Naquane, Grande Roccia, dalla scoperta al modello bidimensionale immersivo

The GREAT ROCK of the Naquane National Park, from the discovery to the two-dimen-
sional immersive model. Although the first researches over the engraved rocks of the Alpine region – which
since the beginnings produced two-dimensional and three-dimensional recordings – date back to the same
historical period of the development of modern palethnology, rock art studies are still struggling to obtain a
full place inside the academic field of the archaeological science. A main problem is related to the difficulty
of correctly recognising and reproducing figures and scenes, due to natural/anthropic decay or vegetal patina
coating, so making hard the scientific refutability of many studies over such archaeological items. Through
the recording experiences carried out over the Great Rock (NAQ1) of the Naquane National Park of Rock
Engravings, the author presents an immersive virtual tour, which main goal is to match contact-tracing results
with ultra hi-res photo mosaics; in this way, opening a door towards a shared evaluation, it is possible to test
their precision while surfing over the model of the engraved surface. The research history of the Great Rock
of Naquane is exposed: the rock was firstly noticed at the beginning of 1932 by Giuseppe Amaracco, a local
guide who worked for Giovanni Marro, the Piedmontese anthropologist who discovered, thanks to the Ama-
racco’s surveys, the engraved areas of the left slope of the Camonica Valley. The areas of the right slope where
discovered few weeks before, on December 1931, by Antonio Nicolussi, assistant of Raffaello Battaglia, the
archaeologist of the Padova Superintendence. In 1935, 1936 and 1937 NAQ1 was studied by the researchers
of the German Forschunginstitut für Kultumorphologie (Leo Frobenius, Franz Altheim, Erika Trautmann, Karl
Kerényi), who took some pictures, rubbings and drawings. In 1954, on the occasion of the Brescia exhibition
devoted to weapons and prehistoric engravings, Emanuele Süss produced various three-dimensional plaster
casts of the most interesting parts of the Great Rock, which are still today exposed at the little Musuem of Ceto,
in Valcamonica. In 1957 NAQ1 was completely recorded on wax paper by Emannuel Anati, who firstly ap-
plied a diachronic cataloguing of the figures, based on styles and superimpositions, and marked the beginning
of a new phase in the Valcamonica and Alpine rock art research. In the late ’80s and early ’90s A. Fossati and
M.S. de Abreu traced some figures and scenes of the rock to illustrate the informative panels planned by the
Archaeological Superintendence. Feeling the exigency of producing an up-to-date recording of the Great Rock
of Naquane, the author recently performed a complete contact-tracing, which consists of 221 transparent plastic
sheets and covers 65 square meters of engraved surface, fully digitalised in vector graphics. The rendering of
the tracing is as essential as an archaeological drawing, clearly showing figures, scenes and engraving phases;
at the same time it is someway analogous to a cartographic map, symbolised by the means of flat projection,
selection of relevant traits, complexity reduction, design and visual effectiveness, ready for communication
and publication. A specific software, RAD-Rock Art Database, has been written by the author to catalogue the
figures – which are 2028 on the entire rock, mostly belonging to the so called IV2 style, VII-VI cent. BC – and
to produce an automatic html output, enhanced by filtering options and stats. A 3D model of the entire surface
has been produced by photogrammetric software, deriving from it a DEM and then a zenith plan with contour lines. More detailed 3D model has been produced thanks to the help of Paolo Emilio Bagnoli, Pisa University,
using photometric stereo technique, which is able to gain better results than laser scan for closer views of
single figures and scenes. After such a long and complex recording job, the large size of the rock and the great
extension of the engraved surface forced the author to find a way to effectively present all the material col-
lected. An immersive two-dimensional model, de facto an interactive virtual tour, was created, joining spherical
multi-resolution panoramas, ultra-large zenith photo mosaics and rock art tracings. Such a technique, working
with different zoom levels and subdividing pictures in tiles, allows to overtake the visualisation limits of the
extremely large picture files, like gigapixel .JPG or .PSB, which can’t be shown on the Internet. The result is an
online tool for archaeology and study purposes, useful at the same time to show and to promote worldwide the
great richness of the most important engraved rock of the Naquane Park. You may surf the demo at the Naquane Park and EuroPreArt websites.