Why do virtual heritage?

Archaeology Magazine (Donald H. Sanders)

Those of us in the virtual heritage business who create digital surrogates of the ancient world see many benefits of visualizing the past interactively and in 3D. We understand that the past did not happen in 2D and that it cannot be effectively studied or taught as a series of disconnected static images that, for the most part, represent incomplete remains. It seems obvious to us that you need an interactive, 3D approach if you expect others to get excited about ancient cultures or expect them to grasp the implications of the evidence.

But how do we convince archaeologists, who should be embracing our technologies, that it is to their advantage to see the ancient world as the ancients did, rather than as static 2D representations in black and white? Today, when personal digital video and music players, GPS-enabled camera cell phones, wireless high-speed home networks, and laptops for schoolchildren are commonplace, why is it so difficult to convince scholars that interactive 3D environments are instructive not simply eye-catching novelties? We could even state this more forcefully: Archaeologists are doing a disservice to their discipline, colleagues, students, and the public by not using all means available to record sites, test hypotheses, and teach about the past.

I have worked in virtual heritage for more than a decade, and in 1993 was involved in one of the earliest virtual re-creations of ancient sites, Buhen, a 12th Dynasty Egyptian fortress whose remains were inundated by Lake Nasser in the late 1960s. Over the years my two companies have worked on dozens of projects--partnering with many archaeologists, museums, broadcast channels, publishers, and even foreign governments--and covering all types of data and visualization goals, from teaching packages, to research resources, to digital publications, to hypothesis tests. We have found that projects routinely generate unexpected revelations about the excavated record, and that the archaeologists who collaborate with us learn about their sites in ways not possible with traditional analytical tools.

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