An automatic approach for the classification of ancient clay statuettes based on heads features recognition

In recent years, quantitative approaches based on mathematical theories and ICT tools, known under the terms of digital, computational, and virtual archaeology, are more and more involved in the traditional archaeological research. In this paper, we apply shape analysis techniques to 3D digital replicas of archaeological findings to support their interpretation. In particular, our study focuses on a collection of small terracotta figurines from the ancient sanctuary of Ayia Irini, Cyprus, and it aims at re-analysing the material utilising a quantitative approach. We experiment state of the art techniques (meshSIFT and DBSCAN) to cluster statuettes according to the similarity of their heads, to investigate their production process.