Abstract
The ancient human remains are of great interest to both the public and scientific community due to their symbolic, emotional and cultural values. They are considered “culturally sensitive artifacts”. However, there remains a lack of comprehensive definition for the status of "human remains" beyond some international regulations (e.g., ICOM) for their display in museum collections. Consequently, there is a growing debate within the scientific community about the ethical issues surrounding this topic. Increased awareness is also reflected in the public's interest when encountering human remains in a museum.
In this regard, computerized craniofacial depiction can play a central role in disobjectifying ancient human remains. By restoring their physical appearance, visitors can virtually meet an individual of the past, no longer seen as an abstraction but as a human being. Consequently, using this technique, our objective is to enhance comprehension of these issues through a multi-level approach to investigate the interest that these remains can generate among museum audiences and to determine whether the display of craniofacial depiction can provoke a response from visitors. Therefore, the skeletal human remains currently housed at the Museum of the Colle del Duomo di Viterbo (Rome), dated between the 8th and 18th centuries, will be bioanthropologically analysed for the first time. Moreover, the measurement of visitor interest will be achieved by detecting indexes of interest and behavioural dynamics using sensor systems and subsequent data processing employing AI techniques, developed within the ARTEMISIA project (CNR-ISPC). Data from motion sensors (i.e., stops, transit, direction of attention) and biometric data (i.e., gender, stature) will be used in a completely anonymous way and then analysed with AI algorithms. This will allow us to obtain both an overall analysis of the museum experience and to identify possible methods of individual profiling before and after the visualization of the craniofacial depiction.