Introduction to the project motivations and goals at the kick-off meeting the 14th June 2016 in Pisa

2. The vast majority of the finds that come back to light
during the archaeological excavations are fragments of pottery …

3. Dozens of ceramic finds boxes
for a few m2 of excavated surface ...

4. K.C. Chang (Rethinking Archaeology, 1967)
says that it is reasonable to estimate that
80 or 90% of the time and energy
of an archaeologist
it is spent in the classification
of excavation finds.

5. From the Neolithic, pottery was used in a
number of daily activities:
to lay the table
to cook
to bottle food
to light
to carry food

6. Pottery breaks, but does not deteriorate until disappearing
as wood, textiles, food, parchment, papyrus …

7. Pottery is the index fossil of
archaeologists, who use it for:
- dating of the archaeological contexts,
- understanding the dynamics
of production and trade flows,
- undestanding social interactions.

8. Even when reduced to small fragments,
the pottery is an extraordinary window
open on the life of the peoples
of the past.
Unfortunately,
classification requires complex skills
and since it is heavily dependent on
human inspection and
interpretation it is a very time
consuming activity.

9. Recognize and classify pottery sherds
during excavation and post-excavation analysis:
from the 3D find
to the 2D characterization of shapes

10. A boundless bibliography,
fragmented and incoherent,
whose consultation is long
and fatiguing also when is
available a well furnished
library …
… but it is not easy to have a
well furnished library in a
remote corner of the world
such as the desert of the
Maghreb, the Anatolian
plateau, a little island of the
Greece …

11. The digital automation of pottery classification:
- would revolutionize archaeological practice, behaviours
and expectations,
- would meet real user needs and generate economic benefit,
reducing time and costs,
- would create societal benefits from cultural heritage,
improving access and exploitation of the digital cultural heritage
in a sustainable way,
- would afford a deeper knowledge of the context
in which cultural heritage exists and is formed.

12. ArchAIDE
ARCHaeological Automatic Interpretation
and Documentation of cEramics
aims to support the classification and
interpretation work
of the archaeologists with innovative
computer-based tools,
able to provide the user with features for:
- the semi-automatic characterization,
- matching of each discovered sherd over the
huge existing ceramic catalogues.

13. ArchAIDE will include the design, development and assessment of a new software
platform offering applications, tools and services for digital archaeology.
This framework
- will be designed to provide very easy-to-use interfaces (e.g. touch-based definition of
the potsherd profile from a photograph acquired with the mobile device),
- will support efficient and powerful algorithms for characterization, search and retrieval
of the possible visual/geometrical correspondences over a complex database built
from the data provided by classical 2D printed repositories,
- will be available through
both a mobile application
and a desktop version.

14. Since we are aware of the caution of the
discipline in front of the replacement of
well-established methods, we plan to
support this specific Humanities domain by
exploiting what is already available in the
Archaeology domain in terms of good
practices and representation paradigms.
We will investigate both 2D- and 3D-based
characterization of shapes for search and
interpretation, always trying to be
compliant with the pre-existing non-digital
methodologies.
ArchAIDE approach is driven by archaeologists’s needs.

15. … we thus plan
- to deliver efficient computer-supported tools
for drafting the profile of each sherd
- to automatically match it with the huge
archives provided by available classifications …
For instance, profile-based approaches, heavily used in archaeological practice,
are an ideal approach to support classification …
… as Biometric Identification Systems

16. The platform will allow
to access tools and services
able to enhance the analysis
of archaeological resources,
such as:
- open data publication
of the pottery classification,
- data analysis and
data visualisation
of spatial distribution
of a certain pottery typology.

17. Summing: ArchAIDE aims to develop:
1. Digital pottery catalogue:
moving from paper to digital schematic representation
The first contribution of ArchAIDE will be
an as-automatic-as-possible procedure
to transform the paper catalogues
in a digital description, to be used
as a data pool for an accurate search and retrieval process.
This will entail:
- scanning (2D digitization) of the paper catalogue(s);
- segmentation and vectorialization of the graphical drawings proposed in those printed
catalogues;
- linking the graphical representation with the metadata reported in the catalogues.

18. Summing: ArchAIDE aims to develop:
2. A tool for on-site documentation of pottery sherds
The user will be able to take an image of a fragment
(using the on-board camera) and will provide
only a few input data to the classification system,
to characterize the sherd.
A record will be created for each sherd, holding both a graphical
representation (the image(s) taken), plus the vectorial
representation reconstructed from the image(s) and the user input.
For the production of the latter semantic graphics data,
a simple sketch-based interface will give the possibility
to indicate portions or lines on the acquired image (i.e. the internal
or external profile, a decorated area) so that the system will be able
to categorize and store those vectorial data and use them in the
subsequent classification phase.

19. 3. Semi-automatic classification of pottery sherds (on-site or remotely).
Given a sherd record produced by the system
(containing a shape-related characterization and some metadata tags),
the system will be able to perform a search
over the classification knowledge stored in the digital catalogue.
The search results could be refined by adding more metadata tags
(the system will offer all resources for easy metadata selection,
such as ontologies and dictionary of terms).
The result of each single classification action will be added to the sherd record,
together with the added metadata tags (if any) used by the user
in the search & classification action (to keep track of the specific decision process
implemented to get to the classification decision).

20. 4. Automated production
of the sherd’s Identity Card
In addition to the sherd classification,
another time-consuming operation is
the production of the findings catalogue.
For each sherd (or, at least, for the more important
ones) the archaeologist is asked to produce
a written record, which usually includes a manual drawing of each profile,
or the inclusion of the images depicting the item,
and the specification of a number of tags and data.
ArchAIDE plan to derive a complete identity card (following consolidated archaeological
documentation procedures and practice) by transforming the data we have stored
in the sherd record into a formatted electronic document, printable or visual.
This will be produced in an automatic manner and will also allow implementing a few
functionalities to add any other data or visual assets the archaeologist would like to have in
the identity card.

21. In conclusion:

22. 5. Data visualisation
The system will also generate a knowledge based system
for archaeological management, research
and knowledge generation.
The possibilities of such system open to research actors,
institutions and general public would be a dramatic change
in the archaeological discipline.
Since the comprehension of
- the assemblage, namely collection of objects of every single non empty stratum,
- the context, namely the relationships among different ceramic classes in the same location,
- the relationships between the location of the finding and the productive centre,
- the relationships with elements found in different locations
is a fundamental operation in pottery analysis, all the information encoded in the pottery
identity cards will be shared, visualised and integrated with cultural heritage information from
different sources (archaeological repositories, Europeana and so on) in order to produce a
really significant impact in the advancement of the discipline.

23. 6. Open data and reuse
As open data best practice requires data be made available
and easily accessible for re-use,
the data created through ArchAIDE will be preserved
and disseminated according to the international
data archiving standards set out in the
Open Archival Information System (OAIS).
The data will be disseminated online, and made freely available for use and re-use.
In according with national laws about Cultural Heritage, each record will be licensed with a
Creative Common-Attribution-Share Alike license (CC-BY-SA) in order to maintain openness
and to permit new ways of exploitation.
Therefore, all the sherd records and postsherd’s Identity Cards will become part
of a semantic database, in order to be used as new correspondences for classification
purposes, and additionally will be preserved in a digital repository
to assure long-term preservation and dissemination as open data.

24. The challenge began. The project will be tested on different pottery classes
(with an extensive on-the-field test and assessment experiences),
especially having large-scale production and distribution.
The archaeologists, mathematicians and IT scientists involved in the project:
Università di Pisa - Dipartimento di Civiltà e forme del sapere
Cnr - Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell’Informazione
University of Tel Aviv - School of Computer Science
University of York - Archaeology Data Service
Universitat de Barcelona - Fac. de Prehistòria, Història Antiga i Arquelogia
Universität zu Köln - Institut für Archäologie
Baraka Arqueologos
ElementsCentre De Gestió i Difusió De Patrimoni Cultural
Inera srl
thank you for attention and wait for you at the end of the project, 31 May 2019.