We discuss important issues around the use of 3D modelling in scholarly research, including metadata, documentation and academic value, and hear about two case studies, involving ancient musical instruments and anatomical ideas. digital design), or never will (conceptual or artistic models), or extant finds where experimental or working models are needed. archaeological fragments), or not yet (e.g. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: General info on this session This session introduced the concept of 3D modelling or visualisation, the production of 3D models of objects that cannot simply be imaged or scanned-either because they no longer exist (e.g. In this short talk, I discussed a case study in ancient Greek music, namely my recent reconstruction of the Louvre aulos and the many different types of evidence that informed it, ranging from literary and technical texts to iconography, mathematical models and practical experiments. These slides accompanied a presentation I recently delivered at the ICS Sunoikisis Seminar on Digital Approaches to Cultural Heritage, within a session on 3D modelling. However, generic conclusions on instruments are not firm if only based on these incidental, rare, and mostly unique archaeological finds. Surviving finds of musical instruments, instead, are the instruments themselves, and, should description, dating and measurements have been well documented, they become valuable pieces of evidence for the archaeomusicologists. It has been extensively documented (Hagel 2004, 375) that pictorial evidence must be treated with the highest degree of suspicion a priori. Broadly speaking, iconographical evidence does not provide us with realistic images of instruments. Regarding methodology, it has been satisfactorily argued that: 1. Contemporary scholars of ancient organology not only combine the available evidence in order to link Greek and Roman nomenclature and descriptions of musical instruments preserved in literature to pictorial representations they also reassess the above-mentioned types of evidence, evaluating their significance and making suggestions that may help to better understand the role and function of instruments in ancient music. In addition to archeological evidence, most of the surviving texts on music bear valuable information on musical instruments, albeit indirect and sometimes approximate, given their author's different main focus or text genre. Interestingly, a few archaeological finds, fragmentary or intact remains of musical instruments published during the last three decades, have brought into light fresher data concerning their exact dimensions and materials, also suggesting the ancient techniques of instrument making.

Partly or fully sculpted musical iconography reveals valuable elements regarding the third dimension, absent in painting. A great number of pictorial representations of scenes displaying musical instruments on pottery and frescos provide us with sufficient indications regarding their overall shape and the relative dimensions to the players' body, playing techniques and social contexts. Evidence on musical instruments in Greek and Roman antiquity falls both on the fields of archaeology and literature.

Greek stringed instrument