From the Stanford Computer Science Newsletter on my desk:
And now, let us return to the continuing saga of Professor Marc Levoy and his Indiana Jones adventures trying to assemble that ancient map of Rome (see last year's newsletter). In March, Marc, his Ph.D. student David Koller, and Professor Jennifer Trimble (Marc's collaborator in the Classics department) traveled to Rome to present a sequence of talks at a conference devoted specifically to "New Discoveries Related to the Forma Urbis Romae." The conference was attended by every leading Italian-speaking Roman archaeologist in the world.
According to all reports, David's talk on "solving the puzzle" was the runaway hit of the day. Earlier talks had focused on one or another fragment of the map; for example, proposing a new placement for the fragment, re-interpreting the meaning of its incised architecture, etc. By contrast, David started his talk by throwing up a slide listing 50 proposed new matches. This drew audible gasps from the audience. He then marched through the list, spending less than a minute on each match. Such things are simply not done in that research community. The murmuring of the audience grew with each match. When he finished, there was loud and sustained applause, so much that David began blushing. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, director of the British School in Rome was heard exclaiming, "Today changes everything; the study of this map will never be the same!"