Eigen Paicas: A 3D Reconstruction of Entire Vessels Using Information of a Single Fragment and a Database

Traditionally, fragments of ceramic vessels are collected diving an archaeological research project since they provide important pieces of evidence concerning cultural affiliation, dating, and other types of important information. However, complete vessels provide additional data such as food storage capacity and weight. A 3D reconstruction technique for reconstructing complete vessels based on fragments is proposed and applied to paicas, large ceramic containers from the Moche society of northern Peru. A database of profile contours, derived from the 3D models of 23 paicas, was established and used to reconstruct the shape of entire vessels from fragments using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the Simplex optimisation algorithm. Preliminary results from a group of four fragments provide good estimations with an average accuracy error of 14% and a precision error equal to 0%.