Media forms are constantly calling into question each other’s ability to represent the authentic, and these remediations raise the possibility of the decay of aura, the loss of authenticity of experience. (Bolter et al. 2006: 34)

Over the last decade, we’ve both been thinking about the fundamental problem of how the authenticity of historic objects and monuments is produced, experienced and negotiated. In particular, this has coalesced in our recent work on digital 3D models, where we have engaged directly with the questions raised by Bolter and his colleagues. To what extent does the use of new 3D digital media in the heritage sector result in the loss of authenticity? What do digital 3D models of historic objects do to their physical counterparts and visa versa? How do their biographies intersect? How does participation in their production inform the experience and negotiation of their authenticity?

Authenticity has traditionally been seen as an intrinsic and immutable dimension of tangible historic objects, monuments and landscapes; qualities that define their significance and their truthfulness. In contrast, the authenticity and value of physical replicas and reconstructions has a much more difficult history. Whilst changing according to their modes of production, accuracy, institutional associations and subsequent uses, their authenticity is almost always seen as secondary, and indeed a potential threat, to the original objects they represent. In Theorizing Digital Heritage, Fiona Cameron explores how digital visualizations of historic objects and monuments (including digital representations and physical reconstructions), often acquire a similarly complex and ambivalent status. This is accentuated by the ‘weirdness’ of digital objects. As one of us (Jeffrey) argues in Challenging Heritage Visualization, such objects are inarguably different from the ‘real’; lacking in substance and physical locale, they apparently defy the laws of nature with their infinite reproducibility and inability to degrade.

But we suggest that these seemingly clear cut distinctions between originals and replicas, both physical and digital, are in fact far more complex than they might first appear. The authenticity of originals is culturally mediated and, as one of us explored through ethnographic research, it involves complex networks of relationships between people, places and things (see Jones; also Macdonald). Just as the intrinsic authenticity and value of originals is widely challenged, so the inauthenticity of physical replicas and reconstructions can be questioned. Physical replicas and reconstructions can acquire authenticity depending on their modes of production and consumption, and the networks of institutional and individual relations from which they arise (e.g. Foster and Curtis). Likewise in considering digital media the notion that virtual replicas and representations signal the end of authenticity has been questioned (e.g. Cameron; Jeffrey). Using Latour and Lowe’s appealing metaphor from the title of their article in Switching Codes, we see a ‘migration of aura’, but how does this work and under what conditions?

Recently our separate research on these issues came together in the ACCORD project, which involved a collaboration between Glasgow School of Art, the University of Manchester, Archaeology Scotland, and the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (now part of Historic Environment Scotland). Through the project we explored how community co-production of 3D digital heritage visualizations impacts on the authenticity associated with them (and in turn the tangible heritage they represent). Working with 10 community heritage groups across Scotland, we co-created 3D visualizations of heritage places, which importantly were identified as places of significance by members of the groups. The ACCORD team used a form of short-term ethnography (Pink and Morgan 2013), using mixed methods, including focused group interviews and participant observation. In turn, the production of the 3D visualizations acted as the kind of intervention in people’s lives recommended by Pink and Morgan; in effect creating an ‘intense route to knowing’.

The research reveals that 3D heritage visualizations can acquire meaningful levels of authenticity and value, at least from the point of view of those involved in their production. At the same time strong distinctions between originals and 3D models are upheld, and certain characteristics undermine the migration of aura from analogue to digital forms. These include the absence of touch (with our non-haptic models), the loss of wider context or setting, the absence of experiential dimensions such as the weather, sound, changing daily and seasonal qualities. Nevertheless, complex and dynamic relationships are set up between heritage objects and their digital replicas. These involve subtle forms of partial migration and borrowing, alongside the generation of new forms of value and authenticity. 3D printing creates a further element of complexity as the digital object ‘migrates’ back into the material world. In this case, we can see an analogue-digital-analogue cycle at work, in which some original forms of authenticity are lost, but new ones are created through the production process.

The community co-design and co-production employed in the ACCORD project is a key part of this process, producing relationships between people, places and objects that informs the experience of authenticity. So, whilst most research on the authenticity and value of digital media focuses on issues such as metric accuracy, design aesthetics and consumption, we suggest that modes of production and participatory practice are equally, if not more, important. The results have important implications for heritage practice, as well as for the application of digital 3D visualization more broadly. They suggest that forms of community participatory practice could be used to explore the authenticity and significance of original historic objects and monuments. At the same time, such methods could be used to create rewarding and significant relationships with digital objects, for those involved in their production and beyond. For instance, they might impact on wider audiences, if the biographies of digital 3D models, and their relationships to people are places, are made explicit. At present we are developing a follow-on project to explore the impact of these proposals, through community co-curation of exhibitions of centred on the ACCORD digital models.

Siân Jones is Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Manchester. She is interested in the production and consumption of cultural heritage and has written on authenticity, social significance, conservation practice, and community archaeology/heritage. You can find her on social media @blinkymanx and https://manchester.academia.edu/SianJones

Stuart Jeffrey is Research Fellow in Heritage Visualisation at the Digital Design Studio of the Glasgow School of Art. His research encompasses multiple aspects of technical recording, reconstruction and visualisation in the heritage context, particularly how outputs from these processes are received by their intended audiences. @stuartjeffrey and http://www.gsa.ac.uk/research/dds-profiles/j/jeffrey-dr-stuart/

Funded by the AHRC, ACCORD is a 12 month project. Others involved in the project include Mhairi Maxwell (Glasgow School of Art), Cara Jones (Archaeology Scotland), and Alex Hale (HES). You can find us on social media @ACCORD_project and http://accordproject.wordpress.com/

This post is part of this month’s analog/digital series and the second post­ discussing my work as an archaeological illustrator in relation to analogue and digital media. In the previous post I outlined my mostly analogue workflow with some digital skeuomorphs and explored the differences between illustration and 3D modeling. Here I’d like to share some ways I’ve recently expanded my use of the digital in my workflow and explored a constructive interplay between the digital and analogue.

I am the site illustrator for Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic archaeological site in Turkey. I started working there in 1999 as an archaeobotanist, and since 2007 I’ve been the project’s illustrator. Every summer I spend about two months drawing artifacts and recording on-site features. Over the years I’ve seen the project transition from entirely analogue recording to a mix of digital and analogue, until it has become almost entirely digital in some trenches. At this point the project employs tablets, laser scanners, and even drones. Dr. Maurizio Forte’s team from Duke University and Dr. Nicoló Dell’Unto from Lund University have spent the last several years testing these digital technologies on site. Until recently my work has mostly been unaffected by this transition to digital, I’ve carried on with my analogue workflow on a parallel track (see my earlier post for some advantages to analogue media in illustration). ­But over the last couple years several situations have arisen where I have had to re-evaluate my approach and consider integrating some of these new digital methods.

For example, this past summer I was tasked with illustrating a large, fragile lump of molded plaster in the shape of a head with painted ochre designs. I sat in front of the head with all my drawing tools laid out, picked up my pencil, and stopped. The plaster feature had already been 3D modeled by Dr. Dell’Unto and photographed by site photographer Jason Quinlan from every angle. What was my analogue pencil and paper drawing going to record that these other digital methods hadn’t already? Why illustrate?

It took a discussion with site conservator Ashley Lingle and comparing model to plaster head, to answer this question. The 3D model and photographs captured the general areas of white and ochre plaster but not the fine details, such as broken surfaces and multiple layers of painting. I ended up creating several illustrations of the head, which isolated different layers of ochre painting and delineated damaged and broken areas, making clear what was the original, intended surface of the feature. I decided to forgo my own measuring process to make these illustrations and use the 3D model as a base in order to take advantage of the 3D model’s accuracy. Jason Quinlan worked with me to rotate the orthoimage into my chosen views, which I subsequently printed. These printouts became the framework for my drawings, allowing me to focus on filling in the details that the model missed rather than wasting valuable time measuring the head. The illustration below shows 4 views of the plaster head and records the latest layer of ochre painted decoration. (You can read a more detailed account of the plaster head’s excavation, conservation, and recording in Chapter 28 of this year’s Archive Report.)

I’m also currently integrating another type of 3D model into my analogue (or digital skeuomorph) illustration process for my ongoing reconstruction of the late formative site of Khonkho Wankane in highland Bolivia. Dr. Scott Smith and Dr. John Janusek hired me to reconstruct the site’s architecture, landscape, and use. At the beginning of the project, Dr Smith also supplied me with a Google SketchUp model of the site he had created. We decided on a view in SketchUp that encompassed the landscape and site features they wanted included. I then exported the view as vector line work to Adobe Illustrator where I fine-tuned the lines, giving the architecture a more organic look. Next, I printed out the line work and drew on top of it with graphite to add in landscape details and shading.

I’m now in the process of digitally painting my Adobe Illustrator line art and graphite drawing in Photoshop, letting some of the pencil show through as seen in the screenshot below. It will soon be populated with people and llamas; as Laia Pujol-Tost points out such peopled pasts are often missing from virtual reconstructions. (I’ll have the final image up on my webpage and Facebook page in a couple weeks.)

In my work with layering analogue illustrations on 3D models, I continue to experiment for best results. However, this work reveals the benefits of combining traditional techniques with emerging digital technologies. This constructive interplay between the digital and analogue draws on the strengths of each media. The 3D model provides accuracy, much more then I ever could with my hand and eyes alone. With my analogue and digital skeuomorph techniques I add interpretive details, people the past, direct the viewer’s gaze, and foreground the image’s authorship with brushstrokes and pencil lines. These experiments have allowed me to see my analogue work not as separate or parallel to digital technologies, but rather in a productive dialogue.

(Thank you Colleen Morgan and Sara Perry for inviting me to be part of this series and Savage Minds for hosting!)

Post by Christine Finn, as part of the Analog/Digital series

The photo was taken at the dawn of the new year, 2016. It is a snapshot taken at a home in Islington, North London. I was using my old BlackBerry, which I prefer to a touch phone. It captures, albeit in a grainy style, a generational dynamic. The child is mediating the moment of Big Ben chiming, not just through he television, but capturing it on his smartphone. The woman, my generation, is peering through the window. She is about to open it to hear the fireworks of celebration over the Thames a short drive away. I am working constantly with the dance of technologies fading, disappearing, and resurging. And a quest for authenticity. This photo captures something of my own sense of time passing, through the filter of technology.

Christine Finn is a journalist, writer, and creative archaeologist. She has written and presented on computers as archaeology since 2000, when serendipity led her to San Jose, California. Her book, “Artifacts: an archaeologist’s year in Silicon Valley”, on the material culture of the dotcom boom and bust, was published by MIT Press in 2001, and is now an ebook. She is author the author of “Past Poetic: archaeology in the poetry of WB Yeats and Seamus Heaney (Duckworth) and her authorised biography of Jacquetta Hawkes, a 20 year literary excavation, will be published in the summer. She has also contributed to the Sunday Times, Guardian, Wired, BBC, and Edge.org. As an artist she has made site-specific works in the UK, Italy, and the US, and received seven Arts Council England funding awards. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Reuter Inst for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University.

I am an archaeological illustrator and in this post, as part of this month’s analog/digital series, I’d like to discuss my work in relation to analogue and digital media. My job includes recording on-site features, drawing artifacts, and creating reconstruction illustrations of architecture, people, and activities. I also help researchers think through their data and raise new questions during the illustration process. Until recently I would have considered my illustration practice wholly analogue. I feel most comfortable working with pencil, paint, and paper. When I first started producing archaeological illustrations (about 10 years ago), the only digital part of my workflow was at the end, scanning my hand drawn images and cleaning them up in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for eventual publication. The image below is an example of this process.

Since then, there has been a gradual creep of the digital into my workflow. I now continually switch back forth between analogue and digital methods when making an illustration. After an initial sketch by hand, I scan the image, then play with the composition digitally, perhaps print it out again and draw on top of my print, scan it again, etc. I continue this back-and-forth until I have a preliminary drawing that I am happy with and that incorporates any comments or corrections from my clients. I’ll then complete the final art in an analogue medium with digital details and final flourishes. This combination of analogue and digital production is fairly straightforward, a skeuomorph of strictly analogue processes.

Therefore, for me as an archaeological illustrator, the central tension between analogue and digital lies not in the different media used in my workflow, but in the relationship between illustration and 3D models. I see two main contrasts in how illustration and 3D models present archaeological data. The first is a contrast in the viewer’s perception of both the type of information presented and the authorship. As Laia Pujol-Tost summarized in an earlier post in this series, both audiences and experts view virtual reconstructions as objective and illustrations, specifically peopled scenes, as speculative. The speculative, subjective nature of illustration is sometimes seen as a drawback. “Why illustrate?” is a question I am frequently asked. The belief that digital media such as photographs and 3D models are superior conveyors of archaeological data is often the subtext to this question. I’ve even had people question my right to be part of archaeological discussion because what I am creating is “art” not “science”.

All illustration is interpretation whether it is intended for an academic or more general audience. I see this subjectivity as a strength and an integral part of what I do. Even with artifact illustrations, seemingly straightforward representations of objects, my clients and I make decisions about the object’s manufacture or purpose and encode them in the drawing. These decisions are made on a larger scale in reconstructions depicting interpretations of past architectural use, behaviors, and landscapes. This decision making process is an ongoing dialogue with interpretive consequences. In the image below, by following archaeological illustration conventions, I’ve included information on the sherd’s decoration (the light from the upper left allows the viewer to conclude the decoration is impressed in the clay, not raised), the inferred pot diameter, and the original position of the sherd in a complete pot.

Interpretation is also part of the 3D modeling process; it is just not as evident. Depending on the purpose and intended audience of a model, 3D modelers make a suite of interpretive decisions, from what is and isn’t part of a site or feature to speculating about building forms and materials in architectural reconstructions. The glossy and smooth computer generated look of these models masks their authorship, leading the viewer to overlook the creator between models and recorded objects, and giving the models their more objective air. On the other hand, analogue media foregrounds the illustrator’s role in the illustration process. Brush strokes and pencil lines hint at the hand that made them and remind the viewer that this is an interpretive process.

The role of guide is the second contrast I’d like to highlight between illustration and 3D modeling. The illustrator is your guide in archaeological illustrations, leading you through the archaeological data, arranging it in specific ways to highlight different interpretations or data sets. Not only do I present these ideas, I help guide the viewer’s eye to key information by making compositional and rendering decisions. For example, a couple years ago I created several images of figurines from Playa de los Muertos in Honduras for Dr. Rosemary Joyce. The textile details on the figurines were her focus and I chose to illustrate them in such a way that highlighted these details (you can read more about this here).

3D models, in contrast, often allow the user to manipulate the view her or himself. The user becomes their own guide through the presented information, rotating an artifact to choose their own view or selecting a path through a site. This has its own advantages such as allowing the viewer to interact with what they deem important and to not be constrained by the limits of a 2D image.

In sum, I see analogue illustration and its digital skeuomorphs filling a much different though equally useful role from 3D modeling in archaeological research. Both illustrations and 3D models are conveyors of archaeological data, they just present it and allow the viewer to interact with it in different ways. In my second post I will discuss how I have recently had the opportunity to combine illustration and 3D modeling in ways that go beyond the skeumorph to constructive interplay between analogue and digital.

Archaeology is mostly about materiality. Its epistemological foundation is based on the relationship between humans and the material culture. Some of this objects, will later be displayed in museums to convey interpretations of the past. Yet, as Yannis Hamilakis and other authors have argued, Archaeology is a modern “science”. As such, it is mostly about the eye, and little about the body. On site, it mostly records and analyses visual, spatial, geometrical features. At the museum, this has meant a universal rule of not touching, and objects are isolated in showcases, for the sake of… mutual protection.

Then came Information and Communication Technologies (before they were called Digital Media), which under the promise of increased accessibility, interaction and engagement, reduced archaeological heritage even more to image and visualization: it had been digitalized; that is, de-materialized and even “de-musealized”. A series of evaluations conducted in museums since the 90s evidenced a conflict between the exhibition and the new media. The main reason being, as Christian Heath and Dirk vom Lehn pointed out, that exhibitions and computers belonged to different communication paradigms.

Around that time, several studies conducted in different European museums led me to the conclusion that the best way to integrate digital technologies was to stop just placing computers in exhibitions, and instead re-design the interfaces purposefully for such environments. Yet, what happened was the advent of mobile devices.

Meanwhile, some researchers working in the highly interdisciplinary field of Human-Computer Interaction started advocating for more natural ways to interact with computers. As a result, a new field called Tangible or Embodied Interaction arose around the 1990s. In this context, the concept of “Tangible User Interface” was developed. In TUIs, the interface is not anymore a PC but an (everyday) object. This takes advantage of the human capacity to manipulate objects, and allows a better integration with the context of use. Since the 2000s, labs used occasionally the cultural field as test bed; until 2013, when the first EU-funded project specifically devoted to tangible interactive experiences in Cultural Heritage settings was set up.

Now 3D printing has become the hype. As it happened with computers in the previous century, this technology is not new: it has been used in the engineering field for rapid-prototyping since the 1980s. But only recently it has become accessible to markets. Its applications are manifold: engineering, clothing, food, housing, health… But more than that, its implications regarding traditional product design, production and distribution chains are so enormous, that some people already talk about additive manufacturing being the next industrial revolution. The Cultural Heritage field has not been indifferent to this development. For example, the Smithsonian has started the X3D project, aimed at digitalizing and allowing the 3D printing of its collections. In the academic domain, some sessions at the EAA conference dealt with the implications of 3D printed replicas for Archaeology. Finally, the first mixed exhibits have appeared in European museums the last years, used either as mediators, smart replicas, top tables for shared exploration and gaming, or as full-body interactive environments.

I am so excited about it! Does this mean that we may finally close the circle and, after such a long history of “voyeurism”, fully acknowledge materiality and tangibility in the cultural heritage field? It is interesting to note that, as it happened before with interaction or storytelling, we needed the pressure of the digital revolution to (re)discover or finally accept elements that already existed in the museums field. Still, I believe there is a big potential in this area, more than with digital media, and this is exactly what I am starting to investigate now. On the one hand, the specific advantages of smart replicas or tangible exhibits for Cultural Heritage settings. I have adapted Eva Hornecker’s overview of Tangible Interaction to list the following features:

1. Appreciation of the materiality of the real object.
2. Direct manipulation instead of just visualization.
3. Performative action instead of passive gaze.
4. Natural interaction without added symbolism.
5. Natural integration in the exhibition environment.
6. Non-fragmented visibility.
7. Suitability for exploration in group.
8. Personalization (especially suitable for children).

On the other hand, I am concerned about the strategies and threats for their adoption in museums. The experience shows that, as costs decrease, the availability and penetration of technologies increase. Still, the problem is designing and maintaining high-tech exhibits. Most museums tend to outsource digital media projects; but this has more often than not proven to be a bittersweet experience in terms of budget, sustainability, end-product, workflow, etc. Institutions are currently implementing different solutions. For example, EU-funded projects emphasize the creation of do-it-yourself authoring tools. Also, the big museums in the USA and Europe give strong support to the creation of their own digital media departments, so that such experiences can be fully developed in-house.

Yet, as we witness again a concern similar to supposed threat posed by the virtual to the brick-and-mortar museum, we first need to complete the unfinished debate around the concept of authenticity in cultural heritage. In my opinion, the problem to be solved is not with smart replicas (which, following Bernard Deloche’s taxonomy, only act as analogical or analytical substitutes), but with the role of originals in the age of information, commodification, and globalization. However, this is a discussion for another time and place.

(Part of this month’s Analog/Digital series, thanks to Savage Minds for hosting!)

It was hot, but that was not unusual. We woke up at the first call to prayer to be on site at sunrise. I would trudge through the dimly-lit streets of the village, up to the ancient tell, and sit next to my trench until I had enough light to see my paperwork. The cut limestone went from dull gray, to a rosy pink, then that brief and magical moment called the golden hour, when the archaeology would become clear and beautifully lit and I would rush around trying to take the important photos of the day. Then the light would become hard, white-hot, and often over 100F. By lunchtime all of the crisp angles of the limestone would disappear into a smeary haze, hardly worth bothering with a camera. Photographs of people were impossible too—everyone was dusty, hot, irritable, half in shadow under hats, scarves.

I picked up my camera and climbed out of the Mamluk building I was excavating, on my way down the ancient tell of Dhiban and back up the neighboring tell of the modern town of Dhiban. As I walked between the Byzantine, Roman, Nabatean and Islamic piles of cut stone, a faint trace of smoke made me hesitate, then come off the winding goat path. Two of the Bani Hamida bedouin who worked with us on site were stoking a small fire on the tell. While making fires on the archaeology was certainly not encouraged, the local community had been using the tell to socialize for a long time. I greeted the men and they invited me to sit and have qahwa, a strong, hot, sweet, green coffee served in many of the local hospitality rituals and customs. I refused once, then twice, then looked over my shoulder at the vanishing backs of my fellow archaeologists, on their way to breakfast. Then I accepted a cup. But first, I pulled out my camera and snapped a photo.

When I’m feeling ornery, I tell people that I wrote a whole chapter of my PhD thesis about a photograph of a teapot. Even worse, a digital photograph of a teapot. And it’s not really a teapot, it is a coffeepot, perched on a small twig fire on top of a tell heaving with archaeology, and tended by these two men, Atif and Zaid, who did not want to be in the frame. They are represented by two slightly blurry sticks, hovering in the foreground, a present absence. The photo isn’t even all that good.

See, in my thesis (Emancipatory Digital Archaeology) I was working through what digital artifacts do in archaeology. What does it mean to take a digital photograph of a pot sherd, a woman swinging a mattock, a teapot coffeepot in the desert sun? How is the analog-turned-digital moment mobilized to create archaeological understanding? Can a virtual reality model of a Neolithic house change the way we understand the past, and, can we start making these things, these digital ephemera, in a better way, to create a more participatory, multivocal, craft-based archaeology?

A tall order, right? Especially running headlong into archaeology’s hot mess of colonialism, imperialism and nationalism, oftentimes burned into celluloid next to ancient monuments. Yeah. It took a while.

So what did I find out? I came up with a pretty good methodology for digital archaeology that investigated each object (and its multiple) in context, explored the concepts of multivocality and authorship in digital object creation, and evaluated the relative transparency and ability to share each of these objects. As part of this, I explored digital materiality–that stuff-in-the-cloud that is actually in big noisy server farms in the countryside. I tried, in my way, to address N. Katherine Hayles’ question: What would it mean to talk about materiality in an era in which simulations are everywhere around us?

After presenting some of this work at the British Museum, thrashing through this analog-to-digital shift, Helen Wickstead asked, (and I badly paraphrase) “Can we productively query the analog with the digital?” Can I draw a circle around this thing called digital archaeology and use it to try to understand analog technologies and representations? What can the flexibility and ubiquity of cameras on smart phones tell us about the glass lantern slide?

I’m still working on it.

(Part of this month’s Analog/Digital series, thanks to Savage Minds for hosting!)

Post by Laia Pujol-Tost.

Archaeology has a long tradition of using visual representations to depict the past. For most of its history, images were done by hand and based on artistic skills and conventions. But the last fifteen years, we have witnessed 3D models take over archaeological visualization. It is interesting to note that while hand-drawn depictions tend to show human figures and seem to be associated with scenes of “daily life”, virtual reconstructions mostly show architectural remains and public spaces, usually devoid of people and objects. Yet, authors state that their intention is to represent the past.

My field of research is what we now call Virtual Archaeology, but I started investigating when we still talked about “VR applications in Archaeology”. I have seen it become mainstream and evolve; and I wonder why after almost twenty years of technological improvements and theoretical debate, virtual reconstructions are still empty. Especially in comparison with drawings. Do the virtual and the physical have implicitly different goals? Are they subject to different perceptions or expectations by researchers and/or audiences? Have they received different historical influences? Maybe technological capacities still play a role?

Let’s put some evidence on the table. I have reviewed a lot of bibliography, and in my early career I conducted a series of studies that took me to Rome, Ename (Belgium) and Athens. The conclusion in relation to the matter at hand was the following: both audiences and experts associated VR with the objective reproduction of reality, while the introduction of human characters (and objects) seemed more speculative. As a result, they considered illustrations were better for wide audiences, especially for children, and associated their production with non-academic professionals (illustrators and educators).

This situation arises from a confluence of causes related to VR and to Archaeology. In the first case, VR allows the representation of and navigation within 3D geometrical spaces. The Cartesian concept of the world is deeply rooted in the Western mind, and is best represented by computers. But VR also comes from the pictorial perspectivist tradition, which is arguably considered the closest to human perception. In addition, we now have the possibility to acquire the model directly from reality, by means of photogrammetry or 3D scanning. Hence the belief that VR represents the world objectively. On the other hand, modelled humans are problematic because they require a lot of computing resources but still seem “fake”. The “uncanny valley” effect contributes to the belief that humans hinder realism.

Technological capacity has been one of the historical justifications for not populating archaeological virtual environments. However, even now that I am building my own VR-mediated experience, I am not persuaded. Video-games display very realistic worlds with human characters and maximum interaction. Certainly, the entertainment industry mobilizes a lot of money and people. But we do have examples of archaeological projects supported by big investments in terms of time and/or human efforts. On the other hand, realism is not limited to visual effects, but is achieved thanks to the interplay of different elements (an overload of visual details, affordances for interaction, sounds, etc.), which generate a general impression of verisimilitude. Besides, there are other solutions, none of them new, such as procedural generation (of textures, buildings, etc.), Non-Photorealistic Rendering, and more recently, the combination of digital and video-recorded content. Yet, I have come to understand that people involved in virtual archaeological reconstructions mostly think in terms of visual accuracy.

To discuss the other set of causes, related to archaeology, let me tell you about {LEAP]. This project aims at building a theoretical and methodological framework for VR mediated experiences, based on the concept of (Cultural) Presence. In order to refine the concept and its translation into user requirements, last August I conducted fieldwork at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey). VR applications share features with the original site (raw data); an experimental house built close to the site (immersivity); and illustrations of the settlement (presence or absence of humans). But VR applications also have specific capacities (dynamism and simulation) due to their virtual computational component. I wanted to see which ones were spontaneously used or considered important by experts when describing verbally and/or visually a past culture. What did I learn about illustrations and virtual reconstructions? According to the results, virtual reconstructions should: 1) show life and objects (like the illustrations but in a dynamic way); 2) distinguish between evidence and reconstruction (like the site); 3) be immersive and multisensory (like the reconstructed house); 4) allow natural navigation (at eye’s, not bird’s view); and 5) show temporal evolution and unusual perspectives (making the most of virtuality).

There is an obvious conflict between these expectations and virtual reconstructions. Moreover, Virtual Archaeology is now a mature area of research, for which an internationally acknowledged set of guidelines, the Seville Principles, has been established. Yet, several points (related to coherence between aims and methods, transparency, and effectiveness) are still not implemented in many VR projects. In my opinion the causes are to be found in archaeological practice. As debated in a couple of recent seminars, the dominant epistemological paradigms aim for the truth, understood either as explanation or description of the archaeological record. Objectivity and visual realism are one and the same. Nevertheless, there are other, very important paradigms that acknowledge the interpretive nature of Archaeology, and attempt to express it visually. Unfortunately, they are both confronted to the pressure of funding bodies, stakeholders and audiences, who demand the illusion of a (scientifically accurate) trip to the past. The consequence are hyperrealistic environments, where buildings are fully reconstructed (in spite of the availability of data), but human characters and material culture are (sometimes) introduced as a necessary embellishment.

So in the end my question should not be why are virtual reconstructions empty, but if we want to change this and how. How do we do our job, how do we contribute to science and society, against hype, inertia, and economic interests?