A significant component of Landscape Archaeology is concerned with recognising human experience and activities at a number of different spatial scales. This study looks at how related areas of technology can be used to investigate these different scales of activity and experience, and how these can be integrated to capture potential synergies that exist between them. The technologies considered are Geographical Information Systems, Panoramic Virtual Reality (PVR), 3D virtual models, and interactive multimedia. Although each of these technologies have been used fairly extensively in their own right, there have been relatively few studies where they have all been applied together, to the same body of archaeological knowledge. In this study, all the technologies have been applied in the same context, which is the Neolithic of the Peak District, with particular attention focussed on the ceremonial monuments of the White Peak. This is mediated by three main case studies.
The first case study uses GIS based viewshed analysis to examine the distribution of the Neolithic burial mounds and two Henge monuments of the Peak District. The results of the analysis are discussed within the prevailing models of seasonal mobility, and also address issues of increasing scales of concern from the early to later Neolithic.
The second case study uses PVR to represent monuments and their landscape settings. In particular this technique is used in conjunction with some of the viewshed data created above, in order to create embodied viewsheds, as an alternative to the default presentational metaphor of the map.
The third case study uses the integrative potential of interactive multimedia to combine elements of the above, along with 3D solid models of a particular monument, the Arbor Low henge. These are presented within the context of a learning resource, demonstrating how these technologies can be used as tools to facilitate learning in a constructivist environment, in which students are actively engaged in creating their own knowledge
