Touching and Interacting with Inaccessible Cultural Heritage

The sense of touch provides a particular access to our environment, enabling a tangible relation with it. In the particular case of cultural heritage, touching the past, apart from being a universal dream, can provide essential information to analyze, understand, or restore artifacts. However, archaeological objects cannot always offer tangible access, either because they have been destroyed or are too damaged, or because they are part of a larger assembly. In other cases, it is the context of use that has become inaccessible, as it is related to an outdated activity. We propose a workflow based on a combination of computed tomography, 3D images, and 3D printing to provide concrete access to cultural heritage, and we illustrate this workflow in different contexts of inaccessibility. These technologies are already used in cultural heritage, but seldom combined, and are most often employed for exceptional artifacts. We propose to combine these technologies in case studies corresponding to relevant archaeological situations.