Reviving the Past Conventions of realism in the virtual reconstruction of Rome Reborn

This paper aims to be a contribution towards a deeper understanding of archaeological virtual reconstruction, using the Rome Reborn project as a case study. Embedded in the use of virtual reconstruction methods as well as the technologies and software algorithms are cultural/historical conventions. Consequently a virtual reconstruction – as a simulation – may be regarded as accurately representing the past in the form of imitation, it may also be comprehended as a simulacrum constituting a hyperreality. These two viewpoints are regarded as two ends of a continuum in which the comprehension of a simulation oscillates due to the embedded conventions of realism. While not arguing for a fixed position – subjected to conventions the understanding of realism is therefore never fixed – this paper argues that above all a simulation should be comprehended as real in itself. A simulation will never be able to fully imitate and at the same has real consequences that do not remain silence in a separate virtual world but concern the ‘real’ world in which we actually live and the virtual is most