Accurate survey of the Stela from Tilmen Höyük by Laser Scanning technique

The use of photo-textured 3D digital models of medium and small objects nowadays ceased to be a research issue only in industrial, navigation or robotics applications and started to be extended also to the field of Cultural Heritage, due to their capability to combine very high precision metrical information with a qualitative and photographic object description. In fact this kind of product can be a fundamental support for the documentation, study and restoration of works of art, until the production of replicas by fast prototyping techniques. In the paper, the complete process for the derivation of a photo-realistic 3D model of an important stela discovered in 2004 in the archaeological site of Tilmen Höyük in south-eastern Turkey is presented. The survey of the surface of the stela cast was realized by the Laser Scanner technique, because of its capability of obtaining directly and quickly very dense Digital Surface Models and its possibility of adapting at many materials. The complex processing phases are described, from the data acquisition performed by a triangulation-based optical laser scanner, until the 3D model construction.