COMBINATION CLOSF-RANGF PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND DIGITAL 
    
PROCFSSING IN ARCHAFOLOGY 
Francisco Jaime Bezerra Mendonca, M.Sc. 
Departamento de Engenharia Cartografica-DeCart 
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco-UFPE 
Rua Academico Hélio Ramos s/n - Cidade Univer- 
sitaria - Recife-PF, 
Brasil - CEP 50741 
COMISSION V 
ABSTRACT 
Close-Range Photogrammetry in Combination with Digital Image Processing offers of solution 
for Survey and study of prehistoric roch painting in Brazil. The combination of 
photographs, digitized by a scanner with stereomodels taken by terrestrial 
colour 
Rolleiflex 
Camera is discussed and the results are analyzed. 
KEY WORDS: Archaeological, Close-Range, Image Processing, Scanner. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Brasilian archaeology has two important 
centers of research in the northest of the 
country. One is the Fundacao Museu do Ho - 
mem Americano that is located in the city 
Sao Raimundo Nonato in Piauí. The other 
of is the Nucleo de Arqueologia-NEA of the 
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, 
According to Guidon (1985) and Martin (1989) 
147 sites of archaeology are found in the 
Northeast of Brazil. Those sites are natural 
shelters where primitive man used to live 
in order to protect themselves from 
inchement weather. Rock paintings and 
engravings are found in the majority of 
these shelters, many of which have yet to 
he documented and analyzed. 
    
  
  
   
  
   
   
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Figure 1: Brasilian Map 
According to Nidge Guidon (1985) the 
written language is not enough to analyse 
and classify rock paintings. It is 
necessary first to copy the rock paintings 
completely and then analyse them. Is 
important to establish morphologic subgroups, 
that would be defineded not only because 
of their shope itself but also because of 
their location and their relative ship: "A 
written description can be used in order 
to give characteristics of the tecnical 
execution, but it can never be used, to 
understand the forms and their composition. 
Gabriela Martin (1980) describes the 
techniques used by archaeologists in 
surveying rock paintings: "the technique , 
that is used by most brasilian archaeologists 
is to divide the shelter in many areas , 
cover each area with a transparent plastic 
sheet and then copy the rock painting by 
using special pens. Although this process 
fs practical a lot of time is lost 
trying to gain acess to the higher places. 
The richness of detail and the range of 
colours are very specifie to this region 
(Martin, 1982). As an exemple of this is 
the "Casa Santa" site, located at Carnaüba 
dos Dantas, RN, which has a panel (2,0 m x 
1,5 m) that has more than one hundred rock 
paintings with a great variety of shapes 
and colors. The figure 2 shows "Casa Santa" 
panel, 
2, PHOTOGRAMMETRIC METHOD 
The research and learning center of the 
Department of Cartographic Engineering of 
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco has an 
agreement with the German Goverment through 
the GTZ(Gesellschaft fuer Technische / 
Zusammenarbeit). The photogrammetry 
laboratory has two metric cameras: one 
UMK/100 mm, made by Zeiss Jena and the new 
Rolleiflex 3003, with "reseau" adapted. 
Surveying of architecture were already 
made (Mendonca, 1985, 1989), based on 
some knowledge of archaeological photogrammetry 
(Kimata, 1980), (Waldhafusi, 1984) ; 
(Muessig, 1980) and (Saley, 1986), it the 
surveying of the archaeological site "FUR- 
NA DOS CABOCLOS' in Carnaüba dos Dantas , 
RN has been done.