2002): Documentation and Recovery of Rupestrian Paintings: An Automatic Approach

This paper describes an automatic approach in archaeological photogrammetry for the documentation and recovery of rupestrian paintings. Visible and near-infrared images were taken from an opened-cave before and after moistening the stone wall. Digital image processing techniques, specially multispectral and multiband classifications, were used to recognise and extract non-destructively the primitive paintings and shapes, i.e. arrows, hunters and animals. Images of rupestrian paintings are presented, before and after human restoration. Additionally, thematic plots of work art obtained semi-automatically and independently before the cave restoration are shown in order to check the profitability of the methodology; statistical accuracies are also presented. Furthermore, some guidelines for future documentation and recovering of rupestrian paintings are pointed out.