Providing Multimedia Tools for Recording, Reconstruction, Visualization and Database Storage/Access of Archaeological Excavations

Over the years archaeologists have been swift to embrace new advances in technology that allow them tomore comprehensively document the results of their work. Today it is commonplace to find informationtechnologies, in the form MS Office-type tools with some CAD and GIS, deployed for primary data cap-ture, analysis, presentation and publication. While these computing technologies can be used effectivelyto record and interpret archaeological sites, the radical developments in 3D recording, reconstructionand visualisation tools have had relatively limited impact upon the archaeological community. This isunfortunate as these new technologies have the potential to (a) enable the archaeologists to record theirunrepeatable experiments to unprecedented levels of accuracy, (b) enable the archaeologists to recon-struct artefacts such as pottery from sherds, textures and sites from different eras (c) visualise the wealthof excavated information in dynamic new ways away from the archaeological site during post-excavationanalysis, (d) make this wealth of detail available to the scholarly community as part of the publicationprocess and secure its digital longevity through its deposition in a trusted digital library/archive and (e)communicate the excitement and importance of their archaeological site and its finds to an interestednon-academic audience. This paper describes the overall concept of the EU funded project, 3D Meas-urement and Virtual Reconstruction of Ancient Lost Worlds of Europe (3D MURALE), that has developedand created a set of low-cost multimedia tools for recording, reconstructing, encoding, and visualisingarchaeological artefacts and site.