For a long time, I did not post anything about the progress of the visualisation project in Cologne-Weiden. Now, we are actually almost finished and I will try to recap some of the steps we were going through. Today’s post topic are the Structure from Motion models of the busts in Cologne-Weiden.

Animated GIF of the male bust in Cologne-Weiden

The burial chamber of Cologne-Weiden is situated approx. 9km west of the center of Cologne and dates into the 2nd to the 4th century AD. In it, there were found three busts, most probably depicting the landowner and his family. Two of the busts are female, but one – maybe the landowner – is male.

This bust most probably dates into the early Severian times (approx. 190-200 AD). The bust was reworked at some point and part of the interior of the burial chamber of Cologne-Weiden, where it was positioned in a niche on the right side. The material is Carrera Marble, which can only be found seldomly for private busts in the provinces.

The Structure from Motion scan was done by the Technische Hochschule Köln and the visualisation by the Archaeological Institute of Cologne and carried out in Cinema4D. The GIF on the left side shows you a loop of the visualisation. The animation will be part of a broader documentation about the scan and documentation of the burial chamber, which will be showcased at the upcoming Congress of Classical Archaeology.

Bibliography

Nölke, Peter. 2008. “Das ‘Römergrab’ in Köln-Weiden und die Grabkammern in den Germanischen Provinzen.” Kölner Jahrbuch 41: 452–55.

Sebastian Hageneuer

Founder & Editor

About the Author

My name is Sebastian. I am a research associate at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Cologne, Germany, Discipline for Archaeoinformatics. My special interest lies in reconstructing ancient architecture and thinking about ways to present archaeological knowledge to other researchers and the public in an informative and appealing way. I teach 3D documentation of material culture as well as 3D modelling and archaeological reconstruction and work on several projects as part of my job.

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