The current volume, the first of a newly established supplementary series the ‘Beiheft’ of the CVA Österreich, aims to introduce new methods of documentation and visualisation to the topic of ancient vase-painting. The volume is structured with a short preface by A. Pülz, the director of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and an introduction by T., the editor of the volume, who sets the agenda and briefly summarises the individual contributions. This is followed by a list of the most commonly referred to bibliographical references and contact details of the contributors. The volume itself contains eight highly interesting contributions (seven in German and one in English, with summaries at the end) by twenty authors, i.e. all but two are multi-authored, acknowledging the specialised subject of research and the number of specialists needed. The contributions lack bibliographies, as references apart from the abbreviated ones are fully quoted in the notes. However, it would have been a helpful, user-friendly addition to supplement the contributions with individual bibliographies. The volume is lavishly illustrated, all of high quality and a fair number in colour.

T. Mannack and G. Parker summarise the history of the CVA since its foundation in 1919, and the development of the Beazley Archive and the CVA as digital research platforms. The impressive free-of-charge tool of CVA-online has approximately 20,000 registered users, a number that will certainly rise with the constantly growing importance of digital research tools. The current debate on open-access publishing will show if the policy to make CVA volumes accessible on the internet five to ten years after the printed version is released can be maintained in the future. Research platforms such as CVA-online certainly have the potential to fascinate new generations of researchers and also interested laymen.

H. Mara and J. Portl discuss the methods, use and applicability of high-resolution 3D-scanners on archaeological objects in general and in particular on pattern painted vessels. The possibilities offered by this method and the illustrations shown, for example figures 6b–11, are fascinating, even if the profile drawing of the handle section (fig. 6b) is not yet satisfactory. The average time needed for the acquisition and post-processing of a 3D-scan (table 1 and pp. 30–1) is surprisingly short, and a standardised application of this tool for archaeological research (including CVA publications) is possible. If so, the accessibility of digital data, their long-term storage and data management will become an even more important issue in the future for archaeologists, museums and collections.

B. Vak offers important insights on visualising barely recognisable or even concealed images using the methods of stereomicroscopy, image processing software and X-ray fluorescence analysis. The astonishing resolution of even the finest sketch lines visible in stereomicroscopy (figs 7–17) will certainly contribute greatly to future studies of painters and relations between different workshops. A whole range of different methods (e.g. UV, IR and X-ray fluorescence analysis) are employed to visualise step by step the different approaches and materials used for restoring ancient vessels.

S. Karl, D. Jungblut and J. Rosc (with a contribution by R. Erlach) discuss the methods, use and application of industrial X-ray computer tomography (hereafter CT). X-radiography has been used since the 1930s, and since the 1990s radiography and CT have been commonly used to differentiate production techniques (for references on the history of research and recent bibliography see pp. 73–4 nn. 4–7). As demonstrated by the authors, CT offers a complete 3D documentation of an even higher precision than 3D-scans, and the differences between both methods and a conventional drawing are shown in fig. 26.

The problem of documenting historical restorations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the use and advantage of applying CT are discussed in the contributions by R. Fürhacker and S. Karl, and by M. Christidis. The analysed objects are kept in the Universalmuseum Joanneum (pp. 117–26 on the history of the collection). Three objects, two Etruscan vessels (one of Bucchero-pesante ware and a column crater) and a guttus are carefully analysed by conventional methods but also by radiography and industrial CT. Most importantly CT analysis not only confirms the suspicion achieved by conventional observation but provides clear evidence (see pp. 136–9, figs 27–33) that the Etruscan Bucchero vessel is a pastiche of non-joining fragments from different vessels that were merged to create a new one. The analysis of the other two objects reveals important new insights into their early restoration and contributes greatly to the history of the objects.

The pilot study of L. Dimitrov and collaborators again focuses on the advantages of industrial CT to create a series of metrical data (e.g. measurements, volume, etc.) and analyse them, as well as to generate sectional drawings. The described methods also raise a number of questions that remain to be answered, such as how and where to store the enormous mass of data (p. 173 refers to 1GB of data for one vase) that will accumulate if industrial CT is to be used on a large scale for archaeological objects.

The final contribution is a preparatory study by P. Kammerer and collaborators, and focuses on reflection spectroscopy as a non-invasive and non-destructive method to analyse the paint used on ancient vessels (pp. 178–80 on the history of research and the method in general). Another aim of the paper is to test if the method is capable of conclusively differentiating the original paint/pigments from more recent additions, for example in patches. A series of seventeen vessels, including eleven white-ground lekythoi, was measured with very promising first results, but more data and further analysis are necessary to evaluate fully the potential of this method.

This volume is a significant contribution as it introduces a series of important methods of documentation and visualisation in the research of ancient vase-painting, and it is to be hoped that some will become standard for future research. The editor and the Austrian Academy of Sciences should earn much credit for this volume and for establishing this supplementary series, the ‘Beiheft’ to the Austrian section of the CVA, and hopefully additional ones will follow soon.