CHSOS was at EuroMed 2014, Cyprus (Nov 3-8 ), a conference on digital documentation of heritage for conservation and protection. Samantha Stout, PhD student at CISA3 – University of California San Diego, presented a poster and a short talk on the field project carried out with CHSOS in the Catacombs of San Giovanni, Syracuse, Sicily. These are the largest catacombs after those in Rome and the study described the findings of XRF and technical photography on two paleochristian mural paintings. Euromed wasn’t the only conference CHSOS made an appearance at this November (coming soon 18th ICOMOS General Assembly and Scientific Symposium).
EuroMed 2014 was full of interesting speakers. Participants learned about strategies to prevent and confront the proliferation of looting amongst archaeological sites, and debated the techniques of 3D laser scanning versus photogrammetric methods like SfM (Structure from Motion). Talks were kept to a quick 10 minutes for most presenters, but the 2.5 hour long “workshops” offered the attendees a more in-depth take on some key projects. Perhaps the biggest game-changer was the ARCHES platform presented by the GCI. It’s a completely open-source and customizable heritage documentation/inventory tool, that’s attached to a standardized ontology, making sure that artifacts retain significant metadata. The EuroMed 2014 event saw 351 participants from 38 countries and 432 paper submissions.
CHSOS and CISa3 want to thank Prof. Mariarita Sgarlata, University of Catania, for her assistance and for allowing us to pursue this research in her capacity as superintendent for the Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra per le catacombe della Sicilia Orientale. We also thank Carmelo Scandurra, who, other than providing his contribution to this study, with great enthusiasm and efforts, promotes scientific studies on the San Giovanni catacombs.
