Ancient Coins & Ceramics - 3d and 2d Documentation for Preservation and Retrieval of Lost Heritage

Motivated by the requirements of archaeologists we are developing an automated system for acquisition, documentation and management of daily finds of excavations. These daily finds can be separated into large objects like remainders of architecture and small objects of ancient daily life like ceramics and coins. Ceramics especially are found in numbers of tens of thousands on virtually every excavation, because ceramics have been in use for thousands of years. Until the present day these finds are documented by manual drawings. There is a similar situation in the case of coins, where manual drawings are often used to abstract them from photographs. Therefore we propose an automated acquisition and documentation system based on digital cameras and structured light for small findings. For ceramics we provide further processing to estimate horizontal cross-sections (profile-lines) for printed documentation, as it is done by manual drawing. For this a proper orientation of the acquired 3D-model is required and automatically estimated based on the assumption that ceramics were made on rotational plates (wheels). We are aware that ceramics might not always have been manufactured on rotational plates, because the wheel was not invented everywhere as for the example in the Americas. Even though ceramics from such areas appear to be rotational symmetric, we developed a method based on shape and symmetry analysis to determine the manufacturing techniques of ceramics. This helps to answer another archaeological question regarding the technological advance of an ancient culture. Results for accuracy and performance are shown on real data from recent interdisciplinary projects together with archaeologists from Austria, Germany, Israel and Peru. Furthermore we present preliminary results of the integration of coin classification in our documentation system. Additionally we are currently adapting the London Charter to ensure the intellectual integrity, reliability, transparency, documentation, standards, sustainability and accessibility of the information gathered by 3D-acquisition. Finally a summary and an outlook is given.