Friends of ASOR present a panel webinar on November 6, 2024, at 7:00 pm EST, with panelists Michael Zimmerman, Sarah Beckmann, Deidre Brin, and Adam Aja. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.

In the past three decades, curators, educators, and scholars have been actively moving archaeological materials and data beyond the physical limitations of sites and museums into the virtual space. These transitions to new media have allowed archaeologists, researchers, and students unprecedented access to the archaeological record, particularly with regard to far away, at-risk, or vanished heritage. Each of the presenters in this webinar has been successful in implementing VR and other digital media in innovative ways in order to bridge the gap between physical and virtual and to educate the public. The first presentation (Dr. Michael Zimmerman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bridgewater State University) focuses on the creation of two virtual environments—the Virtual Museum of Archaeology of South Caucasus (VMASC) and a virtual reconstruction of a Late Bronze Age archaeological site from the Shiraki Plain in the country of Georgia. The second presentation (Dr. Sarah Beckmann, Assistant Professor of Classics, UCLA and Deidre Brin, Director of the Digital Archaeology Lab, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology) presents a digital escape room based on Homer’s Odyssey that was created by university students for a K-12 audience. The third presentation (Dr. Adam Aja, Chief Curator, Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East) will introduce guests to some of HMANE’s freely accessed digital assets, including its virtual gallery tours, 3D artifact scans, and the most recent addition, a Snapchat app-experience that allows the visitor to “step back in time” in a journey to the Assyrian palace of Ashurbanipal. To unite these three presentations, speakers will demonstrate how they creatively used their archaeological knowledge to develop digital tools and educate the public, including how these tools are making real-world impacts in museums, classrooms, and other settings. This webinar will be moderated by Dr. Tine Rassalle (Independent Scholar) and Dr. Debra Trusty (Associate Professor of Instruction, University of Iowa), both of whom strive to facilitate the implementation of new technologies in the study of the ancient world.

Presentation 1: “Virtual Reality Environments for Archaeological Pedagogy, Research, and Outreach from the Shiraki Plain of Georgia in the South Caucasus” with Michael Zimmerman

In 2019, an NSF IRES grant (#1854153) was awarded to Bridgewater State University, Ilia State University, and the Cyberarchaeology Lab at UC San Diego to engage students in interdisciplinary research of human-environmental interactions in the Shiraki Plateau in the country of Georgia. One of the key elements in this project was the creation of two virtual environments by Misha Elashvili and Giorgi Datenashvili—the Virtual Museum of Archaeology of South Caucasus (VMASC), an interactive virtual collection of artifacts from archaeological sites in Shiraki; and a virtual reconstruction of Late Bronze Age Didnauri. We hope to demonstrate future applications of this and other VR environments for archaeology.

Michael Zimmerman is an archaeologist with a PhD from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, and a member of the Archaeogaming Collective, Archaeological Institute of America, American Society of Overseas Research, Northeastern Anthropological Association, Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology, the Save Ancient Studies Alliance, and the Society of Historical Archaeology. He holds an MA in Classical Languages from the University of Florida. He has worked extensively on archaeological surveys and excavations in public archaeology in Massachusetts, as well as in Israel, Jordan, and Georgia, where he is a co-principal investigator for the NSF-funded Shiraki International Multidisciplinary Research project and the U.S. Embassy Democracy Commission grant funded Crossroads Virtual Museum Project. He also serves on the Executive Board of the Northeastern Anthropological Association and the Curation and Collections Committee of the Society for Historical Archaeology. His research interests include archaeogaming and virtual technology in pedagogical contexts, antiquities trafficking, cultural heritage law and public policy, and collections-based research, and he has published extensively in these areas.

Presentation 2: “Tell the Old Story for our Modern Times: Building a Digital Escape Room for Homer’s Odyssey” with Deidre Brin and Sarah Beckmann

In winter 2024, UCLA students, faculty, and the Digital Archaeology Lab worked to create a digital escape room based on Homer’s Odyssey. The obstacles faced by Odysseus and his crew, we decided, were excellent fodder for an immersive web-based application: an escape room brings the vividness of the text to life and introduces contemporary students to ancient Greek culture using modern technologies. Despite facing many obstacles in the course of this work (the Cyclops room in particular!), our project offers a model for how other archaeologists and educators might leverage digital applications in the classroom. Thus our talk will survey development of this project and our future goals: 1) outreach beyond the University classroom using this escape room; and 2) the development of a reusable platform so that those without programming experience can design their own escape room.

Deidre Brin is the director of the Digital Archaeology Lab at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and leads the development of DIG, an archaeological data publishing initiative at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press. Her experience managing data while working on archaeological projects coupled with the foundation in information science and technology, support her current research on the preservation, dissemination, and reuse of cultural heritage datasets.

Sarah Beckmann is a Roman archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Classics at UCLA. Her research interests include domestic art and archaeology broadly in the early Roman empire and the late antique period. She is currently at work on her first monograph, which examines the Roman villa in late antiquity (mid-3rd – 5th c. CE). Other interests represented by recent publications include statuary collecting in late antiquity, Roman portraiture in provincial contexts, and representations of subaltern groups (e.g. women, enslaved children) in luxury domestic arts.

Presentation 3: “Digital Augmentation of an Archaeological Museum” with Adam Aja

While physical exhibition space remains limited within the walls of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE), the digital realm provides virtually unlimited opportunities to display and explore its rich archaeological collections. Chief Curator Adam J. Aja will introduce guests to some of the museum’s freely accessed digital assets, including its virtual gallery tours, 3D artifact scans, and the most recent addition, a Snapchat app-experience that allows the visitor to “step back in time” in a journey to the Assyrian palace of Ashurbanipal.

Adam J. Aja is an archaeologist and museum curator with a background in the creative arts. Since 2009, he has managed the collection of the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (formerly the Harvard Semitic Museum), where he redesigned the storage facilities, implemented new exhibits, and created replicas for display. Dr. Aja started working on archaeological field projects in 1992 and has enjoyed numerous discoveries in the years since, including the Iron Age cemetery of the Philistines at Ashkelon. He is currently the Chief Stratigrapher at the Tel Shimron Excavations. Dr. Aja’s creative projects, combining his love of archaeology and art, have included a full-scale reproduction of the monument discovered between the paws of the Great Sphinx and the creation of an augmented reality app that animates Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs.

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