La Casa dei Pithoi a Serra di Vaglio. Una sperimentazione di ambiente 3D Open Source per la fruizione di beni archeologici

The Casa dei Pithoi restoration project is the last step of the '80s archaeological investigation, that explored the structure and its history through its various phases. The physical reconstruction of the house (fifth century phase) was proposed according to new methodological trends, which were then spread throughout Europe. They were based on the reconstruction of archaeological evidences from the Past in special didactical areas aimed to offer to users an easy presentation of archaeological contexts. According to this approach, even the construction technique adopted reflected the one documented by the scientific data from the excavations of Serra di Vaglio. The virtual reconstruction of the house, therefore, is based on the same methodological approach of the ?80s restoration project, exploiting the new possibilities offered by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). In particular, 3D reconstructions on line allows the worldwide presentation of the results of sixty years of archaeological research in Serra di Vaglio, by making the most of a philological use of three-dimensional technology and of innovative Open Source tools for creating and sharing archaeological data. The virtual model of the Casa dei Pithoi based on the excavation data (reports, specifications, drawings) was integrated in a 3D navigation system, the Open Source 3D Engine OpenSim. The environment allows visualization of the virtual model, while providing functionality for the dynamic generation of "multimedia stories" (web pages, images, videos, etc.) supported by a Multimedia Database Management System. The Casa dei Pithoi prototype is the first phase of a larger project which is dedicated to: 1- a wider reconstruction of the whole Serra di Vaglio Archaeological Area through its diachronic evolution; 2- an enrichment of the multimedia database linked to the models; 3- the implementation of more interactive fruition models, according both to modern museologies, and to e-learning 2.0 approaches. The proposed model is also an innovative, interactive shared research environment able to support experimentation of networking in three-dimensional multiuser environments integrated with multimedia interdisciplinary databases.