3D Comparison of Attic Head Vases

Summary

Several hundred attic head vases are known worldwide and stored in museums and collections. In 1929, Beazley has categorized twenty groups based on stylistic properties and historic methodology. Head vases are assembled in several steps, most important for our comparison is the moulding of the head area. Since moulds were used to shape the heads, our initial hypothesis was to perform a quantitative comparison of head shapes based on digital scan data. Comparison of scan data is straight forward and is very similar to quality control and inspection processes in industrial applications. Initial analysis was performed on older scan data. In addition, a high-resolution fringe projection scanner was employed to scan further head vases in museums in Germany and Italy. Scan resolution and accuracy of approximately 0.1 mm in all dimensions were required to reveal differences below 1 mm. Shape analysis results of the head areas confirm that it is likely that the same mould was used for shaping some of the head vases. According to our results, it is also not unlikely that a first generation of larger head vases was used to prepare moulds for consecutive generations of head vases that are slightly smaller in size.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20798