Following the exhibition • P • I • T • O • T • I • Digital rock art from ancient Europe, the “3D PITOTI” project – which has been supported and partially financed by the European Union – is an innovative and experimental work aimed at the advanced documentation of rock art and at the realization of three-dimensional models of the engraved images. The three-dimensional representation is a well-known technology already widely used in many fields of production. In Valcamonica, it has found an additional innovative employment in the rock art field.

Our partners in this new venture are the University of Nottingham (UK), St. Pölten
University of Applied Sciences (Austria), Cambridge University (UK), Bauhaus University of Weimar (Germany), Graz University of Technology (Austria) and ArcTron 3D GmbH (Germany). Our team is composed of archaeologists, IT experts and pedagogues, who will work to the interdisciplinary project over the next three years.

The project will allow to see, analyze, study and handle the Valcamonica rock engravings also in their three-dimensional aspect. It will make possible to create 3D computer models of the territory, the rocks and of each grapheme, which will permit, among others, to shift images in the space and to get closer to them in order to observe and study the details. Also, we will be able to physically turn the computer models into 3D, so that we will have genuine “plastic models” of the surveyed and scanned areas which can be used in teaching, museum exhibitions or just shown to the public audience.

The scanner surveys will be completed by aerial shooting of the environment which surrounds the engravings, in order to provide the rock with the correct setting within the landscape where it is placed.

Further news will soon follow.