ARCHAIDE ARCHAELOGICAL

AUTOMATIC INTERPRETATION AND

DOCUMENTATION OF CERAMICS Gabriele Gattiglia

Dept. Archeologia, Univ. of PisaRoberto Scopigno

Visual Computing Lab, ISTI – CNR, Pisa, Italy

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ArchAIDE An EC H2020 project Call Reflective 6, RIA (Research and Innovation

Action) Project Started on June 1st, 2016 Duration: 36 months, end on May 31st 2019 Partners:

Archaeology (academia): Pisa U. – Archaeology Dept. (coordinator), U. of York – ADS, U. Cologne, U. of Barcelona

Archaeology (SME): BARAKA, ELEMENTS Technology (research): CNR-ISTI, Tel Aviv U. Technology (SME): INERA

R. Scopigno, ArchAIDE Proj, EG GCH2016

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ArchAIDE - Overall goal Support interpretation

and documentation of archaeological excavations, as much as possible near in space and time to the excavation field/action Interpr. & docum. often

implemented in a second time, in lab

Based on personal experience and consultation of printed catalogues

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ArchAIDE - Overall goal (2)

We want to innovate the archaeological practice, introducing a modern computer-aided approach

but we want to keep as much as possible unchanged the overall methodology, to ensure easy adaptation and impact in the archaeology domain.

“Change everything to maintain the tradition”[Tomasi di Lampedusa, “Il Gattopardo”]

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Interpretation of archaelogical data Interpretation of findings (usually pottery sherds) is

of paramount importance for the interpretation of the excavation results, identification of the layers and to take further decisions on the excavation progress and directions

To be effective, as early this phase is solved, the better

Vast knowledge and experience is required (but often practical excavations are performed by young personnel)

Nowadays study and interpretation of sherds is mostly performed in a remote location, where the archaeologist is able to consult heavy and complex catalogues of ceramics artifacts

Our goal: keep the same consolidated approach, but: (1) support interpretation with a computer assisted approach and (2) automatize & speedup the documentation process

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Sherds & Ceramics Catalogues

Analysis of sherds:(a) the identification of the ceramic class, the specialist • looks at the surface treatment,• looks at the decoration (if

present) • looks at the fabric (paste), i.e.

the clay body of the vessel composed of matrix and inclusions

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Sherds & Ceramics Catalogues(b) identification of the form type:• looks into the ceramic class

paper catalogues for the specific form;

• analyses the section of the potsherd and its profile;

• makes a comparison with the published vessels (hundreds of pages and drawings)

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The pipeline

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The future ArchAIDE platform

The ArchAIDE System is designed mainly for a mobile use (recognition, quantification, raw data entry in an archive) with some specific functionalities designed for a computer desktop environment

Interpretation based on reconstruction (from photos) of the 2D profile and shape matching, with an app for tablets

All data gathered is immediately stored on an archive (ADS-compliant) Documentation gathering is started form the very initial phases, as an incremental process

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You can fill in the field with data you know.The more information you are able to fill in, the more the system will narrow the scope of the search

You can add more than one picture

SeARCH

ArchAIDE pottery recognition

A useful way of using ArchAIDE could be as an universal pottery database.You could have the possibility of making a search using the aforementioned fields. For example, you can ask the system for all the amphorae produced in Spain during the II century A.D.

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Ingredients and research goal (1)Structural components: Digitize the corpus of catalogues

Digitize paper catalogues, detect text and images, link them semantically

Convert profile images from raster to vectorial format (adequate for subsequent shape–based search&retrieval)

Design the overall data archive: Digitized catalouge corpus Documentation of acheo campaigns

Design the ArchAIDE app (mobile platform)

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Ingredients and research goal (2) Research on algorithms:

• Focus on technologies for the digitization of paper catalogues, to convert paper document in digital format (solving problems as digitization, OCR, detection of figures) and how to enable the semi-automatic conversion of raster drawings into a geometric 2D description of each ceramic class (based on drawings and profiles)

• Construction of sherds profiles from a few images: not an easy task, the profile is never completely visible in a single image, how to produce it (without building a 3D model)?

• Efficient and robust algorithms and data structure for supporting the search by similarity of a fragments description with respect to the database of profiles recollected from catalogues

• Validate on the field (SMEs) R. Scopigno, ArchAIDE Proj, EG GCH2016

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Concluding remarks

We have just started,keep posted on our progress:

https://www.facebook.com/archaideproject/

ArchAIDE web site will be opened very soon

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Questions? Contact:

Visual Computing Lab of ISTI - CNR

http://vcg.isti.cnr.itr.scopigno@isti.cnr.it

Remember to submit to: ACM Journ. on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)

http://jocch.acm.org/

R. Scopigno, ArchAIDE Proj, EG GCH2016