Analysis, description and archivation of aggregate information on properties of cultural heritage artefacts and usage of such data in restoration, conservation and research

A consortial project entitled, “Analysis, description and archivation of aggregate information on properties of cultural heritage artefacts and usage of such data in restoration, conservation and research” (project code DG16P02M022), is handled by the National Museum, the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Science, and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University within the Programme of Applied Research and Development of the National Cultural Identity of the Ministry Of Culture of the Czech Republic.
The basic objective of the project is to design and create systems for documenting and analysing cultural heritage artefacts, based on computer-aided imaging and documenting methods for the purpose of obtaining the maximum of information utilisable in restoration, conservation and research. A part of the project will be a practical demonstration of the functionality of these systems in digitalising thematic groups of cultural heritage artefacts. Other objectives of the projects include opening up cultural works to the general public in order to increase the awareness of their necessary protection; the systems will also serve for research purposes. The created digital models of collection items will be, in the form of an entry in the database, completed with data and findings obtained by non-destructive methods of analysis (e.g. through information about their inner structure, topography, and appearance of their outer surface and its compositions regarding elements) which will be annotated with metadata. Content-related information will be gathered through analyses commonly used in the humanities (Historical, archaeological, linguistic, palaeographic, etc.).
The system functionality for documenting and analysing cultural heritage artefacts, based on computer-aided imaging and documenting methods, will be demonstrated through case studies on two extensive sets of artefacts prepared from ceramic materials, in which inner defects may be expected due to the method and process of their production. The first set includes about 400 cuneiform tablets (or other artefacts) from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University; the second set includes selected items of comparable sizes made of both baked and unbaked clay, from the collections of the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures of the National Museum.
The result of the applied research of the use of generic software tools should be a specific data format comprehensively describing objects included in both case studies and containing both spatial and compositional data obtained, among others, by devices constructed within the project. For the set of cuneiform tablets, it will be a database of models prepared within the project, a corpus of old-Assyrian texts, commentaries on the corpus, and a connection with already existing digital pictures in the collection (also, with appropriate modifications of descriptive data, for the set of small-size objects made from baked and unbaked clay, coming from the collections of the Náprstek Museum). Thus, these databases will serve both research and applied (especially museum) purposes.

Project name: Analysis, description and archivation of aggregate information on properties of cultural heritage artefacts and usage of such data in restoration, conservation and research
Code: DG16P02M022
Duration: 2016–2020
Agency: NAKI (Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic)
Project type: consortial project (NM as the principal investigator)
NM’s investigator: Ing. Petra Štefcová, CSc.
Other participants: ITAM CAS (Ing. Jaroslav Valach, Ph.D.), Faculty of Arts, Charles University (doc. PhDr. Petr Zemánek, CSc.)

Anticipated results/outputs:
Autonomous software for processing CSV files from spectrometers from which summary graphs will be formed.
Autonomous software providing access to complex and descriptive data about the objects measured in a user-friendly form.