Open Source in Archeologia. Nuove prospettive per la ricerca

How can an approach that at first seemed looking like a confused bazaar, from which just a miracle could let come out a stable and coherent system, work? If open source is demonstrating its success in the IT sector, can this approach be successfully applied also to the Cultural Heritage field? Integration, interdisciplinarity, participation, data sharing are key words of an open project, together with web use. In fact the use of Internet will increasingly become not only a medium to communicate, often marginally, final results, but a real working tool. The paper will analyze a possible use of open source in archaeology, describing pro and contra of its use and comparing the characteristics of an open project with those of an archaeological one, underlying similarities and differences. A specific and new type of application will be described: VRwebGIS that will open new perspectives such as the interactive reconstruction of shared 3D web-based archaeological environments