Virtual Anthropology in Fieldwork, Conservation, and Education in Mexico: Lessons Learned, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The development of novel digital technologies has consistently expanded the capacities to explore and approach existing anthropological and archaeological research questions. Virtual Anthropology stands as a relatively new interdisciplinary approach that further expands our resolution to study ancient and recent human remains, cultural contexts, and artifacts. The six tenets of Virtual Anthropology (digitize, expose, compare, reconstruct, materialize, and share), which allow the creation of digital replicas of human remains or cultural artifacts, have a great potential to expand research, education, and conservation in Mexico, but its consistent use and application that can translate into benefits is still on the horizon. Based on the experiences of preliminary fieldwork conducted in Mexico during the summer of 2023, we present an overview of the benefits that scanning and generating high-definition 3D models of objects can have in the context of teaching, research, and conservation of the enormous and rich collections housed and curated by the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Furthermore, we explore the challenges of this approach in the context of the asymmetries between the Global North and South by paying special attention to how the newly generated data could be handled in an ethical and legal manner.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Futures through a Virtual Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 41585.0