Articles by Pietro Maria Militello

The article presents the results of a wider research carried out by a multidisciplinary group (archaeologists and engineers) of the University and the CNR-ISPC of Catania in the South-Western Quarter of the Minoan Palace of Phaistos (Crete). The article focuses on two digital survey campaigns carried out respectively in 2014, laser scanning, and 2019, Structure from Motion. Starting from the point cloud by laser scanner, the most recent, low cost and user-friendly photogrammetric tools (GoPro camera and software Agisoft Metashape) have been used during the 2019 campaign in order to update and to improve the previous dataset, which was used as a grid for georeferencing and scaling the new virtual model. Special attention was addressed to the comparison of the two datasets and to the reuse of the first one for georeferencing and scaling the second one. Furthermore, the research has been focused on the opportunity to exploit the obtained virtual model both for scientific purposes and for the outreach. The lack of accessibility of the South-Western Quarter of Phaistos Palace to the visitors attributes a special interest to this output. The virtual environment thus realized constituted an ideal starting point for the development of an educational fruition project based on a Serious Game approach. The cooperation of archaeologists and engineers in the development of the Phaistos game ensures a gaming experience not only pleasant but also provided with a strong educational profile.

This paper illustrates the experiment of image-based modelling conducted on the site of Calicantone (RG) by the international course in Archaeology of the Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche of the University of Catania, in collaboration with the Dept. of Engineering and Architecture of the same University and the Soprintendenza of Ragusa. The aim of the research was to experiment and verify a single process of digital acquisition, elaboration and communication, and to investigate the potential of shifting from 3D to 2D for the creation of metrically and geometrically reliable orthophotos (so called new photogrammetry). In particular, this kind of application has not been widely used by the archaeological teams working in Sicily, especially when the Computer Vision is not aimed at the reconstruction or the dissemination of the results. The site of Calicantone represented an ideal context for a multiple experimentation of image-based modelling. Indeed, the construction of a methodology of survey of the site involved a global understanding of a complex context, made by different kinds of evidence: built architecture (walls), negative architecture (rock cut tombs), horizontal restitution of the trenches vs vertical restitution of the slopes of the hill hosting the tombs. From the point of view of the archaeological narrative, the exceptional impact of the landscape, the necessity of an enhancement and the limited visibility of some of the archaeological evidence encouraged the acquisition of the data through passive detectors, in order to support the traditional 3D reconstruction of the landscape.