Metacultura Project: a research in the archaeological site of Mount Croccia

progetto metacultura montecroccia

The laser scanner relief work realised in the fortified area of Mount Croccia in our Park, represents the operative phase of the Metacultura Project. The action, coordinated by the Specialised School of Archaeology of the University of Basilicata, has been followed by Faber srl, a local society born as a spin-off of the University of Basilicata to implement and develop new technologies in culture.

The recent debate around the need to modernize the usual relief methods is founding answers in the growing quality of technology and in its applications also in a sector traditionally not open to experimentation.

faber rilievi 580

Introduction

According to the aim of the project oriented to a modern vision of the management of the historical, archaeological and environmental patrimony of the area, the laser scanner relief work has shown itself as particularly suitable for a complex such mount Croccia is. Among the obtained results, we have to mention the creation of a digital archive always available, the creation of a 3D geo-referred model allowing the monitoring of the structure useful in restoration works and also the possibility to publish the relief on the web to improve the knowledges concerning the area.

sito croccia cognato 580

The historical and archaeological classification shows the nature of this settlement, located in a dominating position useful to control the Basento and Cavone valleys.

Here, traces of the human presence date back to the Neolithic and probably to the Bronze age. But the first concrete evidences of osco-sannite populations are dated between the VI and IV century b.C. The archaeological researches occurred from the end of the 19^th century until recent times (1998) have allowed to show town walls and different structures located in the acropolis of which, today, it is not possible to observe any traces. The external fortification, datable between the end of the VIII and VI century b.C., is made of stone blocks of squared and polygonal shape, altering with rocks emerging from the surface.

A second wall, of quadrangular shape, limits the acropolis. It presents an emplecton datable before the second half of the IV cent. B.C. The excavation material has shown the presence of two period of the settlement: one archaic and the other datable around the IV cent. B.C. when the settlement concentrates along the slope of the mountain.

From the obtained data, it seems that the site did not survived over the beginning of the III cent. B.C., when the Roman Empire pressure obliged to abandon these small settlements, turned into summer pasture.

The method

The operative phases composing the organisation of the relief are 3:

1. data acquisition
2. elaboration of row data
3. production of final products.

In the settlement of Croccia Cognato, the acquisition of data has concerned only the visible structures such as the external curtain of the second town wall in square work. The relief has been realised with a scanner Leica HDS Scanstation through a series of locations of the instrument in defined points, in total 16 stations.

The number of station has benne determined by the nature of the object to scan and by the used method which is limited of the field of vision of the instrument. In our case, we had to consider the orography and of the different levels of the structure, projected to use at the best the natural altimetric plan.

The relief has been designed on one detail level, extremely high, because one of the main aim of the work on Mount Croccia has been the creation of a 3D relief able to show the wall remains and to replace them in a territorial cartographic context.

During the following phase of processing, every single scanning has been controlled and optimized before register it. The registration includes the combination of all the scanning using referring targets commons to each scanning. The result is a cloud model. After the registration there has been the last elaboration phase pf the data that has determined the creation pf a geometric model, called mesh. It is a model in which clouds of points are transformed into surfaces so to let the model be more comprehensible.

The result of the 3D scanning is exportable and manageable in CAD but also in Cyclon, where to obtain data for every analysis.

Il prodotto della scansione tridimensionale è esportabile e gestibile in ambiente CAD, ma già nel software Cyclon è possibile ricavare i dati utili a qualsiasi tipo di analisi (geometriche, planimetriche, ecc.).

The "pietra della Mola

A short separate speech needs the work made on an area located on the possible external curtain of the ancient walls.

Located at a lower level, the area presents an outcrop of rock, looking toward south-west, called “Petre de la Mola”. Here short excavations realized in past periods, have certified the presence of ancient burials, of the same period of the fortifications but with pre-existing remains going back to the Villanovan period.

The analysis of the outcropping rocks let us identify many anthropic signs: regular cuts, creation of narrow passages, wall structures have modified the “natural” place, giving it a different meaning to understand.

The position of the rock complex, marking a small plateau and signing the South and the West, the position not casual nor natural of some stones, the cuts and the working signs become suggestive the hypothesis of Professor Polcaro who thinks that is could be an ancient solar observatory, linked to production cycles and ritual functions.

Also in this case, the laser scan relief method is the more suitable for the morphplogy of the rocks and the more useful to achieve a high scientific result.