3D Technologies in Conservation of Cultural Heritage: Monitoring of the Neolithic Structures from Archaeological Site Belo Brdo in Vinča

Jugoslav Pendić ; Branislava Lazarević Tošović ; Marko Aleksić ; Andrej Žitňan ; Zuzana Rejdovianová ; Jiří Hrubý ; Daniel Hlásek

Review of the National Center for Digitization, Tome 28 (2016) no. 1.

Résumé

Documenting cultural heritage in interactive 3D format is becoming more and more affordable, easy-to-obtain and implement procedure. Not so long ago, there could be heard voices complaining the lack of full accuracy tests of the automated procedures for extracting 3D data from imagery (1) - and presently we are seeing numerous, tested and actively used solutions, that can even be overly simple for use, although the latter is depending on the eye of the observer and specific needs and portfolio of an individual/project. Furthermore, as the methods have become widely available, an important question is presented: how justified it is to invest effort and funds into the creation and storage of 3D models and collection of datasets, if a limited area of use is intended. Or to ask it more directly, is it really necessary, and what else can be made out of these collections, besides presentation material and snapshots-in-time of a given feature. The paper will present an effort to offer additional meaning to photogrammetric data acquisition in archaeology, apart from it being an advanced documentation system. We tested different approaches in monitoring the state of preservation of an important Neolithic household structure, using SFM workflow combined with an active 3D scanner to evaluate conservation procedures performed on it. The structure is located in a dynamic background of multilayered archaeological site Belo Brdo in Vin?a, which is undergoing its latest phase of field research, spanning from 1998 up to present.