Virtual Experiences of Sustainability and Substance that Promote Wider Audience Access to Archaeological Spaces and Ancient Manuscript Preservation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Empowering manuscript repositories and increasing audience agency in encounters with ancient materials is a key goal of the Virtual Reality Global Library (VRGL). Our research supports the dual--and often dueling--missions of preservation and access that curators and conservators confront daily. Moderately tech-savvy people gain a means of transforming legacy or new 2D scans of parchment manuscripts into an immersive VR headset experience of interactive reading of ancient books with realistic 3D parchment page physics simulation. This NEH-funded project is Unity-based and is intended for wide, free public use. We show a 500-year-old manuscript from the University of Southern California in a gendered space. Archaeologists gain the ability to include evidence-based 3D models as the interactive, virtual space in which the embodied experience of presence unfolds. Input from conservators and curators prompted a focus on the preservation role of museums and the life history of the manuscript. In this way, everyone can do more with manuscripts including experiencing them anew. Anyone who has wished for the superpower of reaching into a museum case to turn the pages of a rare, fragile manuscript gains that ability, with translations and interactives. No travel is required for a sustainable, low carbon footprint experience.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53948