Baley Necropolis

The Necropolis of Baley Virtual Exhibition Project is a joint project between the National Archaeological Institute with Museum and the Department of Scientific Computations with Laboratory on 3D Digitization and Microstructure Analysis, IICT, at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

The field of virtual reality is quickly growing across many disciplines over the past decade if none more important than the field of archaeology and cultural heritage. Numerous artifacts are uncovered each year by archaeological excavations around the world, and only a select few are displayed and recorded in museums while the rest remain hidden away in storage facilities. The use of virtual reality photography provides a potential solution to this problem. This project aims to optimize a computational workflow for digitally documenting these artifacts through an in-depth analysis of the Necropolis of Baley collection of burial vessels currently held by the National Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria. Through the use of three methods of documentation, a virtual exhibition was developed for mobile and web browsers to showcase this important collection to the public and scientific professionals. The objects were photographed on a robotic turntable at 2-4 angles to get complete coverage of the entire surface. The images are processed two-fold: first to generate scaled photogrammetric 3D models, and second to create virtual reality movies that can easily be shared online. Utilizing another growing industry, 3D scanning, a handheld structured light scanner was used to document the objects. A comparison was conducted comparing the 3D results of the photogrammetry to the 3D scanner to determine the optimal workflow for large-scale documentation of archaeological artifacts. The resulting 3D models were embedded in the online exhibition. Additionally, a specially dedicated webpage was built, showcasing the results and the applications of integrating documentation techniques in an online environment. For the scientific community, 3D models can provide a virtual object that can be fully manipulated and viewed with 3D glasses for analysis, measurement, and collaboration.