Vulci 3000 | Reconstructing an Etruscan metropolis today
It is now available on the YouTube channel of Fondazione Luigi Rovati the video presenting Vulci 3000. Reconstructing an Etruscan metropolis today, as an integration to the exhibition Vulci. Goods for men, goods for gods.
Supported by Fondazione Luigi Rovati, the Vulci 3000 project was established in 2014 on the initiative of Duke University in Durham (NC, USA), under the direction of Professor Maurizio Forte, with the aim of investigating the urban phases of the Etruscan and Roman city of Vulci through new archaeological excavations, diachronic landscape study and non-invasive surveys. "Urban Vulci" is an important research topic to increase knowledge of the phases of formation, development and transformation of the city, with about one thousand five hundred years of settlement continuity from the Iron Age to the fifth century AD. For this reason, the "Vulci 3000" project has from the beginning integrated different technologies of surveying, representation and fruition of archaeological data and models so as to use the collected data, from the moment they are acquired in the field until their representation in virtual reality and three-dimensional visualizations.
As part of the project, was created a 3D-printed model reproducing the area of the ancient Etruscan and Roman city of Vulci, in the present territory of the municipality of Montalto di Castro, in the province of Viterbo. In it one can recognize the main elements into which the territory is divided. In the center dominates a vast volcanic plateau of about one hundred and ten hectares in size, elevated above the surrounding area and lapped by the Fiora River, which runs along its eastern slopes forming a wide loop. On this elevation developed the urban settlement proper: in Etruscan times (7th-3rd centuries B.C.) the plateau must have been entirely inhabited, while in Roman times (1st-2nd centuries A.D. and beyond) the main buildings insisted along an east-west road axis (the so-called decumanus). Outside and around the built-up area are the vast necropolis used from the Iron Age to the Imperial Roman age: the Osteria necropolis, located north of the city, the Ponte Rotto necropolis, outside the East Gate, and, a little further on, the Cavalupo necropolis, across the Fiora River, which houses the monumental Cuccumella Tumulus.
The projections allow us to appreciate the progression of research in the area over time: from nineteenth-century cartography to aerial photographs in the 1970s, and finally to the present day. In addition, a selection of the video materials produced over the years by the "Vulci 3000" team using different technologies (georadar and geoelectric prospecting; drone surveys with multispectral sensors and LIDAR - Light Detection and Ranging, a laser technique for active sensing; spatial analysis and simulations) is presented to tell the story of the results of these researches, thus delivering a general reconstruction of the Vulci facility and an overview of the possibilities of new technologies for contemporary excavations.