Implementing Digital Documentation Techniques for Archaeological Artifacts to Develop a Virtual Exhibition: The Necropolis of Baley Collection

Over the past decade, virtual reality has been quickly growing in popularity across disciplines including the fields of archaeology and cultural heritage. Despite numerous artifacts being uncovered each year by archaeological excavations around the world, only a select few are displayed and recorded in museums while the rest remain hidden away in storage facilities. The creation of virtual reality museums provides a potential solution to this problem. This project aims to optimize a computational workflow for digitally documenting these artifacts and designing virtual museum spaces for them to be displayed online. This project focuses on a selection of the most representative artifacts that have been conserved and restored from the Necropolis of Baley collection of burial vessels from Bulgaria. The prehistoric settlement of Baley dates to the Bronze and Early Iron Age in the Middle and Lower Danube Basin and the collection thus far includes over 450 burial artifacts. Through the use of photogrammetry and 3D scanning, photorealistic 3D models were created and used as the basis of a virtual exhibition to showcase this important collection to the public and scientific community that can easily be shared online. A comparison of the 3D results from the photogrammetry and the 3D scanner was conducted to determine the optimal workflow for large-scale documentation of archaeological artifacts. This project showcases the applications of integrating documentation techniques in an online environment in order to showcase important collections to the public in an interactive way to promote cultural heritage to the public that may otherwise be unavailable.