Recovering the past through computation: new techniques for cultural heritage

Computation has provided new means for researchers and scholars in the humanities, fine arts and social sciences to address research questions long considered to be too difficult for conventional methodologies. The subject of this presentation will be to discuss emerging state-of-the-art scientific methodologies applied to discovery, recovery, restoration, representation, analysis and ultimately new understanding of a broad range of cultural heritage artifacts. Critically important remnants of the past are disappearing - through neglect, incidental destruction, neglect, and deterioration and looting. Many ancient artifacts are scattered about the world and reside in public and private collections, inaccessible to scholars and far removed from their original location and context of creation.

Digital representation is possible for numerous cultural heritage resources: script and drawings on a variety of media, manuscripts and documents, images, objects of all shapes and textures, and historic sites and events to name a few. Computation can provide means for recovering to some degree what was lost. Computation using geospatial and temporal data is central to visualizing and understanding mechanisms of change over extended periods of time, at once revealing and elucidating the events, social processes and practices that drive or accompanied change. This task involves, in part, processing massive amounts of raw data from a wide range of instruments and combining these with historic records to produce new information. At this point scholarly work, creative approaches, imaginative thinking and international interdisciplinary collaboration can be undertaken to create new knowledge and understanding and bring to light new segments of the human record.