Philippe Martinez

Digital reunification of the parthenon and its sculptures

The location, condition, and number of the Parthenon sculptures present a considerable challenge to archeologists and researchers studying this monument. Although the Parthenon proudly stands on the Athenian Acropolis after nearly 2,500 years, many of its sculptures have been damaged or lost. Since the end of the 18th century, its surviving sculptural decorations have been scattered to museums around the world. We propose a strategy for digitally capturing a large number of sculptures while minimizing impact on site and working under time and resource constraints. Our system employs a custom structured light scanner and adapted techniques for organizing, aligning and merging the data. In particular this paper details our effort to digitally record the Parthenon sculpture collection in the Basel Skulpturhalle museum, which exhibits plaster casts of most of the known existing pediments, metopes, and frieze. We demonstrate our results by virtually placing the scanned sculptures on the Parthenon.

High fidelity reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian temple of Kalabsha

The ancient Egyptian temple of Kalabsha dates back to 30 BC. In 1963 the temple was dismantled and moved to a new site in order to save it from the rising waters of the Lake Nasser. Computer graphics in collaboration with Egyptologists makes it possible to recreate the temple on a computer, place it back to its original location and orientation, and illuminate it, as it may have appeared some 2000 years ago. Accuracy is of the highest importance in such archaeological reconstructions when investigating how a site might have appeared in the past. Failure to use the highest fidelity means there is a very real danger of misrepresenting the past.n This paper describes the practical methodology that should be undertaken in order to create a high fidelity reconstruction and realistic lighting simulation of an ancient Egyptian temple.

Digital realities and archaeology: a difficult relationship or a fruitful marriage?

As we stand now at the end of year 2001, supposedly time for the miracle of the Space Odyssey, it looks like most of the archaeologists or keepers of the world heritage do remain Indiana Jones without even a whip. Far from the dream equipment used by most of the known Tomb Raiders or Sea Looters, we still have to deal with very pragmatic realities that seem to keep us from using most of the recent technologies poured over our heads by an overwhelming industrial development.But at a time when Hollywood is overusing them to bring to the wider and money spending audiences a vision of our past that is more and more attractive but also disturbing when not totally false, it seems right to try at least to take these techniques over and to try to deal with the new ways they bring not only into the presentation of our research but also in our ways of dealing with the data we are recovering over the years.While recent encounters around this topic have turned into the sad but truthful acknowledgement of the difficulties that remain in the use of digital technologies to reconstruct the past we are slowly but also more and more precisely recovering, it is important to take note of old and recent achievements that show that a difficult relationship does not have to lead to a divorce. And maybe also be that childish dreams do not have to be forgotten along the way.These encounters have also clearly shown that scientists working in the digital fields are eager to help us to apply their research to our own, not only because Archaeology is cool as someone preciously reminded us, but also because problems we are actually facing represent problems not encountered in other fields, that can open doors on new fields or research for both communities.We are just at the beginning of a new age in archaeological research and it would be a shame to straightforwardly but bluntly reject new tools just because they are costly, difficult to use and disturbing for our own precious work habits (Though in fact these can look like pretty good reasons to turn back to paper and pencil).There shall soon come a time when all this shall have become of daily use for most of the good people we are actually working for, and the children of today might very well laugh of our technological fears and shyness. It is a necessary evil to be today the guinea pig testers of these technologies, to be riding the wave while surfing on the net, to be prepared for the revolution these things are bringing in our ways of dealing with our past and turn it into virtual but life-like realities that can be easily comprehended by a wider audience, while also opening our own scientific minds on realities we are not even suspecting to exist today.

Assembling the sculptures of the Parthenon

Although the Parthenon has stood on the Athenian Acropolis for nearly 2,500 years, its sculptural decorations have been scattered to museums around the world. Many of its sculptures have been damaged or lost. Fortunately, most of the decoration survives through drawings, descriptions, and casts. A component of our Parthenon Project has been to assemble digital models of the sculptures and virtually reunite them with the Parthenon. This sketch details our effort to digitally record the Parthenon sculpture collection in the Basel Skulpturhalle museum, which exhibits plaster casts of almost all of the existing pediments, metopes, and frieze. Our techniques have been designed to work as quickly as possible and at low cost.

The Eye of the Medusa: XRF Imaging Reveals Unknown Traces of Antique Polychromy

The colorful decoration of statues and buildings in antique times is commonly described by the term antique polychromy. It is well-known among scholars but less so to the general public, and its exact form is the subject of research. In this paper we discuss results obtained from the frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in the Sanctuary of Delphi (Greece). We will present the first application of a mobile instrument for macro-XRF imaging for the in situ investigation of antique polychromy and show that it allows one to identify significant traces not visible to the naked eye and not detectable by XRF spot measurements or any other mobile, noninvasive method. These findings allow for a partial reconstruction of the polychromy. Furthermore, we present a novel approach enabling the correct interpretation of artifacts resulting from changes of the detection geometry in the investigation of complexly shaped samples by XRF imaging. This approach is based on the 3D surface model acquired by photogrammetry and fundamental parameter calculations.

A high fidelity reconstruction of ancient Egypt: the temple of Kalabsha

Accurate light simulation is of highest importance in archaeological reconstructions when you want to investigate how a site might have looked like in the past. Failure to use the highest fidelity means there is a very real danger of misrepresenting the past. This sketch describes the high fidelity reconstruction and realistic lighting simulation of an ancient Egyptian temple.

Reconstructing a colossus of Ramesses II from laser scan data

We present a new method to solve a 3D jigsaw puzzle, building a colossus from scans of its fragmentary ruins in Thebes, Egypt.

Drawing Accurate Ground Plans Using Optical Triangulation Data

Here we consider optical triangulation scanning as a means of creating permanent architectural archives in the form of accurate ground plans and other orthographic views. We present plan drawings created with laser scan data and use these documents to make comparisons with existing documents. Finally, we present a new technique for decreasing the laser scanning field time required to create plans and other views.

Traversing complex environments using time-indexed high dynamic range panoramas

In our viewer application, we first index the recorded panoramas in a spatial network, using global coordinates recorded during image capture. After initialization, users interactively navigate through the image data using a novel multi-node viewer in which each node represents a different location on the time axis. The user’s current position is drawn in the viewer’s main window. The 3D location for each image capture location in the dataset is projected in this view as navigation links (Figure 2). By hovering over a given link, the user obtains an interactive preview of the linked panorama. In a separate window, a ground plan of the site enables spatial domain traversal of the scene. Indexed metadata is presented in a third window. View information between windows is updated in real time via an XML data stream (Figure 3).