Stadtarchäologie - Workshop 7

We have seen a rapid expansion in Virtual Archaeology, including
visualizations of past environments using 3D models and VR on the Internet, in museums, broadcast media, tourism and heritage industries.
Unfortunately, these are often presented as a final product, isolated from the intellectual and technical processes through which they were developed. I contend that we need to develop appropriate documentation methods that can extend the critical apparatus we take for granted in scientific literature into the world of distributed visualizations. A consistent metadata standard that could be applied at all levels from the outline description of a project down to the individual elements of a 3D model would offer many potential benefits, including, but not limited to:
1. reliable and consistent discovery of Virtual Archaeology resources on the Internet,
2. comparability of aims, methods, results and credibility of projects,
3. an incentive to authors to demonstrate and support the interpretations presented,
4. enabling informed and public peer review of Virtual Archaeology products,

and
5. the possibility of developing common visualization and presentation
interfaces that offer direct access to the metadata descriptions.

Nick Ryan , Great Britain

We have seen a rapid expansion in Virtual Archaeology, including visualizations of past environments using 3D models and VR on the Internet, in museums, broadcast media, tourism and heritage industries. Unfortunately, these are often presented as a final product, isolated from the intellectual and technical processes through which they were developed. I contend that we need to develop appropriate documentation methods that can extend the critical apparatus we take for granted in scientific literature into the world of distributed visualizations. A consistent metadata standard that could be applied at all levels from the outline description of a project down to the individual elements of a 3D model would offer many potential benefits, including, but not limited to: 1. reliable and consistent discovery of Virtual Archaeology resources on the Internet, 2. comparability of aims, methods, results and credibility of projects, 3. an incentive to authors to demonstrate and support the interpretations presented, 4. enabling informed and public peer review of Virtual Archaeology products, and 5. the possibility of developing common visualization and presentation interfaces that offer direct access to the metadata descriptions.