The application of high performance computing in rock art documentation and research
James Andrew Dodd · 2018
This article discusses the application of high performance computing (HPC) to the remote processing of high quality image based models of rock carvings in the eld, using Agisoft PhotoScan / Metashape Professional software. Most work to date has been carried out on the Danish e-Infrastructure Collaboration National High Performance Computer Abacus 2.0, hosted as part of the eScience Centre at The University of Southern Denmark (SDU). More recently, the author has been testing the cloud processing facility available within Metashape Professional, that utilizes Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 HPC cluster. This work forms part of the fieldwork component of the author’s PhD project at Aarhus University, Denmark, investigating regionality in Southern Tradition rock art through a programme of extensive documentation of rock carvings, principally on the island of Bornholm, Denmark, and also parts of Central and Southern Norway and Western Sweden. The successful deployment of this technology as part of a programme of surface based documentation breaks new ground in the fields of rock art research, archaeology, and high performance computing in equal measure. Therefore, the workflow discussed in the following pages has wide ranging implications for a number of disciplines.