This is an online event.
Sponsored by: Archaeological Institute of America
Ceramics are the most numerous class of material object we have from ancient Greece, but much of this material is fragmentary. Today, fragments of Athenian vases are dispersed across the world in museums and private collections. The pieces, unlike more complete pieces, are often poorly published, infrequently the sole focus of scholarly work, and rarely on display. This talk presents several ways that digital techniques are expanding what we know about Athenian vase painting, including work on my digital humanities project, Athena’s Repository. Digital tools, such as digital databases and computational photography techniques including Reflectance Transformation Imaging and Photogrammetry, can make this class of material culture more accessible to the public and to scholars. As a transformative tool for scholars, Athena’s Repository will greatly enhance our understanding of extant pieces, serve as an archival record in case of their destruction, and facilitate wider access to the materials for educational purposes.
Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic:
Athena’s Repository, http://www.athenasrepository.org
Altshuler, Ben F.S. and Thomas Mannack. 2014. “Shedding New Light on Ancient Objects,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Vol. 22, pp. 53-74.
Battiato, Sebastiano, Givanni Gallo, and Filippo Stanco, eds. 2011. Digital Imaging for Cultural Heritage Preservation: Analysis, Restoration, and Reconstruction of Ancient Artworks. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Sapirstein, Philip and Sarah Murray. 2017. “Establishing Best Practices for Photogrammetric Recording During Archaeological Fieldwork,” Journal of Field Archaeology, 42:4, pp. 337-350, DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2017.1338513
Stamatopoulos, Michail and Christos-Nikolaos Anagnostopoulos. 2016. “3D Digital Reassembling of Archaeological Ceramic Pottery Fragments Based on their Thickness Profile,” ResearchGate. Accessed 19 September 2016. <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301873740_3D_digital_reassembling_of_archaeological_ceramic_pottery_fragments_based_on_their_thickness_profile>
This lecture is to be rescheduled from April 4th to a different date. The new date/time will be posted online when available.
Noble Lecture
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