Preserving Endangered Cultural Heritage Through 3D Scanning. The Case of the Banqueting Tokens from Palmyra, Syria

A groundbreaking dataset of 3D scans and models of Palmyra's banqueting tesserae, used as entrance tokens for religious banquets by ancient Palmyrene priests, has been released. Over 1300 distinct types of these clay tokens are known today, with five examples from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen now available in 3D format for the first time. This innovation enables the preservation and study of an endangered cultural heritage, allowing researchers to analyze and share these historically significant artifacts digitally, despite their global dispersion across public and private collections.

Parrott, D., Raja, R., & Steding, J. (2023). Preserving Endangered Cultural Heritage Through 3D Scanning. The Case of the Banqueting Tokens from Palmyra, Syria. Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 11. https://doi.org/10.5334/joad.112