What is PHOTARCH?

A photographic method for clarity, comparability, and cultural continuity

Across the fields of archaeology and cultural heritage, photography remains one of the most widespread tools for documenting material culture. Despite its ubiquity, however, there is a persistent lack of visual standardisation in the way archaeological artefacts are photographed. From excavation reports to museum databases, images of artefacts are often produced under varying conditions — with inconsistent lighting, angles, backgrounds, and metadata, and with little thought to long-term comparability.

While initiatives such as FADGI (2023) and Metamorfoze (2012) have laid the foundation for standardised imaging within preservation and library contexts, their application to archaeological fieldwork and artefact-level documentation remains limited. PHOTARCH was developed to address this gap. It offers a flexible but rigorous method for photographing archaeological artefacts in a way that supports cross-collection comparison, long-term research usability, and future machine-readability.

A visual method, not a software

PHOTARCH — short for Photography of Archaeology — is not a software or product. It is a method grounded in field practice, developed through the need to document artefacts consistently across sites, museums, and imaging conditions. It establishes a repeatable photographic workflow centred on six key principles:

• Standardised lighting: a single-source key light at a fixed angle (typically 45°) with neutral fill, ensuring consistent modelling of surface form and shadow.
• White background: a pure white base allows for clean separation, retained shadow depth, and histogram-based control of exposure and clipping.
• Spherical angle grid: camera positions are mapped using a 12×12 spherical coordinate system (A–L, 1–12), allowing accurate referencing and repeatable coverage.
• Accurate colour management: ICC profiles and calibrated colour targets ensure faithful colour reproduction across equipment and lighting setups.
• Embedded scale and metadata: every image set includes a physical scale and colour reference, with structured metadata embedded in filenames and EXIF fields.
• Open adaptability: the method is equipment-agnostic, scalable, and can be implemented with mirrorless, DSLR, or medium format systems.

Why it matters

The lack of consistency in artefact photography is not a matter of aesthetics, but of scientific usability. Images that lack scale, show ambiguous colour, or present objects from undocumented or arbitrary angles cannot be reliably compared or integrated across studies. For institutions working with large collections, this creates both a curatorial and epistemological challenge: artefacts may be well preserved, yet visually isolated.

PHOTARCH addresses this by treating photographic documentation not as an illustration, but as data. This shift aligns with the growing interest in AI-ready datasets, reproducible documentation, and interoperable image archives (Grosvenor, 2024; FADGI, 2023). Importantly, the method also allows for immediate human interpretation: its clarity is visual, not only digital.

Proven in practice