HIGHLIGHTING THE MARKS OF THE PAST: DIGITAL IMAGE TREATMENT OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ROCK ART SITE PEDRA DA FIGURA

The use of digital photography and image treatment as a tool for preservation and documentation in Archaeology has expanded the aim of Rock Art research field in recent years. Since documenting also means preserving, the intend of this work was to highlight the marks of the past in the rock panel of the archaeological site Pedra da Figura, in Taquaritinga do Norte/PE, using tools that optimize archaeologists' perception, as for visualization as for materiality of the photographed object. This study was carried out using digital treatment techniques applied to six pictures of the pictographs: the use of digital filters available in the menu of the ImageJ program and the development of programs in python language, with few lines of code, containing the implementation of the filter algorithms that do not exist in the ImageJ program. Then, the treated images were compared to the line drawings made in 1980 and 2021. Finally, treatment of the images allowed a better visualization of pictographs' shapes and contours, emphasizing details that were no longer noticeable due to the panels' high level of degradation. This method has a great potential for increasing Rock Art research, and even to other branches of Archaeology due to its replicability. Also, since the use of accessible tools was prioritized, this study demonstrated great cost-benefit ratio, requiring only a personal computer.