ARCHAEOLOGICAL AUTOMATIC INTERPRETATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF CERAMICS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 07/12/2020

Pottery studies approach us to the comprehension and dating of archaeological contexts, and are necessary for understanding social interactions and economic dynamics. Today, characterisation and classification of ceramics is carried out manually, through the expertise of specialists and the use of analogue catalogues. In order to optimise and economise this process, ArchAIDE project (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme) aims to create a new system for the automatic recognition of archaeological pottery from excavations around the World. The ArchAIDE project will develop a new app that aims to change the global practice of archaeology, thanks to the latest automatic image recognition technology. ArchAIDE will support the classification and interpretation work of archaeologists (during both fieldwork and post-excavation analysis) with an innovative app designed for tablets and smartphones, designed to be an essential tool for archaeologists. Pottery fragments will be photographed, their characteristics sent to a comparative collection, which activates the automatic object recognition system, resulting in a response with all relevant information linked, and ultimately stored, within a database that allows each new discovery to be shared online. In this paper we will present ArchAIDE’s database design and the preliminary validation of the first digitalization system prototype on sample datasets.


Author(s): Miguel Gascón, Eva (Universitat de Barcelona; Cultura Material i Arqueometria UB - ARQUB-GRACPE) - Anichini, Francesca
(Università di Pisa) - Green, Katie (University of York)