Under the Shelling: Digital 3D Protection of the Ukrainian Bronze Age: Archaeological Museum of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

The dataset represents artefacts from the Archaeological Museum of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. The main objective of the project "Under the Shelling: Digital 3D Protection of the Ukrainian Bronze Age" was to digitally preserve Bronze Age artefacts from the collections of the largest university archaeological museum in Ukraine. University archaeological museums have never been open to the general public, functioning more as storehouses for expedition collections and learning centers for students.

Founded in 1987, the Archaeological Museum of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv houses some 30,000 artefacts from various regions of Ukraine. The museum has an extremely rich archaeological collection, especially items from the Bronze Age. The vast majority of them come from fieldwork carried out in the second half of the 20th century and relate to the prehistory of the Yamna, Catakomb, and Zrubna cultures.

The project was supported and carried out thanks to a Research Scholarship from the DAI (German Archaeological Institute). Members of the NGO "SRL "Archaїc" participated in the project voluntarily. The project produced 66 accurate 3D models of Bronze Age portable monuments, mainly pottery. Image-based 3D modeling was chosen as the working technology. The Agisoft Metashape (and, sometimes, Reality Capture) software was used as the basic software, and post-processing was done in Autodesk Meshmixer and Blender. The estimated metric accuracy of the models is 1-2 mm.

Potential Applications of the Data

The project introduces a representative collection of ceramic production from the Middle Bronze Age of the Ukrainian Steppe. It is the largest digitized dataset of Katakombna culture that has ever been 3D captured. It will be in use for the study of the material culture from the Bronze Age of Steppe and Forest-Steppe Ukraine. Moreover, the metric parameters of the models as well as their high resolution, allow to study the metric parameters of the Bronze Age pottery, including its structure, texture, morphology, and clay features. It reveals the main features of the archaeological, classificational, and typological aspects of the Bronze Age pottery, Bronze Age tools, and their parameters. Moreover, this asset is representative in terms of ornamentation tools and patterns variety for the Katakombna culture.