Shipwrecks in 3D: underwater archaeologists from Ca’ Foscari tested technological revolution

Technology is transforming archaeological techniques on land and underwater. For several years now underwater archaeologists have been using special software to transform the pictures taken underwater in detailed three-dimensional models. With this new application of a known technique, photogrammetric processing, maritime excavations become faster, safer and cheaper.

How does it affect the quality of the findings? What measures should the researcher take to make the most of the investigations? In a research published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage and mentioned by Science the maritime archaeologist and professor at the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari Carlo Beltrame dealt with these questions with his team, thanks to a collaboration with the photogrammetric lab at IUAV University.  

The key instrument is the camera, to take hundreds of pictures from many different angles of underwater excavations, associated with a precise topographic net on the site.

“With photogrammetric we save many working days underwater - Beltrame explained - and in just a few hours we can create a detailed three-dimensional model of the excavation in our computer, and calculate volumes with an irrelevant margin of error. It is a genuine revolution”.

The team tested photogrammetric on different sites with different depth and environmental conditions. Darkness or the dissolving of colors linked to depth, or high turbidity water were identified as troubling for photography as well as the extension and complexity of sites and the short periods of stay linked to the increase of depth.

Antiquity finds can be found all over the Mediterranean seabed and three-dimensional reconstructions facilitate to imagine how ships were like, how much material they were carrying, how it wrecked. The excavations include “the routes of marble” project (ITALIAN) and the shipwreck of Cape Stoba (ITALIAN) loaded with wine amphoras that sunk a thousand years ago in Croatia (see the video reconstruction).