Hacking Light in the Digitization of Archaeological Glass Vessels: the Quest for Geometric Rigor
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Date
2025
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Eurographics Association
Abstract
The 3D digitization of heritage has revolutionized archaeological research and the dissemination of archaeological materiality. Emerging new technologies not only allow to analyze data from new perspectives and dimensions, in a literal sense; but have also democratized access to material culture and enriched the public's experience of history. However, a significant lacuna exists in virtual collections and databases: glass objects. In both virtual museum expositions and archaeological research, ancient glass tableware is often largely forgotten. In museums, glass artifacts are often confined to display cases. In archaeological research, ancient glass is a subject that has received comparatively little scholarly attention, and the literature on its craftmanship is scant when compared to that of its functional counterparts in other materials. Fragile, fragmentary and poorly studied, ancient glassware current status can be attributed, in part, to the technical challenges posed by the 3D digitization of glass artifacts. In this way, the new computational tools for analysing archaeological data cannot access these types of productions because they are not available in a digital version. The inherent nature of glass presents significant difficulties for digitization techniques, as the optical properties of reflectance, reflexivity, and transparency prevent its surfaces from being read by any light-based method. Glass exhibits complex and diverse light-redirecting and -absorbing characteristics. Consequently, various 3D scanning and photogrammetry techniques encounter problems in geometrically capturing glass objects. The present study aims to overcome the difficulties of 3D glass acquisition by proposing the use of a new methodology based on photogrammetry, which enables the digitization of the geometry of these elusive pieces with rigor. This technique has been specifically designed to capture light at its optimal deflection in glass vessel surfaces and to record it as reliable image data in order to build geometrically accurate 3D models. Thus, this paper intends to tackle the 3D acquisition of the archaeological glass objects even beyond the renders; that is: data has been collected and processed in a hermetic and thorough polygonal mesh that can be texturized and optimized afterward. The methodology has been implemented in the analysis of Roman glassware. The resulting precise meshes make it a technique that can be applied to any computational morphometric analysis on any type of archaeological glass artifacts, in addition to completing the digital heritage collections.
Description
@inproceedings{10.2312:dh.20253073,
booktitle = {Digital Heritage},
editor = {Campana, Stefano and Ferdani, Daniele and Graf, Holger and Guidi, Gabriele and Hegarty, Zackary and Pescarin, Sofia and Remondino, Fabio},
title = {{Hacking Light in the Digitization of Archaeological Glass Vessels: the Quest for Geometric Rigor}},
author = {Espuelas, Vanessa Cornago},
year = {2025},
publisher = {The Eurographics Association},
ISBN = {978-3-03868-277-6},
DOI = {10.2312/dh.20253073}
}