A shared terminology for hypothetical 3D digital reconstructions in the field of Cultural Heritage

Working in synergy with experts coming not only from different fields (computer scientists, archaeologists, historians...), but also from different countries, thus speaking a variety of languages, is very often essential in the field of digital 3D reconstructions for cultural heritage, for heuristic rather than entertainment purposes. This inevitably leads to the comparison of different methods and workflows, each of which is based on its own terminology. Therefore, comparing the terms that are used, following their evolution and, to some extent, attempting to standardise them is a prerequisite for making the reconstruction as objective and reproducible as possible, qualities that are of prime importance especially when the goal is the publication of results in online platforms, so that they are accessible and comprehensible to a wide audience of interested users. Terminology is only one of the open problems in the field of digital 3D reconstructions, which, as is well known, also faces issues related, for instance, to different software and file formats, or even to data storage and to the platforms used to share them. These problems, however, can hardly be tackled without a shared terminology and methodology, which should be the basis of any 3D digital reconstruction used to disseminate (and potentially enrich with new discoveries) cultural heritage, especially when it comes to hypothetical reconstructions of artefacts that have been destroyed or have never been built. In this case, the dialogue between experts is a central element and it is therefore clear why, first of all, it is necessary to agree on the terms that are used. This study aims to analyse some of the most frequent ones in this sense, especially those relating to the certainty and reliability of a reconstruction, whose data model becomes a social and cultural object that we cannot ignore.