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VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
Mayo 2013
55
3d Surveying and modelling
of the Archaeological Area of Paestum, Italy
Fausta Fiorillo
1
, Belen Jiménez Fernández-Palacios
2
, Fabio Remondino
2
and Salvatore Barba
1
1
Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Italy
2
3D Optical Metrology unit, FBK Trento, Italy
Resumen
El objetivo del presente trabajo interdisciplinario es la integración de diferentes técnicas de levantamiento 3D e instrumentos para el estudio de la zona arqueológica
de Paestum (Italia), con el fin de obtener modelos tridimensionales digitales de las principales estructuras y templos del yacimiento arqueológico.
La antigua ciudad de Paestum, Patrimonio Mundial desde 1998, es uno de los yacimientos históricos más importantes de Italia, ya que conserva vestigios de las
épocas griega y romana, entre ellos tres templos dóricos. La toma de datos se ha realizado a través de técnicas de fotogrametría y láser escáner terrestre (TLS), con
el objetivo de aprovechar plenamente las ventajas intrínsecas de las técnicas de levantamiento en 3D basadas en objetos reales.
Palabras Clave
: LÁSER ESCÁNER, FOTOGRAMETRÍA, LEVANTAMIENTO ARQUEOLÓGICO, MODELO 3D,
VISITA VIRTUAL
Abstract
The intention of this interdisciplinary work is the integration of different 3D recording techniques and instruments to survey the archaeological area of Paestum
(Italy) and obtain digital models of the main structures and temples of the site. The ancient city of Paestum, included in the UNESCO World Heritage list since
1998, is one of the most important archaeological sites in Italy, preserving the vestiges and ruins of Greek and Roman times, including three Doric temples.
Photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) acquisitions were integrated in order to exploit the intrinsic advantages of the actual 3D surveying techniques
and produces digital models, orthoimages, maps and other geometric representations useful for archaeological, architectural and communication needs.
Key words
: LASER SCANNER, PHOTOGRAMMETRY, ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY, 3D MODEL, VIRTUAL TOUR
1. Introduction
A reality-based survey can be an essential instrument of
knowledge, documentation and analysis, preliminary to any work
of cataloguing, restoration and heritage conservation. The aim of
the presented interdisciplinary work is the integration of
different 3D recording techniques and instruments
(REMONDINO, 2011) to survey the archaeological area of
Paestum (Italy) in order to obtain detailed 3D textured models
of the site for archaeological needs and graphical
representations.
The ancient city of Paestum preserves ruins of Greek and Roman
times and three very well preserved Doric temples. Paestum is one
of the most important archaeological sites in Italy and was
included in the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998. Paestum
was founded around 600 BC by Greeks from Sybaris with the
name of Poseidonia and it presents the urban space divided into
sacred, public and private areas. The central area of the city was
designated for public use and during the Greek period was
occupied by the agorà. In the North was located the sanctuary of
Athena (ca 500 BC) known as the temple of Ceres. Instead, the so-
called “Basilica” (ca 550 BC, it was the earliest of three temples)
and the temple of Neptune (ca 450 BC) was placed in the South.
At the end of the 5th century B.C. Poseidonia was defeated by the
Lucani, a population of Samnite origins, who replaced the Greeks
in the government of the city. The conquest of Lucani did not
introduce changes in the organization of urban cities, only the
defensive walls were built. In 273 BC the city became a Roman
colony and took the name of Paestum. The most important
transformations of this period involves the organization of the
urban space: the Forum was built and the main Greek public
monuments (agorà, ekklesiasteiron and heroon) were eliminated. The
city was then abandoned during the Middle Ages and the
archaeological area remained submerged under marshes and
brushwood for a long time. With the rediscovery of the temples in
the 18th century, Paestum came into knowledge again. Systematic
archaeological investigations started at the beginning of the last
century and they are still on-going.
A detailed and reality-based 3D recording of the area is not yet
available, therefore the project aims to produce accurate 3D data
and orthoimages for documentation, conservation, preservation,
restoration and visualization purposes. In order to fully exploit
the intrinsic advantages of the actual 3D recording techniques,
photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) surveying
were integrated during a 6-days field campaign (2 days to
complete the UAV aerial surveying, 4 days for the terrestrial
surveying, based on TOF laser scanning and photogrammetry).
VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
Mayo 2013
56
2.
Aerial surveying
Given the dimension of the area (ca 1x0.6 km) and the
characteristics of the temples, an UAV platform (Fig. 1) was
used to record aerial views useful for orthoimages generation
and as integration to the terrestrial surveying.
The employed quadricopter belongs to the “Laboratorio de
Fotogrametría Arquitectónica (LFA) y Documentación, Análisis y
Visualización Avanzada del Patrimonio” (DAVAP) of the
Valladolid University, directed by Juan José Fernández Martin
(http://157.88.193.21/~lfa-davap). The platform is a MD4-1000
entirely of carbon fibre and can carry up to 1.2 kg. It was coupled
once with an Olympus E-P1 camera (12 Megapixels, 4 n pixel
size) with 17 mm focal length and then with an Olympus XZ-1 (10
Megapixels, 2 n pixel size) with 6 mm focal length. The flight’s
endurance of the UAV platform depends on the payload, wind
and batteries but can reach, under optimal conditions, ca 70
minutes.
Figure 1. UAV surveying with the MD4-1000.
Figure 2. Example of an oblique image of the site.
The UAV flies under a remote control or autonomously, with
the aid of a GPS Waypoint navigation system.
For the surveying of the site and monuments, a relative altitude
of 130 m (for the entire site) and 70 m (for the single
monuments) was respectively used, delivering images with an
average ground sampling distance (GSD) of 5 and 3 cm,
respectively (Fig.2).
Table 1. UAV surveying of the archaeological monuments and site -
collected images and average ground resolution.
Area Average
GSD Number of images
Entire site ca 5 cm 60 vertical image - 4 strips
“Basilica” ca 3 cm 15 vertical images - 3 strips
“Basilica” ca 3 cm 25 oblique images - 1 round
Neptune ca 3 cm 14 vertical images - 3 strips
a) b)
Figure 3. Oblique UAV images over the Basilica temples (a) and derived surface model of the heritage (b).
VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
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The processing of the acquired aerial images (Table 1) followed the standard photogrammetric pipeline. After the image triangulation by
mean of automated tie points extraction and a photogrammetric bundle adjustment, a dense point cloud and surface model (Fig. 3) were
generated for the successive creation of a geo-referenced orthoimage (Fig. 4) of the entire UNESCO site. Later on, the achieved aerial
results will be integrated with the terrestrial 3D data in order to create a more complete and detailed 3D model of the area with geometric
representations useful for archaeological, architectural, communication and preservation issues.
Figure 4. The produced geo-referenced orthoimage overlaid on the map of entire heritage area.
3. Terrestrial surveying
The temple of Neptune and the “Basilica” were surveyed with TOF
laser scanners, while the Ceres temple was digitally recorded with
images as well as 3D scanning. The “Basilica” (Fig. 5a) spans ca 24,5
x 54 m (at the stylobate) and it features 18 columns on the long side
and 9 on the short one, while the interior part has a line of 3
columns. The temple of Neptune (Fig. 5b) is much more complex: it
measures ca 24,5 x 60 m and consists of 6 frontal and 14 lateral
columns while in the interior area has two rows of double ordered
columns that divide the naos in three parts. While the temple of
Ceres (Fig. 5c) has only a series of 6 x 13 columns and measure 14,5
x 33 m.
The number of the range acquisitions and stations for each
temple depends on the dimensions and on the complexity of the
monument. The positions of the different acquisitions have been
organized to cover the entire volume of the monument, taking
account of shadows, obstacles and undercut. The geometric
resolution of the scans has been chosen depending of the
distance instrument-object in order to ensure a sampling fairly
constant and sufficient to reconstruct all the necessary
architectural details and degrade. For example, the nominal
resolution for the nearest stations and for all scans of the inner
temple of Neptune was set to 0,018° (one point for every 3 mm
at a distance of 10 m), while for the most distant scanner
position a higher resolution, equal to 0.009° (1,6 mm at 10 m),
was chosen. Instead, for the Basilica and the Temple of Ceres a
minimum and maximum resolution of 0,036° and 0,018°
respectively were selected.
VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
Mayo 2013
58
Table 2. Terrestrial surveying of the archaeological monuments in Paestum.
Object Technique Instrument Data
Neptune TLS Leica HDS
7000
48 scans
23 int, 25 ext
500 mil. points
Basilica TLS Z+F 5600h
28 scans
13 int, 15 ext
65 mil. points
Ceres TLS Z+F 5600h
23 scans
9 int, 16 ext
40 mil. points
Ceres Photogr. Nikon D3X 214 images
99 int, 115 ext
a) b) c)
Figure 5. Range data acquisition and shaded clouds (“Basilica”, Neptune and Ceres temples, respectively).
VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
Mayo 2013
59
Figure 6. Range-based textured 3D model of the Neptune temple (ca 87 million polygons) and the segmentation of the archaeological elements.
The employed laser scanners are a Z+F IMAGER 5600h and a
Leica HDS 7000, both based the phase-shift measurement
principle which guarantees a very high sampling step, fast
scanning operations and good geometric accuracy (SAN JOSÉ
ALONSO et al., 2011). The Z+F scanner was coupled with the
motorized camera M-Cam (5 Megapixels, 55° FOV, 4.8 mm
focal length) in order to simultaneously capture the radiometric
information of the surveyed scene. For the Neptune temple, in
order to obtain a textured 3D model (Fig. 6a), terrestrial images
were also acquired.
Before starting the meshing of the acquired point clouds, the
range data needed to be aligned and edited (BARBA &
FIORILLO, 2010).
The produced polygonal model is now the basis for further
modelling issues and allows us to produce orthoimages, sections,
maps, segmented representations and other digital delivering
useful for archaeologists, conservators or communicators (Fig. 6).
The photogrammetric modelling of the Ceres temple
investigated new automated image orientation and matching
algorithms available in the open-source domain (mainly Apero
and MicMac - PIERROT-DESEILLIGNY et al., 2011). The 3D
results are quite satisfactory (Fig. 7) but further tests and critical
analyses are necessary.
3.1 Virtual Tour of Paestum
With a different purpose, a panoramic head (GigaPan) was used to
capture a series of high-resolution images of the archaeological
site. The single shots were assembled into unique panoramic
gigapixel images in order to create immersive photography for
virtual tour applications and allow the exploration of the
archaeological area of Paestum even on-line (using any browser).
The panoramic images can be enriched with illustrative videos,
text information and digital 3D models of artefacts
(REMONDINO, 2011). Therefore, a virtual tour application
allows not only to visit "virtually" distant places, but also to have
access to additional media content and information that facilitate
and enhance the knowledge of the site or help education and
promotion. In this way, the virtual tour becomes a container of
data of different types for different purposes and may represent a
suitable solution for the organization, divulgation and sharing of
the collected information.
4.
Conclusions and outlook
The article reported the preliminary results of the Paestum
project, an on-going collaborative and interdisciplinary 3D
modeling project. The aims of this project are (i) to develop
reality-based digital models of the main structures and temples
of the archaeological site, (ii) to compare 3D surveying and
modelling methodologies concerning costs, reliability, processing
time and final accuracy and finally (iii) to deliver metric and
accurate results for archaeological, architectural, conservation
and communications needs. The produced 3D models can be
used (i) to extract maps, plans, cross-sections, orthoimages for a
technical public or for conservation issues, (ii) to allow the use of
3D models on the web, using innovative techniques of
visualization (ABATE et al., 2012) and virtual reality and (iii) to
produce material for informative and educational purposes. The
next steps of the project will be the integration of the aerial and
terrestrial 3D data and the generation of a seamless 3D model of
the entire heritage area
Acknowledgements
The authors appreciated and acknowledge the support of the Soprintendeza per i Beni Archeologici di Salerno Avellino Benevento e Caserta, especially the
Direction of the National Museum of Paestum, the Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the University of Salerno, the LFA-DAVAP
laboratory of Valladolid – partnership of the project – and the entire 3DOM research unit of FBK Trento - Italy.
VAR. Volumen 4 Número 8. ISSN: 1989-9947
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Figure 7. Derived camera poses (214 images) and 3D model for the Ceres temple.
Figure 8. Virtual Tour of the archaeological area of Paestum.
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