Virtual Museums
Aidone Museum Archaeological Collection
The Archaeological Museum of Aidone is located in the province of Enna, in Sicily, and it is housed in a former Capuchin convent dedicated to Saint Francis. It was inaugurated in the summer of 1984 and preserves the findings of over thirty years of excavations in Morgantina, ordered according to chronological and thematic criteria, among which the world renown statue of the Goddess of Morgantina and the Head of Hades.
The Collection
In 2017, 126 archaeological artifacts from the Archaeological Museum of Aidone were captured by the USF Center for Virtualization and Applied Spatial Technologies. In 2019, the Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx) finalized the digital curation of that collection. These objects were captured at the museum using laser scanning, structured light 3D scanning and digital photogrammetry. These objects cover a large range of chronology, from prehistoric to late Hellenistic and include terracotta figurines and busts, Greek and Indigenous pottery, prehistoric stone tools, and some stone sculptures.
Virtualization and Data Curation
Archaeological and historical metadata of those archaeological artifacts required substantial original research in order to provide these artifacts with the necessary information to allow them to become useful resources for the public and scholars. Researching for this metadata involved utilizing scholarly sources that provided valuable information allowing us to conclude accurate dates, descriptions, and material. Once the correct metadata was obtained, it was inserted into the IDEx database, structured according to the Dublin Core schema.
Global Digital Dissemination
The 3D models of all the 94 archaeological artifacts from the Aidone Museum were initially disseminated online on the USF IDEx Sketchfab page and received with great enthusiasm by scholars and general public. More recently the current ad hoc web platform housed on a USF server and maintaned by USF IT has been launched in order to disseminate the metadata in a more user-friendly interface.
