Images and Artefacts of the Ancient World

In this genuinely productive interdisciplinary dialogue, engineering scientists, archaeologists and historians discuss how recent exciting developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display/diffusion can be applied to three-dimensional objects of material culture from the classical world, ranging from inscribed writing tablets to buildings and urban sites. The fifteen papers explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve the presentation of evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in developing methods of image-enhancement and the interpretation of objects.

These fifteen papers explore the ways in which recent developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display and diffusion can be applied to objects of material culture in order to enhance historians' understanding of the period from which the objects came (in this case, the remote past). In interpreting artefacts, the historian acts out a perceptual-cognitive task of transforming often noisy and impoverished signals into semantically rich symbols that have to be set within a cultural and historical context. Engineering scientists, equipped with a range of sophisticated techniques, equipment and highly specialised knowledge, are not always as aware as they might be of the range and the exact nature of problems faced by historians in interpreting objects of material culture. By providing the opportunity for scholars from these communities to explain to each other what they are doing and how, the papers explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve methods of presenting evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in their approach to developing methods of image-enhancement and interpretation of objects. A significant further dimension is the improvement of techniques of providing high quality images of important and valuable collections of original artefacts to scholars who cannot always study the originals directly. Another important development discussed here is the fact that such imaging techniques now offer the researcher valuable insurance against the processes of deterioration to which such artefacts are inevitably subject. Seven of the papers are scientific and technical, while the other eight have an archaeological or historical focus.

Michael Brady & Alan K Bowman: Introduction; Alan K Bowman & R S O Tomlin: Wooden stilus tablets from Roman Britain; Michael Brady, Xiao-Bo Pan, Viet Schenk, Melissa Terns & Nicholas Molton: Shadow Stereo, image filtering, and constraint propagation; Carlo Vandecasteele, Karel Van Lerberghe, Johan Van Rompay, & Patrick Wambacq: Digitising cuneiform tablets; Jan O H Swantesson & Helmer Gustavson: Interpretation of ancient runic inscriptions by laser scanning; Michael Greenhalgh: Virtual reality, relative accuracy: modelling architecture and sculpture with VRML; Andrew D Fitzgibbon, Geoff Cross & Andrew Zisserman: Automatic creation of virtual artefacts from video sequences; Hugh Denard: At the foot of Pompey's statue: reconceiving Rome's theatrum lapideum; Luc Van Gool, Marc Pollefeys, Marc Proesmans & Alexey Zalesny: Modelling Sagalassos: creation of a 3D archaeological virtual site; Andrew M Wallace: Three-simensional laser imaging and processing in an archaeological context;; Jan J Koenderink: Movements of the mental eye in pictorial space; Christopher J Howgego: The potential for image analysis in numismatics; Eleni Schindler Kaudelka & Ulrike Fastner: Italian terra sigillata with appliqu? decoration: digitising, visualising & web-publishing; Roberto Cipolla & Kwan-Yee K Wong: Shape from profiles; R A H Heave & A J N W Prag: The skull as the armature of the face: reconstructing ancient faces; Alf Linney, Joao Campos & Ghassan Alusi: Reconstruction of a 3D mummy portrait from Roman Egypt