Today the world of Egyptology faces a silent crisis – not of looting, although that plays a part, but of disconnection. Walk into any major museum, from Copenhagen to California, and you see glass cases filled with what could be called orphaned artifacts: remarkable objects, often acquired in the 19th and early 20th century, that have been completely stripped of their histories. You can see what they are – a mummy’s painted foot case, a golden mask – but we have no idea where they came from. They are beautiful, but historically they are mute.
Sometimes an object can be mostly intact in a museum collection, but with few facts known about its origin.
Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo
Many objects entered museum collections at times when excavation and collecting practices were very different from today. In the past, excavated objects were often divided between institutions around the world, and display was prioritized over documentation. Over time, connections between pieces were lost. As a result, museums around the world hold remarkable artifacts whose backstories are thin, fragmentary or missing altogether.
Archaeologists like me working in the field today regularly uncover fragments: broken pieces of objects that once formed part of something larger. In some cases, those fragments may share the same underlying geometry with objects already held in museums. For example, a mummy’s foot case and a newly found shard may have been produced using the same mold, so they share a consistent three-dimensional form even if they are now separated by time, distance and absence of documentation.
Traditionally, evaluating whether a fragment matches up with a specific museum object has relied on visual judgment and incomplete records, rather than a quantitative comparison of shape.
This gap between excavation archaeology and museum collections is one of the most persistent challenges in the field. My research asks a simple question: Can we use digital tools to test whether fragments and museum objects might be related and, in doing so, recover parts of their histories that were previously inaccessible?
Reuse over time and looting shifted and damaged the contents of an ancient Egyptian tomb. This displaced mummy mask could have a relationship to other artifacts already in museums around the world.
Carlo Rindi Nuzzolo
A long-standing problem in archaeology
Archaeology is, by nature, fragmentary. Objects break, decay or are disturbed over centuries. Traditionally, archaeologists have relied on visual inspection, stylistic comparison and written records to propose connections between fragments and objects. These approaches are still essential, but they also have limits. Visual judgments can be subjective, and archival documentation is often incomplete or inconsistent.
As a result, many potential links between excavated material and museum artifacts have remained speculative…
