This project continues a longer term intellectual program begun under the ITR solicitation and has proven to be innovative in multiple ways. The work is an artful interdisciplinary blend of computer vision, physics, mathematics, algorithm development, efficient computation, graphics and visualization in a rapidly emerging area which might best be termed computational archeology, although the methods are generalized to other domains. The project involves an interdisciplinary team of archeologists and computer vision/graphics/visualization researchers developing methods and software for capturing and analyzing archeological data. In this project The Brown University Division of Engineering, Laboratory for Man/Machine Systems (LEMS), will collaborate with the Brown University Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, the nonprofit educational outreach Institute for the Visualization of History, Williamstown, MA, archaeologists at Tel Aviv University, Israel and several computer vision experts from European institutions.
The primary testbed project will be a crusader castle in Israel. There are four sub-projects proposed: a collection system and database for video and 3D data captured on-site during excavation, three-dimensional reconstruction, of both small artifacts and architectural sites, assembly of pottery and glass fragments, and visualization of sites and artifacts. The project builds on and extends earlier work which focused on the Petra archaeological site and assembly of artifact fragments. The advances in computing technologies over the past 5 years in processing power and storage capacity combined with decreases in cost allow the researchers to expand their ambitions and develop more powerful tools and analytic techniques.
