Interdisciplinary Workshop on 3D Paleo-Anthropology, Anatomy, Computer Science & Engineering - Synergies for the Future - June, 19-20 2008 - Muséum de Toulouse, France Updated on 14/6/2010	EVAN Network (EC)
Museum of Toulouse		ODENT Project, CNRS

Prehistoric portable art included small mobile pieces that could be carried from place to place. We can define different categories (according to [Wikipedia]):

• slightly Modified Natural Objects. Usually composed of fossils, teeth, shells, and bone, slightly modified natural objects were pre-existing objects which prehistoric man altered by etching lines or patterns, drilling holes, or other simple techniques which changed the original object into a piece of artwork, typically jewellery.
• Engraved or Painted Stone. As many as 1,000 sites with instances of decorated stone have been discovered. Sandstone, limestone, slate, or stalagmite were the most common types of material employed, and were usually adorned with animal figures or symbols.
• Engraved or Painted Bone. Similar to engraved or painted stone works, the subjects of the bone pieces were typically game animals and symbols.
• Carved Bone and Antler. Most frequently used in the carving of spear-throwers, carved bone and antler pieces are significant because of the great amount of time, effort, and pain-staking detail with which they were carved.
• Statuettes and Ivory Carvings. While it is the rounded female stattuetes, dubbed venus figurines, that have garnered the most attention, sculpted objects also featured more "normal" human depictions, as well as that of animals. The statuettes and carvings were done using flint tools in a wide variety of materials, ranging from their simple inception as terracottas, to limestone, sandstone, ivory, stealite, coal, jet, and even amber.

Such items are fragile and it is sometimes difficult to manipulate them for conservation or restoration, for a careful analysis or even for a simple museum exhibition. One solution would be to do the same thing than for fossils: perform a 3D acquisition of the items in order to obtain a virtual representation which could be easily archived and exchanged through Internet.

But, if 3D scanning of museographic objects is now widely developed, there is still very few work on the specific field of prehistoric portable art items. We can find some references on a statuette [Godin et al., 2002] or a "bâton" [Tilkens, 2007].

New research have to be done in the following topics:

• define acquisition protocol. It must be adapted to the material of the item (bone, stone [Borderie et al., 2004]), to the required resolution (do we want to study the general shape or the engravings?) and to the information we want to get (surface/inside geometry, color of the surface if there are some drawings or paintings?).
• develop specific image-processing algorithms. For example, the engravings can be precisely identified and it could be possible to compute their depth-profiles in order to know in which order they were designed (see a very preliminary work in [Diaz-Andreu et al., 2005]).

3D modelling of prehistoric stone tools - state of the art and comparative study (presentation in pdf), Quentin Borderie, ArScAn, UMR7041, Paris, France
• CT, micro CT and surface scan of a "bâton percé", (presentation in pdf), Francis Duranthon, Curator, Museum of Natural History, Toulouse, France ; Ludovic Brethes, Scientific Director, Noomeo, Toulouse, France ; Gérard Subsol, Senior Researcher, ICAR Team, LIRMM, UMR5506, France