Generating Content for a Virtual World Learning Environment with POIs: The Land Bridge Paleo-Games

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hunting for Hunters, Underwater: Results and Future Directions for Submerged Ancient Sites" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This project utilizes a Virtual Reality simulation of an ancient environment currently submerged underneath Lake Huron. The simulation was originally designed to help predict the location of ancient occupational remains of early Holocene hunter-gatherers. The system has been repurposed to provide a more immersive cultural and anthropological experience for High School STEM Education. The experience consists of five basic stages that embody a gamified version of the Scientific Method. Students are introduced to the Virtual World in a training room. Next, they explore the land bridge environment guided by information provided by a network of Points of Interest (POI). These POI work to provide a basic conceptual understanding of the paleolandscape ecosystem. In stage three Generative AI is used to help students articulate their hypotheses about the location of hunter-gatherer sites on the landscape. Stage four allows the student to express their hypotheses spatially in order verify their intuition. These locations are then validated via an XR diving expedition to explore selected locations. The location and content of the POI are critical to the success of the Land Bridge Virtual Reality learning environment. This paper discusses the basic AI procedures used to construct and position the POI network.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Hunting for Hunters, Underwater: Results and Future Directions for Submerged Ancient Sites

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50364