A computer aided pottery reconstruction

Reassembling pottery artefacts is one of the most demanding and time consuming task in archaeology. Nonetheless it is very important to reconstruct fragments, especially as regards typology and classica- tion. Archaeologists follow two dierent approaches: a metric and a descriptive method. Anyway these methods allow only to presume the same sherds origin and shape, therefore it is hopeful to have an auto- matic method that helps objectifying the process and speed it up. Some of the related studies concerning automatic 3D vessels assemblage are illustrated in this paper. Four axis detection methods and their main characteristics are examined (normal intersection-based methods, centres-based methods, circle and line ttings methods, planar section symmetry method): in fact, axis evaluation is fundamental for computer based method devoted to identify and reconstruct pottery fragments. Being axis a tie for the relative spatial position of sherds, this allows to nd a position for the fragments pertaining to the same vase. After that, experimental results about axis detection are shown. Finally, Keradomeo is proposed, a soft- ware which performs a computer aided pottery reconstruction, which gives archaeologists the possibility to interact with the analysed fragments, through a specic graphical interface.