Virtual Archaeology in a Multi-platform and Multi-lingual Setting

Abstract

Virtual archaeology has been an active field of investigation in recent decades when imaging techniques have been paired with physical excavations. Also, in recent times, virtual environments have greatly contributed to data interpretation, with applications to scientific dissemination for wide audiences and to scholar investigations that reproduce the excavation field. Underlying the virtual archaeology applications are comprehensive semantic databases that describe both the excavation processes, with the stratigraphic units and the archaeological sites, and the findings with related interpretations. This paper presents BeA-ViR, an application for virtual archaeology that is devoted to general audiences and multi-disciplinary scholars. The archaeological excavation concerns a site in Japan with related multicultural and multilingual issues. BeA-ViR is deployed in three platforms: desktop, CAVE, and web browser. It has been conceived to be effective for large audiences as well as for specialized scholars. It relies on a comprehensive database that merged archaeological and archaeometric knowledge.