Stratigraphy and photogrammetry: the case study of the Basilica Capo Don
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 02/11/2020

Since 2011, on the site of the Basilica Capo Don (Riva Ligure, Italy), a team of young researchers affiliated to the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archeology has used photogrammetry to surveythe stratigraphical units and to realize 3D models for structures discovered on the site. In this paper we would like to disclose the last achievements reached in the field. Moreover, we aim to share with other researchers many important questions emerged with the development of archaeological mapping techniques. We will focus on the reasons why do we switched to pho-togrammetry from direct mapping and the new open source pipeline to get orthophotomosaics and meshes based on MicMac and Meshlab. We also describe the photo acquisition techniques used to collect images, the different methods we tested to record GCPs and how 3D models in were used (e.g. for sarcophagi). We will show a comparison of different softwares to understand which one could fit better for our purpose and why is the open source the best choice, in spite of its practical limitations. Other important points are the usage of QGIS’s plug-ins to repre-sent both planar rasters and the stratigraphical sequence; the comparison between traditional methods of representing the stratigraphic sequence, like 2D Harris’ Matrix and hand drawing; how the new methods together can help archaeologists on the field to understand data records and we provide traditional vectorial documentation to the Italian Archaeological, beautiful arts and landscape Superintendence.


Alessandro Garrisi, Alessio Paonessa, Elia Kas Hanna