Research Project

ARS3D African Red Slip Ware digitalised

3D documentation for the multi-perspective analysis of a central object genre of Late Antiquity

Summary

The iconography of the Late Antique and Early Christian motifs on African Red Slip Ware (ARS) pottery vessels, produced using appliqué techniques, is central to the understanding of Late Antique imaginary worlds. As mass-produced image carriers, ARS spread throughout the entire Mediterranean region and beyond in the third to fifth centuries. The BMBF-funded project is making this object genre accessible through 3D digitisation and semantic modelling. With the help of these methods, an online reference catalogue, a digital research platform and Linked Open Data are available for subsequent use.

The central question of the BMBF-funded cooperation project (i3mainz and LEIZA) relates to the establishment of standardised digital processes, whereby the geometric recording or rectification of appliqué motifs forms a basis for comparisons to determine identical models. This leads to the question of generating automatic conclusions for comparisons. For this purpose, a process is developed in which a semantic set of rules (ontology) automatically decides on the basis of archaeological and geometrical criteria how "similar" such motifs are. Furthermore, the question arises of a CIDOC-CRM-based semantic modelling strategy of image motif interpretations (e.g. Healing of the Paralytic or Hercules and the Nemean Lion) for re-use, which is based on chains of reasoning and observations of object characteristics (features).

Because previous methods did not succeed in realising an automated process for levelling appliqué geometries (a rolling off of differently curved 3D surfaces into the 2D plane), the research goal of the project was to develop specialised workflows and algorithms that serve as a basis for comparisons between appliqué motifs and archaeological semantic descriptions. The digital recording of the ARS holdings of the LEIZA by means of 3D procedures (strip light projection scanning) and the aforementioned workflows and algorithms developed by i3mainz now make it possible to compare potentially identical appliqués or to assign their negative forms (matrices/models) as well as appliqués created from them.

The digital methodology is based on the creation of annotations on the basis of archaeological and semantic modelling with the ontologies CIDOC-CRM and PROV-O, which are created for each object and object feature (e.g. appliqués). In this way, image contexts and contents, archaeological meta-information (e.g. material, form), as well as metadata on the geometric recording can be made available interoperably for subsequent use. A transformation to Linked Open Data and the linking of conceptual concepts to external repositories (e.g. Getty AAT, IconClass, Wikidata) also creates a connection to the Linked Open Data Cloud. As a basis for methods for automated comparisons, both purely geometric and archaeological rule sets will be developed independently of each other, which will lead to rule-based statements through a weighted, common decision structure. The final provision of the scanned and annotated data on an online platform creates a reference catalogue that enables the classification and determination of appliqués in digital space.

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Contact

Florian Thiery
+49 6131 8885-329
Kontakt
Dr. Louise Rokohl
+49 0 6131 8885-0
Kontakt

Team

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alexandra W. Busch
Dr. Louise Rokohl
Florian Thiery
Dr. Allard Mees
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Guido Heinz
Samantha Beck
Anke Dingler

  • Hochschule Mainz, i3mainz – Institut für Raumbezogene Informations- und Messtechnik

  • Thiery, Florian, Karmacharya, Ashish and Rokohl, Louise. 2019. ‘ARS3D – Documenting facts and interpretations of African Red Slip Ware’. In CAA2019. Check Object Integrity. Proceedings of the 47rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. [in review]
  • Atorf, Philipp, Justus, Carina, Karmacharya, Ashish, Rokohl, Louise and Boochs, Frank. 2019. ‘Similarity analysis of African Red Slip Ware (ARS) with modern 3D and 2D processing techniques’. In CAA2019. Check Object Integrity. Proceedings of the 47rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. [in review]
  • Hofmann, Kerstin. 2019. ‘Ding-Editionen. Vom archäologischen (Be-)Fund übers Corpus ins Netz’. Edited by Susanne Grunwald, Franziska Lang, Ulrike Peter, Katja Rösler, Louise Rokohl, Stefan Schreiber, Karsten Tolle, and David Wigg-Wolf. e-Forschungsberichte des DAI, Fasc.2 (2019), 1–12. URL: https://publications.dainst.org/journals/index.php/efb/article/view/2236.
  • Heinz, Guido, and Rokohl Louise. 2019. ‘3D-Dokumentation von Sammlungsobjekten und Datenanalyse im RGZM’. In 9. Workshop der AG CAA Deutschland, Talk. Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
  • Thiery, Florian, Ashish Karmacharya, and Louise Rokohl. 2019. ‘ARS3D - Documenting Facts and Interpretations of African Red Slip Ware’. In Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Talk. Kraków, Polen: Zenodo.https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.2648210.
  • Atorf, Philipp, Justus, Carina, Karmacharya, Ashish, Rokohl, Louise, and Boochs, Frank. 2019. ‘Similarity analysis of African Red Slip Ware (ARS) with modern 3D and 2D processing techniques’. In Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Talk. Kraków, Poland.
  • Karmacharya, Ashish, Rokohl, Louise, and Thiery, Florian. 2019. ‘African Red Slip Ware als Graph: Modellierung in CIDOC-CRM im ARS3D-Project’. In Graph Technologies in the Humanities 2019: Modellierung, Erschließung, Vergleich: Graphen in den Digitalen Geisteswissenschaften, Talk. Mainz, Germany.
  • Rokohl, Louise. 2018. ‘African Red Slip Ware digital – Mit 3D-Dokumentation und Ontologie zur Online-Edition’. In Ding-Editionen: Vom Artefakt übers Corpus ins Netz, Talk. Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

With the completion of the project, the complete LEIZA collection of African Red Slip Ware will be available in an online reference catalogue in an online portal. For each object, high-resolution 3D models, metadata and archaeological information are provided. The web-based open source framework 3DHOP enables individual analysis in the browser, e.g. the use of different light, texture and measurement tools. Through the semantic modelling of the archaeological information on the basis of CIDOC-CRM and its extensions, as well as links to LEIZA’s own and external repositories, the annotated research data is human- and machine-readable, was published as Linked Open Data at the end of the project and can thus be used for further research questions.

In order to establish a procedure for comparing appliqués, an automated comparison workflow of appliqués or models based on geometric and archaeological processes was developed. The resulting comparison viewer enables the simultaneous viewing of two appliqués or models. This includes synchronised zooming and panning, as well as the possibility of displaying different image layers. These include a customisable height difference image, different transparency levels of the comparison object, as well as an image with residual gaps of the displacement from the matching process. For the evaluation of the similarity of two appliqués or models, each comparison was evaluated geometrically and then subjected to an archaeological assessment. This results in an overall assessment of the comparison, which is made available via the online portal.

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