#virtual heritage

By Uzi Baram, New College of Florida

Archaeology exposes, reveals, analyzes, and interprets the past. As anthropology, archaeological interpretations offer alterity, differences from our world. Once the scientific research was completed and published, some archaeologists would tell stories of the past connecting material culture to social life in a manner that allowed audiences to imagine a past social world, one different from their own. Those narratives were given in public lectures or written as popular books. Today digital technologies provide impressive visual opportunities to go beyond the printed page or a spoken performance.

 The maroon history for Second Spanish Florida (1783-1821) is not well-known. The heritage of Florida as a haven from slavery is commemorated by Fort Mosé Historic State Park, with exhibits, books, reenactments, and films. As one of the most challenging wars in US history and as a key period for the Seminole peoples’ survival in Florida, the Second Seminole War (1835-42) is documented by a wide range of scholarship even if the era is not readily recognized by many today. Between Fort Mosé and the Second Seminole War, researchers have only recently uncovered the struggle for freedom from the Apalachicola River to Tampa Bay. The history comes mostly from US military records from battles in 1816 and 1818 and raids in 1821 – we only have archaeological traces of the Black Seminoles, African Seminoles, self-emancipated people of African heritage, maroons, and other terms used for freedom-seeking people on the Florida Gulf Coast.

 In remembrance of the July 27, 1816 military battle at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River, I partnered with Digital Heritage Interactive to create virtual worlds for the maroon landscapes at Prospect Bluff and the Manatee River. The virtual worlds offer the opportunities to walk in the footsteps of the maroons, at the Prospect Bluff military fort and the refuge by the Manatee Mineral Spring. Unlike the published articles and site reports, or my public presentations, the virtual worlds offer an avenue to engage the landscape of early 19th century freedom-seeking peoples.

 The commemoration is titled Tragedy and Survival, to represent both aspects of the history as military defeats led to falling back from the US border, further and further south into peninsular Florida. The people survived, some in interior Florida and others on Andros Island in the British Bahamas. The virtual worlds show the landscape without people, just the place and the materiality of the time before destruction – the viewer needs to imagine the places populated by people fighting for freedom.

Prospect Bluff, 1816

 Community of Angola on the Manatee River, 1821

 The virtual worlds are available for engaging online and for downloading, for free. Time Sifters Archaeology Society hosts the website for the project at http://tragedyandsurvival.timesifters.org/

Google-translating this article about the discovery of a 2nd century painting of the God Pan ("legs of deer, but a trunk and a human head, capped with horns") in a Bourges cellar provides the following piece of wisdom, which sums up one of the underlying tensions of our forthcoming Bourges-based UNIVERSAL EAR episode:

"It will always be possible, one day, to make a facsimile of the places."

In context, it refers to the fact that the Pan painting will have to be permanently removed due to refurbishment work, while the room as a whole will be 3D scanned - giving future generations the possibility to enjoy the freaky picture in an authentic 3D printed plastic remake of the dirty old cellar. (This sort of thing is becoming common in Egypt, where apparently the difficult part is replicating the curse that was unleashed upon opening the original tomb).

Other place-fascimiles are more virtual still. The Teufelsberg Reverb software plug-in allows you to record your band's next hit using the reverb you would've got had you recorded it at the echoey old Field Station Berlin - a defunct cold-war era spy tower.

This article is a thought-provoking read for anyone who is interested in the possibilities of VR in the museum environment.

During my recent research trip I visited David Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef Dive VR experience at the Natural History Museum in London. I found it slightly strange to be ushered into a room with a group of people and then be instructed on how to put on the headset in the right way, at the right time in order to have an individual experience. Is this the ultimate expression of Sherry Turkle’s critique of our 21st Century relationship with media technologies, ‘Alone Together’? Or is there little difference between VR and cinema except patrons are spared the annoyance of mobiles glowing in the dark or the sounds of snacking and chatting?