Theme:
2. Archaeological Sciences, Humanities and the Digital era: Bridging the Gaps
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Persistent signs on surfaces: the innovative use of Visual Archaeology techniques in investigating voluntary and crafting marks
Content:
The proposed session aims to offer an occasion to compare different Visual Archaeology techniques used to study worked surfaces. In the last decades, the digital age has completely revised archaeological research and documentation methods, changing the way we investigate (or re-investigate) the ancient world. Computational Imaging are now used in topographic analyses as well as in the study of material culture. Furthermore, at higher magnifications, some techniques are helpful to investigate manufacturing and wearing traces.
Visual Archaeology techniques – such as RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), VRTI (Virtual-RTI), Photogrammetry, 2D/3D image reconstruction – are used to “read” surfaces in more detail than the naked eye. Thanks to these “digital” diagnostic approach, today it is possible to in-depth study inscribed, engraved worked or painted surfaces, made of clay, stone, bone, ivory, and metal. The observation of such traces using Visual Archaeology techniques helps, for example, to reconstruct and interpret texts, signs of writing and decorations as well as to understand how they were crafted and which tools were used, distinguishing voluntary and processing marks, and exploring the real sequence of artisanal gestures behind the artefact itself.
In this perspective, the main goals of the session are:
- offer a space for comparing different Visual Archaeology techniques in terms of developing various scientific intersections with other approaches (such as experimental archaeology, archaeometry, etc.), its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, light conditions, level of detail, magnifications and fieldwork, and discussing limitations and further potentiality;
- explore the possibility of applying these techniques to provide a renewed perspective in relation to the ancient artefacts and their crafting features and their function in order to define the best areas – distinguished by conservation status, degradation, presence of crafting traces, pigments, clay coatings, and patinas – on which indoor and outdoor microscale analyses can then be carried out.
Keywords:
Experimental archaeology, Tool traces, Medieval and Post-Medieval periods, Macroscopic and microscopic study, Stone and stoneworkers, Degradation and conservation
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Giulia Previti (Italy) 1
Co-organisers:
Lavinia Giorgi (Italy) 2
Martin Langner (Germany) 3
Jose Luis Lerma (Spain) 4
Marco Serino (Italy) 5
Affiliations:
1. Sapienza University of Rome, Department of science of antiquity
2. Sapienza University of Rome, Department of Classics
3. Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Institute for Digital Humanities
4. Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Cartographic Engineering, Geodesy and Photogrammetry
5. Università degli Studi di Torino, Department of Historical Studies
THIS SESSION CAN NOT BE SELECTED AT THIS MOMENT