Virtualization for Knowledge and Protection: The Case of an Early Medieval Church

The present paper belongs to a research focusing on the early medieval church of Santa Sofia, located in Benevento, southern Italy. The work, in general, involved methods typical of both the humanities and mathematical engineering. This contribution gives some details about the church and the methodology used to analyze and virtualize its main phases. Then, attention is given to discussing the approach used to reconstruct the complex vaulting system of the church. Using Coons patches that are based on Hermite cubics, a remapping strategy was considered to maintain control of all terms appearing in the approximation. The obtained surfaces were inserted in the virtual solid models of the church. It must be emphasized that solid modeling of artifacts of archeological interest requires that information from different sources, i.e., geometric and architectural data with archeological and archival findings, are merged together. It is indeed mandatory to adopt an archeologically meaningful methodology to assess the reliability of the virtual reconstructions.