Internet Archaeology 46: Digital Co-Production in Archaeology

This article will present and discuss the process of digital co-production and audiences' responses to the full-scale interactive, gestural, visual and musical experience of a Virtual Reality arts play. This was inspired by cist-slab images from the Kivik Grave, which is Sweden's most famous Bronze Age grave. The aim of the VR arts play was to use digital technology to engage users as time-travellers and participants in a ritual and sensory experience. The play was part of the exhibition Petroglyphics — Virtual Rock-Carvings Experiences at Österlens Museum, the culture historical museum of Simrishamn, Southern Sweden (May 2013-December 2014). By physically taking part in the artistic imaginary performance of a burial ceremony depicted on one of the stone slabs inside the tomb, the museum visitor was invited to contribute to the interpretative process of Bronze Age imagery. Arising from this digital pilot project and research experiment, followed by an audience study involving over 250 museum visitors, this article first discusses the process, challenges and opportunities of digital co-production in an exhibition context, when archaeological, technological and artistic skills are combined in order to explore new ways to engage a museum audience. The focus then moves on to consider what interpretative processes look like when digital co-production intersects the physical participation of museum visitors. One of the major results is that 94% of surveyed museum visitors, adults as well as children, stated that digital technology combined with art that engages the user's body opens up new forms of knowledge and audience experiences. Furthermore, this study reveals that a full-body, interactive and multisensory experience with virtual space stimuli has the potential to involve several museum visitors, emotionally awaking feelings of identification prompted by specific archaeological findings, and nurturing vivid, individual interpretative processes in relation to visitors' own social, historical and cultural references and former experiences.

Public Archaeology 2015 was a year-long project dedicated to the creation of public engagement and involvement with archaeological projects and subjects. Month-long projects were devised and enacted by both archaeologists and non-archaeologists, with the impact of the project residing in the moments of engagement themselves rather than critical or academic analysis with the benefit of hindsight. In this short article, the convenors of the project discuss the project's central ethos and its relationship to wider debates on co-production and impact assessment in public archaeology. It expands discussion on the opposition therein between impetus provided by 'experts' and from 'amateurs'. The project aimed to use a different mode of operation to existing 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' models of collaboration, and created a democratic situation where different kinds of public engagement with archaeology took place within a wider context of those central terms — public, archaeology, engagement — being kept intentionally fluid and open to interpretation.

In 2010, five caches of top quality Migration-period jewellery were found at the Iron Age ring fort of Sandby borg, on the island of Öland, Sweden. When subsequent archaeological investigations revealed evidence of a violent massacre in the late 5th century, which left the victims lying on the spot where they had fallen, media and public interest increased rapidly. Since the local community raised concerns about the fast-growing interest in the project and the sensitive status of the ring fort, digital media was used as an important tool to communicate and work with different stakeholders. In this article, we present some experiences and insights from two separate projects with the aim of involving the public; a public outreach programme, Culture for Children, conducted in 2014-2015 and supported by the Swedish Arts Council, and a crowdfunding project launched at Kickstarter in December 2014, which enabled one season of fieldwork in 2015. The article concludes with a brief reflection on the topic of digital engagement in public archaeology.