FROM cave paintings to Roman mosaics, our perception of archaeological artefacts is affected by how they are lit - which is usually by bright modern lights. As a result, the way we see them may bear little resemblance to how they would have looked to the people who created them.
Alan Chalmers of the Digital Laboratory at the University of Warwick, UK, wants to fix that. He is working with computer scientists and archaeologists at the Roman site of Conimbriga in Portugal to come up with computer reconstructions that take account of the lighting conditions of the time. "We want a research tool, not just a pretty picture," he says.
I was at a lecture one time about anthropology and early cave art in France (no, the lecture wasn't in France, the cave art is). the way it was described about some of the anthropomorphic animals, is that when viewed from a hand-held torch or flickering fire-light, the beings seemed to move, live and breath from the non-constant light. when viewed in a static picture, and from incandescent or fluorescent lighting to see detail, most seem to lose aspect and seemed to not hold their character, and even seemed to be oddly shaped.
sometimes context has more to do with things than what we think.
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