3D RECONSTRUCTION AND MODELLING OF THE CONTACT SURFACES FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SMALL MUSEUM PIECES

The paper is concerned with the application of close range photogrammetry for reconstruction of the shape of the 3D surfaces of the small archaeological pieces. Such items, as statuettes, stone plates, pots, etc, are very often broken and their pieces are placed in various museums over the World. To identify their exact origin and the correspondence of the particular pieces, there is need to determine the shapes of the corresponding contact surfaces of the adjacent pieces, which belong to the same items. Creating a database for such contact surfaces, with their geometrical description and the selected thematic information, would allow to make some indications on the assignment of the pieces. In this paper, the main principles and the practical results of the proposed approach for reconstruction of the shape of the 3D contact small surfaces, are presented. In the experiment carried out in the Photogrammetric Digital Laboratory at the Warsaw University of Technology, thirty three 3D surfaces of the broken museum pieces (from Cairo and Warsaw) were determined. This project is sponsored by the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research.