ul 2004 
| for the 
ork can 
irale et 
oclation 
e Sainte 
storique, 
othèque 
Abrairie 
ition of 
cording 
national 
. ISPRS 
sing and 
N 1682- 
itectural 
metry ». 
pp. 300- 
Levant. 
eyrouth, 
ographic 
ciety for 
and, 689 
lications 
jelle et 
ues, L. 
aire des 
AL N23, 
nister of 
Husseini 
izing the 
ot, Alma 
heir help 
Barake, 
_ebanese 
iged the 
1itectural 
udies of 
c sites in 
| ,ebanese 
» authors 
A NOVEL SYSTEM FOR THE 3D RECONSTRUCTION OF SMALL 
ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTS 
V. TSIOUKAS*, P.PATIAS?, P.F. JACOBS: 
" Demokritos University of Thrace, Dept. of Architectural Engineering, vtsiouka@arch.duth,gr 
? Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Surveying Engineering, patias@topo.auth.gr 
* Mississippi State University, Cobb Institute of Archaeology, pfjl@ra.msstate.edu 
Commission V, WG V/4 
KEY WORDS: Reconstruction, Archaeology, Visualization, Virtual reality, Model 
ABSTRACT: 
The need for mapping small objects in such areas as archaeology, museum collections, medicine, and industry may be met by using 
close-range photogrammetric techniques. Requirements of these disciplines demand, in some instances, extremely high accuracy in 
an automated process for recording the geometry of objects, while in instances which involve numerous objects to be mapped an 
error-free but rapid procedure is necessary. Laser scanning techniques are likely the best and most reliable for these purposes. 
However, the costs associated with these techniques prohibit their use in many of the applications mentioned above. 
The authors have constructed a device to take advantage of the properties of a laser beam; by using the optical properties of a 
vertical laser line beamed from an off-the-shelf laser level, standard photogrammetric methods determine locations of these points 
on objects. Costs are kept low because measurement is done without the use of a laser beam detector to measure distance (hence, 
position) of points on objects. 
The cost of this system—a typical desktop PC, an electronic circuit attached to the parallel port, a digital camera, a laser level, and a 
rotator mechanism—is relatively low. 
I. INTRODUCTION 
In the matter of documentation of small artefact finds, the 
archaeological scientific community faces important issues that 
arise from several factors: 
D) 
The objects, because oflen they are too fragile for 
repeated handling or because access to investigators 
has been prohibited, require special treatment in 
measuring, archiving, and preservation; 
Because many small artefacts are only partially 
preserved, modelling and mapping are difficult to 
accomplish in a scale of 1:1; 
Because the numbers of small artefacts from a single 
excavation may be quite numerous, it is clear that an 
automatic mapping procedure is needed to cut human 
involvement to a minimum. 
Such mapping systems exist, of course, though they are often 
expensive and difficult to perform; however, the matters of 
expense and difficulty of manipulation ought not to prevent the 
application of one of these several modern techniques to fulfil 
the needs of documentation of the artefacts. The output 
produced by modern digitization applications will be useful in 
one or more of the following scenarios: 
a) 
b) 
c) 
Internal use; i.e., the creation of a complete database 
archive for use within an archaeological institution or 
within an excavation staff for its own research; 
Replica creation (Skarlatos, D., et. al. 2003) 
External use; detailed study of objects by members of 
the academic community, who otherwise would not 
have direct access to the artefacts, either because 
d) 
access is legally prohibited or because of distance 
needed to travel to the location of the artefacts; 
Creation of virtual museums; these virtual museums 
would provide not only digital images (2D 
presentations) of objects, but also accurate 3D models 
and visualizations using VRML object files. 
2. CURRENT TREND 
To date the techniques applied to the restitution of small 
archaeological objects are based on the exhausting calculation 
of 3D point clouds, which represent the outer surfaces of the 
objects. The most popular are (Boehler, W. and Marbs, A., 
2002): 
1) 
Laser scanning. The measuring of the 3D points 
coordinates is implemented through a laser beam that 
is transmitted towards the object and reflected back to 
the source. The time that is needed for the beam to 
travel from the laser beam source to the object and 
back, multiplied by the speed of laser light, yields the 
distance of the points from the source; hence their 
location on an arbitrarily defined 3D coordinates 
System. 
Optical scanning. Special structured light devices and 
laser diodes producing straight (horizontal or vertical) 
line tracks are used for the exact definition of 3D 
points on the object. Sophisticated photogrammetric 
procedures may lead to the calculation of a dense 
point cloud that describes the outer surfaces of the 
objects.