Multidisciplinary non-destructive investigation of cuneiform tablets (case study)

Abstract

Cultural heritage artefacts made of ceramic materials (burnt/unburnt clay) are an important part of nearly all museum collections. Nondestructive investigation methods can help specify the provenience of the artefacts, but only concomitant with methods applied in other fields of study such as humanities, e.g. history, archaeology, linguistics, philology, paleography, etc. The present study is the partial outcome of a multi-disciplinary project, which connected humanities and technical sciences, and whose main goal is to devise a system for the documentation and analysis of cultural heritage artefacts with the aid of computer-supported imaging and documentation methods. A part of the project work entails creating 2d/3d models of cuneiform tablets, which make the documentation of the surface of the investigated objects or the imaging of the internal structure of the material used possible; the final outcome will be a database linking all the results obtained.