Seeing is Believing: Re-creating the Past at Turpin with Virtual Reality

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Improving and Decolonizing Precontact Legacy Collections with Fieldwork: Making Sense of Harvard’s Turpin Site Expedition (Ohio)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists are often good at communicating with each other, but not usually at conveying our findings to wider audiences. This seems particularly true in the US Midwest, where visibility of the remains of ancient sites is low, in contrast to places like the US Southwest. We address this problem by using Virtual Reality (VR) to share information about the precontact component of the Turpin site in southwest Ohio. Specifically, we are creating an immersive reconstruction of the site including the archaeological grid and a variety of maps, photos, and 3D objects that can be examined in their discovery context. This technology can make visible what the site contains with no damage to the resource and can also facilitate remote access to the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Improving and Decolonizing Precontact Legacy Collections with Fieldwork: Making Sense of Harvard’s Turpin Site Expedition (Ohio)   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39103.0