What is virtual archeology?

We all know what archeology is, and with it comes a lot of work: extensive planning, careful digging, artifact evaluation and in the end only artifacts depict what a whole society looked like. Wouldn't it be great if from the artifacts and ruins a city could be reconstructed with all its splendor that it held while in existence? Welcome to virtual archeology. This new and exciting field combines traditional methods of archeology with cutting edge computer graphics and powerful rendering systems.

What are the advantages of virtual archeology over regular archeology?

Virtual archeology provides many advantages over traditional archeology. Reconstructed sites can be placed in museums in computers, so the original artifacts don't have to be present there. This prevents risk of theft and damage to the artifacts. Second, with so many homes having Internet access, one can log on and see many reconstructed sites (see our links page for interesting examples). Also sites that are closed to the public, such as Stonehenge, can be visited virtually from your computer.

What are the disadvantages of virtual archeology?

One thing that people might consider a disadvantage of virtual archeology is that you can't see the actual artifacts that were recovered from a site. But with the increasing sophistication of computer models the difference between the actual thing and a computer model is very small.

When is it necessary to use virtual archeology?

Many times a civilization will leave behind buildings, but the more delicate items will deteriorate over time. For instance, objects made out of organic matter have no chance of remaining intact over thousands of years. With virtual archeology whole artifacts can be restored. Buildings also deteriorate over time, changing in color and crumbling, so in virtual archeology they can also be restored to their original beauty.

If you have any questions, email them to us at 18261@advanced.org and we will post the answers to the most common ones.

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