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| Issue 9 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Emily Whetter - February 2003
Emily Whetter of MJC² Limited reports on PAST - a new way of showing visitors to archaeological sites what life was like for their early inhabitants.
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| Figure 1: Image of Pocket PC |
| showing the interactive map |
When people visit an archaeological site, it is difficult to give them a clear picture of how people lived on the site - all that usually remains is a few ruins, and sometimes not even those are visible. There have been various approaches to try to resolve this situation, but there are problems with all of them. Museums on site rely on the visitors' memory of their tour around the site, pamphlets given out at the entrance and noticeboards at points of interest are usually written in language that is difficult for children to understand, involve significant production costs and may be hard to update. PAST presents a new solution to this problem whereby visitors not only see images showing the site as it was in the period represented by the site, but also receive a detailed insight into the lives of the occupants, from the frame of reference of their own lifestyle and interests. Each visitor will be given a highly personalised route around the site, tailored to their speed of travel and their interests; this means that individual visitors only view the locations relevant to them, at a rate that suits them. They will only be shown material at a level tailored to them, so children do not get bored, adults do not feel patronised, and everyone goes away with a complete understanding of the information shown to them.
PAST [1] is an acronym for exPeriencing Archaeology across Space and Time, an EU-funded project undertaken by the following organisations:
The IT partners:
The archaeological partners:
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| Figure 2: Image of Pocket |
| PC showing welcome page |
On arrival at the site, visitors will be given a Pocket PC, which will display a welcome page (see Figure 2) asking them to select their language. They will work their way through a profile to ascertain their interests and level of presentation of information. They will then be presented with an interactive map with their route displayed (see Figure 1 above), and a choice of options, which will include the opportunity to reschedule their route completely, to add and remove points, and most importantly, to visit the first point.
As they progress around the site, they will be given the option to reschedule if they move faster or slower than anticipated, and to change the level of presentation of information if they feel it is not suitable. At the end of the visit, the visitor is able to create a CD of their visit, for future reference. Visitors can also access the system from home over the Internet before arrival, which means they can fill in the profiling section and arrive at the site ready to begin their tour.
Figure 3 displays the architecture of the system. It consists of a client, namely a Pocket PC, using Pocket Internet Explorer as a browser to access a number of dynamic HTML pages, and the server-side components that create those pages. The communication between the client and the server is made using wireless networking.
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| Figure 3: Image of the system architecture |
| showing the interactive map |
On the server, there are five components:
The PAST system is currently being trialled at two sites - Passo di Corvo in Italy and Toumba in Greece. Passo di Corvo is a prehistoric village - the excavations in this site have confirmed that the one hundred or so structures visible from aerial photography do not all belong to the same period of time, but span a period of around a thousand years (from 4500 to 3500 B.C.). The site of Toumba is located in the coastal plain of Thessaloniki, on the foothills of Mount Hortiatis. It consists of an artificial hill (tell or toumba) created by the overlapping of archeological remains over several thousand years. The numerous objects discovered during the archeological dig, including prestigious artefacts and a large quantity of pottery from the late Mycenean Age, allow dating of the excavated area to the Late Bronze Age (i.e. 1200 B.C.).
Emily Whetter
MJC² Limited
33 Wellington Business Park
Dukes Ride
Crowthorne
Berkshire RG45 6LS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1344 760000
Fax: +44 1344 760017
URL: <http://www.mjc2.com>
Email: Info@mjc2.com
MJC² Limited focuses on providing software solutions to complex optimisation, planning and scheduling problems addressing amongst other areas: supply chain optimisation, strategic logistics, realtime distribution scheduling, manufacturing planning, intelligent business analysis, mobile workforce management and interactive visitor guiding around exhibition halls and other centres.
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For citation purposes:
Whetter, E. "PAST - Bringing archaeological sites to life", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/past/>
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