Images And Artefacts Of The Ancient World

by Bowman, Alan K.; Brady, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780197262962
• ISBN10: 0197262961
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-08-11
• Publisher: British Academy

Summary

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 aredoing 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 toencourage 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 imagingtechniques 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.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Table	vi
Notes on Contributors	x
Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(6)
Michael Brady
Alan K. Bowman
Wooden Stilus Tablets from Roman Britain	7	(8)
Alan K. Bowman
Roger S. O. Tomlin
Shadow Stereo, Image Filtering, and Constraint Propagation	15	(16)
Michael Brady
Xiao-Bo Pan
Veit Schenk
Melissa Terras
Paul Robertson
Nicholas Molton
Digitising Cuneiform Tablets	31	(4)
Carlo Vandecasteele
Luc Van Gool
Karel Van Lerberghe
Johan Van Rompay
Patrick Wambacq
Interpretation of Ancient Runic Inscriptions by Laser Scanning	35	(10)
Jan O. H. Swantesson
Helmer Gustavson
Virtual Reality, Relative Accuracy: Modelling Architecture and Sculpture with VRML	45	(14)
Michael Greenhalgh
Automatic Creation of Virtual Artefacts from Video Sequences	59	(10)
Andrew W. Fitzgibbon
Geoff Cross
Andrew Zisserman
At the Foot of Pompey's Statue: Reconceiving Rome's Theatrum Lapideum	69	(8)
Hugh Denard
Modelling Sagalassos: Creation of a 3D Archaeological Virtual Site	77	(12)
Luc Van Gool
Marc Pollefeys
Marc Proesmans
Alexey Zalesny
Three-Dimensional Laser Imaging in an Archaeological Context	89	(10)
Andrew M. Wallace
Movements of the Mental Eye in Pictorial Space	99	(10)
Jan J. Koenderink
The Potential for Image Analysis in Numismatics	109	(6)
Christopher J. Howgego
Italian Terra Sigillata with Applique Decoration: Digitising, Visualising, and Web-Publishing	115	(10)
Eleni Schindler Kaudelka
Ulrike Fastner
Shape from Profiles	125	(6)
Roberto Cipolla
Kwan-Yee K. Wong
The Skull as the Armature of the Face: Reconstructing Ancient Faces	131	(14)
R. A. H. Neave
A. J. N. W. Prag
Reconstruction of a 3D Mummy Portrait from Roman Egypt	145
Alf Linney
Joao Campos
Ghassan Alusi