6533b7d6fe1ef96bd1266729
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Morphometry of Middle Bronze Age palstaves by discrete cosine transform.
Maréva GabillotS. ForelCyril Hugues DommerguesChristophe PetitBenoît ForelClaude MordantFabrice MonnaCarmela ChateauSylvain Gerbersubject
Morphology010506 paleontologyArcheology[SHS.ARCHEO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and PrehistoryPopulationengineering.material01 natural sciencesBronze AgeDiscrete cosine transform0601 history and archaeologyBronzeeducationOpen contour[ SHS.STAT ] Humanities and Social Sciences/Methods and statistics0105 earth and related environmental scienceseducation.field_of_study[SHS.STAT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Methods and statistics060102 archaeologybusiness.industryPattern recognition06 humanities and the artsArchaeologyShape analysisTypologyBronze axe[ SHS.ARCHEO ] Humanities and Social Sciences/Archaeology and PrehistoryengineeringArtificial intelligencebusinessPalstaveGeologyShape analysis (digital geometry)description
9 pages; International audience; The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is a Fourier-related transform widely used in signal processing and well suited to the analysis of open outlines. This method was applied here to evaluate the discrimination power of the inner lateral rib for two palstave populations dating from the Middle Bronze Age, excavated in northwest France. A corpus of almost 400 palstaves (bronze axes) of the Breton and Norman types was processed, and compared to specimens found at Sermizelles in Burgundy. The procedure is robust and produces a discrimination in good agreement with the traditional typology. Besides the definition of a ‘standard' shape for each population, the morphometrical approach allows shape disparity, which is generally inaccessible to the naked eye, to be visualised and quantified. Shape disparity indicates that, contrary to previous assumptions, the bronze axes from the Sermizelles hoards cannot be explained as an assortment of Breton and Norman palstaves alone. We believe that this approach is quick, reproducible, and generalisable enough to be applied to a wide variety of artefacts from different periods, in order to clarify their typology and even their origin.
year | journal | country | edition | language |
---|---|---|---|---|
2009-03-01 |