AUTOMATIC TOOL MARK IDENTIFICATION AND COMPARISON WITH KNOWN BRONZE AGE HAND TOOL REPLICAS

Abstract. The acquisition of high-resolution surface information by advanced documentation methods as short-range laser scanning or closerange photogrammetry can provide novel tool mark research perspectives in the field of archaeological sciences. For this reason, altogether eight different Bronze Age hand tool replicas and their tool marks were surveyed and analysed in this study. The automatic identification of sliding tool marks was carried out in a GIS environment. Based on hydrological and aspect parameters, the various hand tool impressions as watershed boundaries of the surface model could be determined in the developed workflow. After the segmentation of the single tool marks, slope and width values of the patterns were compared with the cutting edges of their replicas and the most used regions of the hand tool heads could be defined by these tool mark characteristics. The variation of midline parameters along the sliding tool marks resulted in significant conclusions about the mounting techniques of the hand tool heads on the handles. A smaller angular value between the replica and the handle produced different hand tool impressions which had a major influence on the woodworking efficiency as well. Furthermore, in this paper presented methods should also help to understand other ancient wood manufacture processes.