Visualizing original sea level of Stone Age sites on location by means of mobile augmented reality
Gunnar Liestøl, Birgitte Bjørkli, Espen Uleberg
Abstract When understanding and informing about the localization of Stone Age sites along the rugged coast of Norway it is always pertinent to include information about the sea level at the time the site was in use. This is important for both archaeological surveying and excavation, as well as mediation to the public at large. When one finds oneself on a Stone Age site a kilometer inland in the thick of a dark forest it is not easy to imagine what the place actually looked like six thousand years earlier when the site was in use by Neolitihic Man in Norway as part of the coastline and exposed to the open sea. How may we take advantage of the current state of the art in location– based media and mobile augmented reality in order to bring dynamic visualizations of the ancient landscape into the hands of both archaeologists and interested visitors? In this paper presentation we report on the development and testing of a situated simulation where the user can move around in a given landscape and view a parallel simulation of the sea level from pre–historic times until present on his or her smartphone or tablet. The application uses an indirect augmented reality approach and sea level/time–period can be altered continuously. When approaching a surveyed and/or excavated site one can also observe its extension and via spatially positioned hypertext links access the online databases for multimodal information about the findings, etc. The prototype runs on iOS and has been tested with a small group of visitors on location. The paper concludes with a discussion of the user evaluation and suggestions for further work.
