The survey of lintels

This contribution presents the digital survey of two Crusader lintels from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, now preserved at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. One lintel depicts scenes from the life of Christ, while the other is decorated with a vegetal scroll frieze. Conducted within the Hagia Polis Project, the study compares two acquisition and processing workflows: high-resolution photographic documentation processed through Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry in Agisoft Metashape, and a rapid mobile survey performed with the Polycam application on a LiDAR-equipped smartphone. Visual examination and direct measurements provided dimensional control and enabled the three-dimensional models to be accurately scaled, while orthomosaics were produced to support the historical and artistic analysis of the artefacts. After registration and subsampling, the corresponding point clouds were compared in CloudCompare through cloud-to-cloud distance analysis. Despite the substantial difference in dataset density, the models showed a high degree of correspondence and low alignment errors. The results demonstrate the reliability of mobile survey techniques for the rapid documentation of complex sculptural heritage.