Qp: A tool for generating 3D models of ancient Greek pottery

2013

This paper describes an ongoing research focused on developing an automatic recognition system for the retrieval of archaeological 3D models. The aim of the project is to implement computer tools capable of exploring a database and retrieving those objects that are similar in shape to a given 3D 'query model'. Such tools would be extremely useful to archaeologists who need to compare shape features between artefacts as part of their quantitative analysis. One interesting case is the comparison of stylistic similarities in anthropomorphic objects recovered from the re mains of the ancient city of Tenochtitlan (today's Mexico City).

Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2011

The utilisation of 3D computer graphics technologies in the domain of pottery analysis can enhance archaeological research in terms of data management, indexing and shape matching. In this paper, we attempt to reduce the dimensions of the 3D vessel shape matching problem in order to create Web-enabled compact shape descriptors applicable for content based retrieval systems. This is achieved by exploiting significant morphological features of vessels such as the rotational symmetry and the opposed positioning of appendages. We propose the idea of capturing the surface relief of a normalised, in terms of scale, position and orientation 3D vessel on a pair of depthmap images. We question the ability of performing shape matching of complete or nearly complete 3D vessels by encoding depthmap images using 2D shape descriptors. We have evaluated the performance of two shape descriptors applied on depthmap images in relation to a generic 3D shape descriptor. For the performance evaluation, we have implemented multiple queries-by-example on five ancient Greek vessel shape categories found in our calibrated 3D vessel database.

2016

Abstract: The paper presents a new approach for the virtual reconstruction of historical artifacts such as ceramic pots. The technique is based on the photogrammetry method through which the profile line of the pot is achieved and which is composed by a fixed number of inflection points. The parameterization of the profile is then followed by the creation of a macro (script) in CAD software in order to automatically generate the shape of the ceramic pot. The case study included in the article consists of a total of 15 families of ancient ceramic pottery. The purpose of this technique is to serve as a support both for historians, archaeologists and restorers, as well as for students who desire a fast, fair and accessible virtual reconstruction of ceramic pots, regardless of their considered knowledge in designing or editing a programming language.

2022

Ancient pottery in archaeological sites is typically found as broken fragments. The collection, classification, and assembling of those pieces into their original artifact may take years of hard work, especially when the fragments are irregular, intermixed with parts of different vessels, or if some key pieces are missing. This problem is traditionally handled via two main steps: (1) the Classification of Archaeological Fragments into similar groups (CAF) and (2) the Reconstruction of each group into the original Archaeological Objects (RAO). Over the years, many alternatives have been proposed to solve this problem. A seminal approach was exploiting the color and texture properties of the fragments. More recently, the use of 3D computer-aided reconstruction methods gained attention as promising tools in pattern recognition. For this reason, researchers have implemented algorithms to collect all the information necessary to reconstruct a complete vessel from suitable data collected via 3D scanners. In this work, four types of algorithms were tested to reconstruct the objects without an a priori knowledge of the final shapes. The method exploited the geometric features obtained from the 3D mesh model acquisition on artificial samples from a broken mug, used as test cases. The best algorithm satisfying the final 3D reconstruction was then applied to the study of archaeological ceramic fragments from Villa della Piscina in the Parco Archeologico of Centocelle (Rome, Italy) within the project ERCOLE. The aim of this work is at developing a tool that satisfies the criteria of accuracy, performance, robustness, transportability, cost, and careful handling of archaeological specimens.

… on Imaging Science, …, 2001

This paper presents a method for archiving and searching 3D Native American ceramic vessels using geometric modeling techniques. Archaeological vessels are scanned and defined as a set of three-dimensional triangulated meshes composed of points, edges and triangles. Our work includes modeling the data with parametric surfaces, extracting features to raise the level of abstraction of data, and organizing vessel data based on XML schema. A visual query interface on the Web was developed that permits users to sketch or select sample vessel shapes to augment text and metric search criteria to retrieve original and modeled data, and interactive 2D and 3D models.

International Journal of Advanced Research

An automatic reconstruction of ancient artifact fragments is of great interest in archaeology, and is considered important because it helps archaeologists make inferences about past cultures and civilizations. Therefore, numerous researches proposed various methods to put together and restore the fragments of a piece of pottery to its original form. The aim of this paper is to present an in-depth review of the most important available publications in computer applications related to the area of the classifying and reconstruction of three-dimensional model for archaeological pottery objects over the epoch in the early eighties until the end of 2013. This task classified according to the feature extraction, the classification process and the matching techniques implemented for the purpose of restoration of the fragments of pottery object to its original form. Moreover, this paper focused on review and analyze the results that they have achieved.

JOURNAL OF ANCIENT HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY, 2015

The paper presents a new approach for the virtual reconstruction of historical artifacts such as ceramic pots. The technique is based on the photogrammetry method through which the profile line of the pot is achieved and which is composed by a fixed number of inflection points. The parameterization of the profile is then followed by the creation of a macro (script) in CAD software in order to automatically generate the shape of the ceramic pot. The case study included in the article consists of a total of 15 families of ancient ceramic pottery. The purpose of this technique is to serve as a support both for historians, archaeologists and restorers, as well as for students who desire a fast, fair and accessible virtual reconstruction of ceramic pots, regardless of their considered knowledge in designing or editing a programming language.

Springer eBooks, 2024

This paper focuses on digitally-supported research methods for an important group of cultural heritage objects, the Greek pottery, especially with figured decoration. The design, development and application of new digital methods for searching, comparing, and visually exploring these vases need an interdisciplinary approach to effectively analyse the various features of the vases, like shape, decoration, and manufacturing techniques, and relationships between the vases. We motivate the need and opportunities by a multimodal representation of the objects, including 3D shape, material, and painting. We then illustrate a range of innovative methods for these representations, including quantified surface and capacity comparison, material analysis, image flattening from 3D objects, retrieval and comparison of shapes and paintings, and multidimensional data visualization. We also discuss challenges and future work in this area.

2005

In this paper we propose an image-based pottery shape and school identification and classification system for an unknown pottery or fragment. This system is designed to assist archaeologists and students to identify and record objects quickly and accurately. We present several image retrieval and computer vision techniques and describe their applications within the domain of archaeological studies by utilizing a large digital library of pottery photos. Twenty pottery shapes and four pottery schools are identified with shape and color-based image retrieval techniques, respectively. The system analyses and compares extracted features to determine the five closest database images, and then presents them to the user for final decision. This is the first pottery study to combine the two different techniques -shape and color-based image retrieval -to identify multiple characteristics of an unknown pottery image or a pottery fragment. The database contains about one thousand pottery photos obtained from online digital libraries. Experiments on identifying the correct pottery shape and pottery schools yielded pproximately 98% accuracy based on the whole pottery image. a

2013

Pottery is considered as one of the most representative categories of artifacts in the cultural heritage domain. Nowadays, several 3D digitized replicas are publicly available over the Web. The content richness of 3D pottery is of great importance in the archaeological research domain. This information can be used by special software tools that will provide the archaeologist with automated shape matching mechanisms that take under consideration the 3D morphological characteristics. In this work, we present a digital signature that can be used for pottery shape matching. The signature carries information related to the 3D morphology of a vessel and its extraction is based on a mesh preprocessing procedure. We have implemented a software tool that extracts the proposed signature and we performed initial tests on shape matching using a 3D pottery database composed by both modeled and digitized 3D models. Key words: 3D Pottery Repositories, shape matching, 3D digitization, content-based...