Experiencing the Past through "Digifacts"

Summary

This paper presents DIGIFACT, a project aiming at improving our understanding of how people perceive artifacts through different media. This project will clarify the role of 3D technologies in the perception of archaeological artifacts, which are critical to our world heritage, and help us understanding how people experience artifacts in a museum and how 3D replicas can improve visitor experience of authenticity and understanding. For this research, I will collect data on how visitors experience the archaeological record in the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology in Cambridge, developing a research program to feed into the redevelopment of the World Archaeology Gallery. In order to explore how people perceive museum artifacts through different media, I will videotape volunteer participants at the MAA while they interact with selected artifacts through different forms of media. Speech and gestures will be analyzed with methods borrowed from Cognitive and Information Science, to see how the medium (e.g. tactile experience vs interaction with 3D virtual copies) influences the way people describe and understand objects.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Public Perceptions of Archaeology

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