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Mosaic Units: Patterns in Ancient Mosiacs
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard, Edo Jo fe GgW O. N. |
| Abstract | Inspecting ancient floor mosaics, I noticed [ l ] that their geometric patterns tend to fall into the same few size groups, despite the mosaics being in widely separated parts of the classical world, On measuring all alternative dimensions that it seemed reasonable to measure on each patternf and doing this for many patterns of the same size group 9 I obtained a histogram as in Fig* 1. In every size group I obtained the same basic pattern of histogram; some little peaks followed by a very tall peak* followed by a succession of diminishing waves of small peaks. Examination of these histograms revealed that nearly every pattern has one dimension contributing to the very tall peak. This dimension can be said to be common to every pattern in the size group concerned. That virtually every pattern of a size group has one dimension of v i r tually (i. e. , within the spread of the very tall peak) the same length* suggests that this dimension was fixed by the mosaicists* Lack of many alternative dimensions would explain why patterns fall into size groups. Examining equal pattern dimensions on different mosaics, I found that they are not composed of equal numbers of stones. Even on the same mosaic, constant dimensions are often composed of varied numbers of stones* Mosaicists fixing dimensions by measurement, rather than by counting out stones, would explain this, Measuring (with a class interval of 1 millimeter) 121265 dimensions of patterns that had apparently been originally fixed by mosaicists measurements , I obtained a frequency distribution as in Figure 2* Measuring more patterns, to a total of more than 310000 pattern dimensions, I found essentially the same distribution; the very tall peaks grew much taller, whilst some extra* but minute, peaks appeared,, From the distribution (Fige 2), it is clear that ancient floor mosaic geometric patterns are remarkably few different absolute sizes* Can we account for i t? |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/FQ/Scanned/8-3/moore-a.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.fq.math.ca/Scanned/8-3/moore-a.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
