Cross-Reality Technologies in Archaeometry Bridge Humanities With “Hard Science”

Introduction

The evolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) over the last decades, alters our lives and affects every domain of scientific research (Collins, & Halverson, 2018). In the field of Archaeology, ICTs are used in many areas but the deliberation about the way new technologies and the Internet affect the electronic processing and presentation of museum artifact collections and monuments, is still strong and already going on for about 20 years (Liritzis, Al-Otaibi, Volonakis, & Drivaliari, 2015). A popular adage mentions that the 21^st century archaeologists are no longer excavators (Djindjian, 2015). Archaeologists play a key role in the difficult task of reconstructing the past and providing people with the necessary information about the civilizations of past societies. Digital tools have been employed in archaeology at every level. Their increased use facilitates the information processing and presentation, concerning the field investigation and the post excavation phase (Wilhelmson & Dell’Unto, 2015). The digital cultural heritage field, as major part of synchronous Archaeology, depicts to the end user all the information from excavation to the virtual representation, using ICT tools at every step. Musílek (2015) stated that archaeometry is the application of various scientific fields, like natural sciences and engineering, for exploring archaeological findings. The term archaeometry has appeared for the first time in the journal Archaeometry in Oxford in 1958. In the stage of archaeometry, laboratories are used in order to examine and analyze the archeological findings. As there should be a continuous interaction between the people managing the cultural heritage and the scientists, it is essential that both parties are aware of the potentials, each technique used for scientific investigation, can have. Unfortunately, in most countries the conventional academic differentiation between humanistic and scientific curricula in the educational institutions is the most important barrier to the exchange of competences between archaeology and science (Artioli, 2010). Most natural sciences students involved with cultural heritage have minimum training in the scientific principles and techniques they are about to use in an archaeοmetry lab. ICTs tools like Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) laboratories, could create an interface between these different disciplines and offer a deeper understanding for the science principles on which the operation of complicated laboratory equipment is based.

The objectives of the present study are at first, a presentation of studies concerning the use of virtual environments in digital cultural heritage field, secondly a brief review of virtual laboratories in Archaeometry and finally a proposal of how virtual laboratories can be a part of Archaeometry education based on the presentation of student’s outcomes in educational scenarios where a VR laboratory application is involved.