From remote sensing to a serious game: Digital reconstruction of an abandoned medieval village in Southern Italy

The digital reconstruction of the history of a buried medieval village is the main focus of this paper. The study, based on remote sensing and historical sources, is the starting point of the development of a serious game aimed at educational purposes and exploitation of remote sensing data in the field of edutainment. The selected historical scenario is Yrsum, a village in Basilicata (South of Italy), founded in the 11th century and abandoned in the 14th century. A LiDAR survey along with satellite multispectral data (suitably elaborated for feature extraction) as well as the historical sources and archaeological records provided useful information on the 'forma urbis' of the medieval settlement from its foundation to its abandonment. The extraction of the archaeological features and the analysis of urban pattern put in evidence similarities with some medieval settlements based on “motte and bailey” typology that spread in Southern Italy, France and England from the 11th to the 13th century. After the virtual reconstruction, an interactive application articulated both on bi-dimensional and three-dimensional elements have been developed. The major novelty compared to most common video games has been the possibility to derive the game from rigorously scientific data. The player enjoys and learns within a logic of an edutainment game (a combination of education and entertainment), which has become by now a well-established concept but still rarely applied in the field of cultural heritage.