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Zusatztext ...a bold, original and well-illustrated collection of fifteen papers addressing state-of-the-art computer-based imaging of ancient visual culture, and it opens up a fruitful collaborative dialogue between the Humanities and the Sciences ... this volume will surely - as the Editors hoped - 'set a standard and a guideline for interdisciplinary research' Klappentext In this genuinely productive interdisciplinary dialogue, engineering scientists, archaeologists and historians discuss how recent exciting developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display/diffusion can be applied to three-dimensional objects of material culture from the classical world, ranging from inscribed writing tablets to buildings and urban sites. The fifteen papers explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve the presentation of evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in developing methods of image-enhancement and the interpretation of objects. Zusammenfassung These fifteen papers explore the ways in which recent developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display and diffusion can be applied to objects of material culture in order to enhance historians' understanding of the period from which the objects came (in this case, the remote past). In interpreting artefacts, the historian acts out a perceptual-cognitive task of transforming often noisy and impoverished signals into semantically rich symbols that have to be set within a cultural and historical context. Engineering scientists, equipped with a range of sophisticated techniques, equipment and highly specialised knowledge, are not always as aware as they might be of the range and the exact nature of problems faced by historians in interpreting objects of material culture. By providing the opportunity for scholars from these communities to explain to each other what they are doing and how, the papers explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve methods of presenting evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in their approach to developing methods of image-enhancement and interpretation of objects. A significant further dimension is the improvement of techniques of providing high quality images of important and valuable collections of original artefacts to scholars who cannot always study the originals directly. Another important development discussed here is the fact that such imaging techniques now offer the researcher valuable insurance against the processes of deterioration to which such artefacts are inevitably subject. Seven of the papers are scientific and technical, while the other eight have an archaeological or historical focus. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction Wooden stilus tablets from Roman Britain Shadow Stereo, image filtering, and constraint propagation Digitising cuneiform tablets Interpretation of ancient runic inscriptions by laser scanning Virtual reality, relative accuracy: modelling architecture and sculpture with VRML Automatic creation of virtual artefacts from video sequences At the foot of Pompey's statue: reconceiving Rome's theatrum lapideum Modelling Sagalassos: creation of a 3D archaeological virtual site Three-simensional laser imaging and processing in an archaeological context; Movements of the mental eye in pictorial space The potential for image analysis in numismatics Italian terra sigillata with appliqué decoration: digitising, visualising and web-publishing Shape from profiles The skull as the armature of the face: reconstructing ancient faces Reconstruction of a 3D...