Digital realities and archaeology: a difficult relationship or a fruitful marriage?

• Authors: Philippe Martinez
• Venue: Proceedings of the 2001 conference on Virtual reality, archeology, and cultural heritage
• Year: 2001

As we stand now at the end of year 2001, supposedly time for the miracle of the Space Odyssey, it looks like most of the archaeologists or keepers of the world heritage do remain "Indiana Jones without even a whip". Far from the dream equipment used by most of the known Tomb Raiders or Sea Looters, we still have to deal with very pragmatic realities that seem to keep us from using most of the recent technologies poured over our heads by an overwhelming industrial development.But at a time when Hollywood is overusing them to bring to the wider and money spending audiences a vision of our past that is more and more attractive but also disturbing when not totally false, it seems right to try at least to take these techniques over and to try to deal with the new ways they bring not only into the presentation of our research but also in our ways of dealing with the data we are recovering over the years.While recent encounters around this topic have turned into the sad but truthful acknowledgement of the difficulties that remain in the use of digital technologies to reconstruct the past we are slowly but also more and more precisely recovering, it is important to take note of old and recent achievements that show that a difficult relationship does not have to lead to a divorce. And maybe also be that childish dreams do not have to be forgotten along the way.These encounters have also clearly shown that scientists working in the digital fields are eager to help us to apply their research to our own, not only because "Archaeology is cool" as someone preciously reminded us, but also because problems we are actually facing represent problems not encountered in other fields, that can open doors on new fields or research for both communities.We are just at the beginning of a new age in archaeological research and it would be a shame to straightforwardly but bluntly reject new tools just because they are costly, difficult to use and disturbing for our own precious work habits (Though in fact these can look like pretty good reasons to turn back to paper and pencil).There shall soon come a time when all this shall have become of daily use for most of the good people we are actually working for, and the children of today might very well laugh of our technological fears and shyness. It is a necessary evil to be today the guinea pig testers of these technologies, to be riding the wave while surfing on the net, to be prepared for the revolution these things are bringing in our ways of dealing with our past and turn it into virtual but life-like realities that can be easily comprehended by a wider audience, while also opening our own scientific minds on realities we are not even suspecting to exist today.