ARCHAEO VIZ
A 3D Explorative Learning Environment of Reconstructed Archaeological Sites
and Cultural Artefacts
Ioannis Paliokas
Department of Informatics, Alexander Technical Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Sindos, Greece
Vlad Buda
Game and Media Technology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Iancu Adrian Robert
Department of Informatics, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Keywords: Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality, Archaeology Reconstruction.
Abstract: In this paper, we present an educationally effective software system based on modelling for cultural heritage
objects and landscapes of archaeological sites. The low-cost ‘Archaeo Viz’ can be easily applied as an
extension to pre-existing museum data management systems. Its main contribution is to strengthen the
visualized experience of visitors, support educational activities and enhance the communication between
archaeologists, researchers, museum curators and the public. It is a concrete, open and evolving model
designed to support case studies based on archaeological complex sites in a game like environment.
1 INTRODUCTION
Innovative multimodal visualization technology has
opened the possibility of creating VR that integrates
3D content, for example, into a virtual museum’s
data management system, thus enhancing the
experience of learning acquired by a visitor’s
interaction with an online exhibition, either within
the museum or on the Internet (Mourkoussis et al.,
2002) (Petridis et al., 2005).
Archaeo Viz has been designed by taking into
consideration the key issues when designing
museum interactive systems as they have been
presented in Petridis et al. (2006). Apart from cost
effectiveness, those key issues refer to transforming
museums into so called hybrid institutions which
support multiple presentation techniques including
digital surrogates and reach interaction techniques
that reinforce the heritage behind the artefacts. In
this contribution, we support the claim that learning
activities should rely on multisensory experiences in
a form of digital storytelling (Pletinckx et al., 2003)
in order to maximize the educational usability and
make students to feel part of the virtual exhibition.
The first case study refers to an archaeological
complex site that dates back to the Late
Chalcholithic. This site is located on a hill named
Gorgan, near the village of Şeuşa in Alba County,
Romania (latitude: 46º 3’ 53” longitude: 23º 39’ 2”).
2 METHODOLOGICAL
APPROACH
The development of the proposed project deals with
the collection of digital material, evaluation of
available scientific information, database
development, network maintenance and the design
of educational characteristics of the system. The
above issues were addressed by a disciplinary team
consisted by an archaeologist professor who
provided the team with registered information, two
computer science students who were responsible
with programming and modelling the 3D world and
211
Paliokas I., Buda V. and Adrian Robert I. (2010).
ARCHAEO VIZ - A 3D Explorative Learning Environment of Reconstructed Archaeological Sites and Cultural Artefacts.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications, pages 211-214
DOI: 10.5220/0002938902110214
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

one more faculty member with research background
on information systems, computer graphics and
educational software development. The challenges
in generating virtual worlds are connected to
performances versus natural behaviour and aspects
of the environment. Such requirements are often in
contradiction: convincing models and high level
physical simulation implies demanding hardware
and software requirements, meaning an increased
computational load that influence the overall
performance. On the other hand, there is the need to
manage various types of data such as: temporal and
spatial data, vectorial plans, digital photos along
with videos and 3D models. To address the above
technical issues the design team adopted the Irrlicht
Engine along with Autodesk Maya for modelling 3d
objects.
3 MAIN FEATURES & SYSTEM
FUNCTIONALITY
The main menu of Archaeo Viz contains: 1) 3D
maps of study locations, 2) 3D object visualization
3) Options (user preferences such as resolution,
video driver, bit depth, language). Other
supplementary options include copyright
information and help files. In this section, the main
features of the system will be described.
3.1 Exploring the 3D Locations
There are two ways to explore 3D locations of
archaeological sites: A) Explore now-a–days sites
and B) Virtual Tour in past times. The first feature
represents the remains of the archaeological sites as
can be seen in reality. Using the table of contents as
a thematic menu, students can access additional
information (learning objects) including description
of the site, localization and geomorphologic
characteristics, the research of the site and the
research objectives.
The virtual tour feature allows students to
immerse through the excavations as seen in Fig. 1.
for the Chalcolithic settlement case study. This
scene contains 7 Chalcolithic houses (representing
the village) in which users can enter and examine the
interior (Fig. 1-bottom). Also, users can pick
surrounding objects (ceramic pots, bone tools) to
examine them separately in the object viewer in
more detail.
Figure 1: Virtual reconstruction of the Chalcolithic
settlement (top) and surface house (bottom).
3.2 Object Viewer
The object viewer (Fig. 2) was designed to function
as a separate application because it has a complex
menu with many options and facilities.
Figure 2: Chalcolithic bone chisel in the object viewer.
The artefacts are categorized by large classes such as
material, type of object, or its usage. Some of the
data access services that are integrated into the
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object viewer include visualization and manipulation
of three-dimensional (3D) objects, where the user
can rotate, move and resize selected objects;
multiple levels of detail can be activated from the
main menu; playback of high quality 3D video of
artefacts and access to textual content (basic
information, attributes, description) about artefacts
can also be acquired in the object viewer.
4 MOVE AND FEEL
‘Look and Feel’, a term that prevailed in discussions
about graphical user interfaces (GUI) during the last
decades, includes issues regarding graphic design,
colour code, shape, fonts and dynamic visual
control’s behaviour such as buttons, drop-down
menus, navigation methods and other. Later, it was
extended to webpage design as well. It can be
implied that ‘Move and Feel’ (Paliokas and
Kekkeris, 2007) works similarly in Virtual Reality
applications. As one of the most abstract VR
software characteristics, it can be used for two main
reasons: (a) to facilitate the user in using tools with
similar function and navigating in a specific style,
(b) to identify products of a certain creation team. In
Archaeo Viz, ‘Move and Feel’ is characterised by a
general realistic feeling of presence in past times and
interaction with reconstructed 3D artefacts. It
consists of the following: repetitive form
characteristics of space such as architectural
elements, wallpapers and object textures,
panoramas, furnishing of Chalcolithic houses, etc;
kinetic characteristics (navigation style), such as
avatar motion in space and use of cameras;
interaction characteristics between avatars and
cultural artefacts, physical lows, collision detection,
obstacle overcome. The user explores the virtual
environment with continuous experimentation using
different actions, receives system messages in a
game like style and at the same time he/she receives
a specific feeling by doing so.
5 EDUCATIONAL
EFFECTIVENESS
The model describing educational activities was
based on the fact that an important element of any
educational process is the conceptual change (Posner
et al., 1982) by the means of new knowledge and the
reconstruction of pre-existing attitudes. The use of
VR in the exploration of past archaeological sites,
apart from providing more information, locates
artefacts at their physical environment enabling
users to recognize the depth of every concept related
to artefacts. For example, the traditional way
artefacts are exhibited in museums can distort the
initial identity and real nature of a given artefact in
student’s mind (depending on personal pre-existing
attitudes). This initial identity refers to properties
and way of everyday use before the artefact became
worth seeing and a subject of scientific research.
Traditionally, there are two ways of placing
artefacts in their physical environment: A) the
skilled physical reconstruction of small parts of the
past world (usually expensive and space
consuming), B) the use of a computer-generated
reconstruction of the past physical environment. In
this project, the design team used the second way to
explain to visitors how they would see specific
artefacts and what concepts they would have about
them if they were born at Seusa-Gorgan in the Late
Chalcholithic. Students can create multiple concepts
about artefacts, and the knowledge they finally
construct is the result of first-person experiences
using the immersion capabilities of Archaeo Viz.
6 USABILITY TESTING
A revised version of Archaeo Viz was described. For
evaluation purposes of the first version, 3 members
of academia with related research background
(expert group), 16 students of ATEI of Thessaloniki
attending Computer Graphics class (winter semester
of 2008) and a few members of wider public were
asked to evaluate the system after 10-15 minutes of
presentation and actual use. The Thinking Aloud
Protocol was used as a method of gathering data in
usability testing (Lewis and Rieman, 1993), where
future users expressed their opinion aloud during the
system testing. At that time, pragmatic user actions
(Ozmen and Balcisoy, 2008) were asked to be
refined, as well as the texture details of the 3D
explorer. Users were impressed by the realistic
representation and really enjoyed the virtual tour as
an alternative game-like way to have contact with
educational material. This game-like environment
does not require much effort to understand the
operation of the interface because it was designed to
be closer to student’s culture. Research findings in
literature imply that those are important issues
positively affecting the learning cue (Economou &
Pujol, 2006).
From the engineering point of view, the system
architecture was requested to be more structured and
ARCHAEO VIZ - A 3D Explorative Learning Environment of Reconstructed Archaeological Sites and Cultural Artefacts
213

better documented. The entire application has added
the major requirements in order to meet the users’
demands.
Finally, more than 50% of users asked if services
of automatic content enrichment could be possible
from non-experts. Even after the revised version
presented in here, this demand is estimated difficult
to be addressed because design process of new
content demands specialized knowledge on 3D
modelling, VR and Computer Graphics.
According to the overall evaluation, in Archaeo
Viz the user understands immediately and without
paying much effort the kind of activities that will
follow. The Move and Feel of the application is
considered as the most interesting part of the
visualization and navigation subsystems. All users
appreciated the detailed content and the game-like
alternative way of exploring reconstructed
archaeological past sites.
7 CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER
WORK
Archaeo Viz, a system to support reconstructed
archaeological landscapes in immersive environment
in order to offer multisensory first-person
experiences and to maximize the interest of visitors
was presented. Using common Internet protocols for
information distribution, it can be easily adjusted to
the typical school environment and to common e-
learning platforms. Archaeo Viz provides a stimulus
environment that can lengthen the time students-
visitors normally spend on learning activities related
to archaeology. It does so by integrating
archaeological data and artefacts into a simulated
physical environment of archaeological sites to
allow users to explore meaningful places and
become active learners.
Improvements to the way of use will be based on
stereoscopic imaging using low-cost stereoscopic
glasses (e.g. NVIDIA 3D Vision Stereoscopic
Glasses). As for the content, the design team is
currently working on more case studies. Through the
3D reconstructions of Prehistoric and Historic sites
we approach a suggestive interpretation that
involves the public and transmits the importance of
cultural heritage and thus its preservation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to express their true gratitude
to Prof. Marius Ciută (professor of prehistoric
archaeology, Department of History and
Archaeology, "1 Decembrie 1918" University of
Alba Iulia, Romania) for supporting Archaeo Viz.
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