only a small portion of the underlying full design, 2) in the case of a stamping application, the same design may be applied multiple times with spatial overlap on one object, and 3) curve patterns detected on an object are usually incomplete and noisy. As a result, traditional curve-pattern matching algorithms, such as Chamfer matching, may perform poorly in identifying the underlying design. In this paper, we develop a new partial-to-global curve matching algorithm to address these challenges and better identify the full design from a fragmented cultural heritage object. Specifically, we develop the algorithm to identify the designs of the carved wooden paddles of the Southeastern Woodlands from unearthed pottery sherds. A set of pottery sherds, curated at Georgia Southern University, are used to test the proposed algorithm, with promising results.