Introduction

Our project, Greek History Rebuilt, focused on creating 3D models of Greek objects hosted by the Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College. Given the Perlman's vast collection, we chose a subset of artifacts, based on object type (decorative and utilitarian) and location (Greece). This particular combination of descriptors was fitting given our group's interest in classical history.

Project Origins
As we started thinking about what we might focus on for this project, we were particularly interested by the various historical objects that Carleton has in its collections. Sam, through her work in the Archaeology Department, has had exposure to artifacts excavated on Carleton's grounds, and most of the group has had class and personal visits to the Perlman, Carleton's teaching museum. Given that many of the artifacts excavated by the Archaeology Department have already been modeled, we decided to explore Carleton's connections to past societies through the Perlman's collection. Our common interest in Greek and classical history led us to explore the objects tagged as Grecian; as we did so, we realized that not only was there fairly little information about these artifacts, some also did not have photos. We decided to model and research these objects, both as a way to learn more about Carleton's archival collections and interactions with Greek antiquity and as a way to increase the resources available to the Perlman and hopefully increase the visibility of this part of their collection.

Sources
After going through the Perlman's collections, we decided to center our project around twelve objects, all of which were definitively or potentially associated with Greece, and all of which were tagged as decorative/utilitarian objects. The artifacts are all constructed either of bronze, copper, or terra cotta, and have been sorted on this page as either metal or clay. Of the twelve items, there are two terra cotta statues, three terra cotta vases (of varying shapes and sizes), four bronze and one copper domestic items, one bowl, and a bronze figure. These artifacts encompass a range of time periods, uses, and artistic qualities, and provide a compelling diversity of focus to this project.

Process
After connecting with staff at the Perlman and ensuring that this project was feasible given our various time and resource constraints, we began photographing and modeling the objects. Our initial plan was to use a digital camera to capture photographs of each object, which we would then use to create a 3D model on the modeling platform MetaShape. However, difficulties with the coverage, lighting, and number of photographs meant that the MetaShape models were unusable. We had to pivot our approach to the project, and instead modeled the objects using Scaniverse, a mobile app that produces 3D models from video footage of objects.