The petroglyphs in the Camonica Valley in Italy, referred to locally as Pitoti, were carved into rock faces by prehistoric cultures. These precious artefacts form part of Europe’s cultural heritage. Studying them is often very problematic because the slopes on which they are found are difficult to access. The PITOTI 3D project, led by the University of Nottingham, is investigating and documenting the three-dimensional nature of the petroglyphs for the first time. St. Pölten UAS is focusing on the development of intelligent data processing technologies for manipulating the scanned 3D data based on classification, clustering and retrieval methods, in order to identify the inherent structures in the data and process it into a useable form. The project aims to make the rock art accessible to the general public as well as experts for the first time, and present the images in an engaging and interactive way.

Pitoti in Valcamonica © FHSTP

Different scales of the microscope range © 3D-Pitoti Project, edited by FHSTP

Depth map of a small patch of a large point cloud © FHSTP