Advanced Toolkits for Interdisciplinary and Enhanced Study, Conservation, and Restoration in Burial Excavations and Findings is a Horizon Europe Innovation Action funded by the European Union under call HORIZON-CL2-2024-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01 (Grant Agreement No. 101233712), running from October 2025 to March 2029. The project is coordinated by the Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) and carried out by a multidisciplinary consortium of research, academic, heritage, and technology partners across Europe.
Aligned with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), EXCALIBUR proposes a holistic framework that offers innovative tools and methods for the enhanced study, improved conservation and restoration, and deeper knowledge of cultural heritage objects through their digital twins. The project focuses specifically on burial excavations, remains, and findings, and delivers its solutions through a centralised, interoperable, and human-centred platform designed in line with the ECCCH infrastructure, services, and ecosystem.
The project delivers open-source, cost-efficient digital tools built on AI/ML, Digital Twin, and eXtended Reality (XR) technologies, designed with and for the heritage community. Archaeologists, bioanthropologists, museologists, conservators, historians, researchers, and scholars co-define the requirements, co-design the toolkits, and test, evaluate, and validate the tools through representative case studies and an open call for support to third parties. The aim is to make advanced technology accessible and affordable for a new generation of heritage professionals across Europe and worldwide.
EXCALIBUR applies its work across four heritage layers: burial sites and surroundings; tomb structures and decoration; artefacts and burial findings; and human and burial remains. Each layer is addressed by a dedicated set of digital toolkits, validated through four real-world pilot use cases across Europe.
Our Contribution to the EXCALIBUR
Pilot Case 3: State Museum of Egyptian Art (SMAEK), Munich
Our work at the research lab of the Institute for Digital Cultural Heritage Studies in this pilot focuses on three interconnected directions, all centred on the museum's funerary collection.
3D Digitisation and Processing: Selected objects from the SMAEK collection are digitised and processed into high-quality 3D models. The pipeline covers the full workflow from raw capture through to clean, publication-ready.
Chatbot: We are developing a conversational interface that allows researchers and visitors to query the SMAEK knowledge base using natural language. The chatbot draws on the collection's structured metadata and iconographic records, enabling intuitive access to the semantic content of the Egyptian funerary corpus.
AI for Cultural Heritage, Coffin Reconstruction and Inpainting: A dedicated research line explores the application of AI to the reconstruction and inpainting of ancient Egyptian coffin imagery. Working with a specialised dataset of coffin decorations, we investigate how generative AI models (diffusion models) can recover missing, damaged, or deteriorated regions of painted surfaces.
Pilot Case 4: Bioarchaeological Collection of DUTH, Komotini, Greece
Our contributions here address two fundamental challenges in physical anthropology: biological profile estimation and skeletal reconstruction from fragmentary remains. The work is based on a bioarchaeological collection from the Laboratory of Biological Anthropology, Democritus University of Thrace.
Sex Estimation from 2D Images: We are developing a full computational pipeline for estimating the biological sex of skeletal individuals from standard 2D images of Pelvis. The pipeline integrates transformer-based models for automated bone detection and segmentation, followed by classification models trained on pelvic bone morphology.
Long Bone Reconstruction for Stature Estimation: Fragmented or incomplete long bones present a significant obstacle to stature estimation, which is one of the core components of a biological profile. We are developing reconstruction methods that predict and complete broken long bones from partial remains, delivering a virtual complete bone. This supports more reliable stature estimation and broader comparative analysis across the collection.
EXCALIBUR is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 101233712, call HORIZON-CL2-2024-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
The Swiss consortium partner PIX4D SA participates as an associated partner. Its contribution is supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), in line with the funding arrangements for Swiss participants in Horizon Europe.
