Stigmergy in comparative settlement choice and palaeoenvironment simulation

Decisions on settlement location in the face of climate change and coastal inundation may have resulted in success, survival or even catastrophic failure for early settlers in many parts of the world. In this study, we investigate various questions related to how individuals respond to a palaeoenvironmental simulation, on an interactive tabletop device where participants have the opportunity to build a settlement on a coastal land- scape, balancing safety, and access to resources, including sea and terrestrial foodstuffs, while taking into con- sideration the threat of rising sea levels. The results of the study were analyzed to consider whether decisions on settlement were predicated to be near to locations where previous structures were located, stigmergically, and whether later settler choice would fare better, and score higher, as time progressed. The proximity of settlements was investigated and the reasons for clustering were considered. The interactive simulation was exhibited to thousands of visitors at the 2012 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition at the ‘‘Europe’s Lost World’’ exhibit. 347 participants contributed to the simulation, providing a sufficiently large sample of data for analysis

Crowd behavior mining with virtual environments

This article explores ways in which virtual environments can be used for crowdsourcing and behavior mining for filling gaps within the information space of topical research. Behavior mining in this article refers to the act of harvesting the latent or instinctive behavior of participants, usually a crowd, and injecting the population behavior into a preset context, such as within a virtual environment so that the subjective behaviors and the contexts are merged. The experimental approach combines various modalities centered upon virtual environments so as to induce presence in order to bring participants into the context. This approach is new and not well studied; however, it has real potential in research dealing with behaviors and culture in reconstructed virtual environments. Two virtual environments case studies at the 2012 and 2015 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition are presented, which demonstrate that the unique crowdsourcing activity is able to fill gaps within the information space so that answers to research questions can be more complete. Thus, by reconstructing and replicating a lost landscape, and by injecting harvested human behavior into the context of the landscape, we may be able to gather much more information than conventional methods will allow

Virtually real or really virtual: towards a heritage metaverse

The hype surrounding the impending mainstreaming of Virtual Reality can seem to prioritize the digital above the critical. With the development of VR said to be at a pivotal point, there is an important opportunity to consider the emergence of virtual heritage and its potential futures. This paper argues that there is a disjunction between the present reality of virtual heritage and virtual reality, and discusses the twin challenges of presence and realism within virtual reality. In particular, it highlights a paradox inherent in virtual heritage and virtual reality and proposes the use of ‘loose-realism’ as a solution. Ultimately, the challenge is to address the claims that virtual reality represents a new class of information system, or metaverse, in order that virtual heritage fully engages with enquiry about the pas

Lines Across the Land: A Biography of the Linear Earthwork Landscapes of the Later Prehistoric Yorkshire Wolds

During the first millennium BC, the people of the chalk landscapes of the Yorkshire Wolds began carving up their world with monumental linear earthworks. This project explores the meanings of the later prehistoric boundary systems of the Yorkshire Wolds. It writes a biography of the linear earthwork landscapes of the north-central Wolds, using geographic information systems (GIS), original fieldwork and theories of agency and memory. Tracing the construction, use and modification of particular linear earthworks, it examines how these monuments would have related to other features in the landscape, and how they could have exercised agency within networks of interconnected people, animals, objects and other places. Finally, the project attempts to situate these boundary systems within the larger context of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age society in order to understand how the later prehistoric people of East Yorkshire would have experienced their world. Taking a biographical approach to landscape and allowing linear earthworks to become the protagonists of this narrative, the project charts the life histories of the earthworks at Wetwang-Garton Slack and Huggate Dykes and investigates the collective authorship of the wider landscape. To understand the rural, monumental landscapes of the Wolds, we must consider the agency of not only people, but also of animals and of monuments themselves. By focussing on the relationships which bound together linear earthworks and other agents, we can begin to understand the ways in which monumentalised landscapes both reflected and generated the cosmologies of prehistoric communities.The Appendices A to E are not included online

Archaeology of Digital Environments: Tools, Methods, and Approaches

Digital archaeologists use digital tools for conducting archaeological work, but their potential also lies in applying archaeological thinking and methods to understanding digital built environments (i.e., software) as contemporary examples of human settlement, use, and abandonment. This thesis argues for digital spaces as archaeological artifacts, sites, and landscapes that can be investigated in both traditional and non-traditional ways. At the core of my research is the fundamental argument that human-occupied digital spaces can be studied archaeologically with existing and modified theory, tools, and methods to reveal that human occupation and use of synthetic worlds is similar to how people behave in the natural world. Working digitally adds new avenues of investigation into human behavior in relation to the things people make, modify, and inhabit. In order to investigate this argument, the thesis focuses on three video game case studies, each using different kinds of archaeology specifically chosen to help understand the software environments being researched: 1) epigraphy, stylometry, and text analysis for the code-artifact of Colossal Cave Adventure; 2) photogrammetry, 3D printing, GIS mapping, phenomenology, and landscape archaeology within the designed, digital heritage virtual reality game-site of Skyrim VR; 3) actual survey and excavation of 30 heritage sites for a community of displaced human players in the synthetic landscape of No Man’s Sky. My conclusions include a blended approach to conducting future archaeological fieldwork in digital built environments, one that modifies traditional approaches to archaeological sites and material in a post/transhuman landscape. As humanity continues trending towards constant digital engagement, archaeologists need to be prepared to study how digital places are settled, used, and abandoned. This thesis takes a step in that direction using the vernacular of games as a starting point