ViSMan-DHER: a Virtual Archaeology Application for Visualization and Management of Archaeological Data Related to ancient Herculaneum (NA), Italy

Abstract

This work aims at presenting a case-study application of ViSMan (Visual Scenarios Manager), an opensource framework developed at Cineca for visualization and interaction with virtual scientific models connected to digital archives of data. ViSMan has been used for the visualization of a digital model of a roman house, realized by the Università di Bologna within the DHER (Domus Herculanensis Rationes) Project. The application allows navigation through several scenarios (the Campanian landscape, the archaeological areas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, some reconstructed houses) and a direct link between the models and a rich digital archive, consisting in old and new photographic documentation of insulae, houses, rooms and wall decoration details, former excavation and restoration reports, and more archaeological data about the reconstructed structures. Most data come from the Archive of the Soprintendenza archeologica of Pompeii and cover many houses in the two archaeological areas. Reconstructed structures were used as a spatial interface for visualization and analysis of the collected data managed through a relational database.