Eternal Witnesses

High-resolution documentation of graffiti carved into stone surfaces can help read nearly illegible characters. They can fade out due to outdoor conditions like weathering or biological coating. Indoor, the illegibility can be caused by delicately carved graffiti on a hard stone with a polished or shiny surface. These witnesses of people from former times are nonetheless important to tell stories about the place or object and help to enrich its history. This research aims to show how 3D scanning, especially structured light scanning, can help adequately document and analyse carved graffiti. Therefore, two case studies are discussed in this paper, highlighting different challenges while recording: an abandoned quarry in Bavaria, Germany, illustrating the problems of deteriorated surfaces with biological colonisation outdoors, and a gravestone in North Macedonia illustrating challenges occurring indoors with shiny, polished stone surfaces. The advantage of 3D documentation is, in both cases, to facilitate analyses, help researchers from different scientific backgrounds, and visualise and disseminate the results in a suitable way.