A virtual collaborative environment for archaeology through Multiuser domain in the web

The VHLab of CNR-ITABC is developing new research projects oriented to virtual archaeology and to the study and communication of cultural heritage through multi-user virtual reality applications (off and on line). The state of art in this field is still quite pioneering, because there are no multi-user domains (MuD) for sharing and exchanging cultural and scientific contents, in the field of virtual heritage. In effect, the use of virtual reality systems in the interpretation process in archaeology is not frequent and probably these potentialities have to be explored in detail. A FIRB project, "Integrated Technologies of robotics and virtual environment in archaeology", financed by the Italian Ministry of the University and Scientific Research, gives us the opportunity to experiment and realize a multi-user domain on the web aimed to a multidisciplinary scientific community: archaeologists, topographers, historians, experts in human and social sciences, communication experts. The capacity to load, share and interact with data in the same spatial virtual environment can increase the level of learning and scientific communication; in this way the information become hyper-real and contextualized. The project is still a work in progress, we expect to complete it in Autumn 2008. In the following paper we'll present the general scenario of the applications, its aims and methodologies, together with the first results.