Nadja DEBENJAK | Kaisa MÄKI-PETÄJÄ (Inari Software, Graz, Austria) Keywords: History, AIS, Geolocalization, Museum Abstract: It has been long since it was enough for museums to be simply repositories of objects and hubs of research and knowledge. Public education and sharing of knowledge has always been part of museum ideology but today many museums are striving to engage and enthral their audiences in in today’s world filled with pastime entertainment. Nonetheless, this challenge is not novel but one of the fundamental questions of museum pedagogy: How to present past and distant cultures as lived histories, as actual places and environments that were or still are inhabited by real people? How to present the world stored inside the museum as interconnected with the living, changing everyday world outside? In archaeology you can sense the history of an object. After digging carefully an ancient house takes shape and there near the entrance is a loom weight. Maybe discarded in favour of a prettier one, or one with a more suitable weight. On the excavation in the middle of the remains of ancient buildings history becomes almost tangible. Who lived here? Who decided to discard the weight? The problem is, how to transfer this sense of connection and of real life in past ages into a museums? How to take the museum out of the building and to integrate knowledge of the past in the places where history happened? The purpose of this paper is to present solutions to these questions using modern technology to bring information back to the public domain. The presented methods include usage of 3D-technology and augmented reality with geolocalized information in the spirit of...

Johannes VALENTA1 | Stefanie ZECHA2 (1ArchIV – Archäologische Informationsverarbeitung J. Valenta, München | 2Katholische Universität Eichstätt (Geographiedidaktik), Eichstätt, Germany) Keywords: public relations, heritage sites, geocacching, archaeology, heritage conservation Abstract: Disseminating information about heritage sites in interesting and enjoyable ways contributes to the development of their public appreciation. Geocaching can help attracting new audiences to historical features.This paper examines a new type of cache -The Heritage Cache- and its benefits. In comparison to normal geocaches, it does not have a cachebox. Learning about the monument or heritage site itself by solving tasks directly related to its location is the treasure to be found. This provides engaging and often adventurous opportunities to learn about historical features in non-formal settings. Various international studies have shown that the non-formal learning process includes 60-80% of the total process of learning (OECD, 1977; Laura-Ernst 1998). Before anybody can log the find of a cache, the completed tasks have to be reviewed and approved by the cache owner. This implies profound scientific supervision and maintenance both of the content and the design of the on-site assignments which should address different levels of the user’s background knowledge on history. Heritage Caches, among others have to conform to the following criteria: Caches must offer a science lesson about historical monuments Caches must be educational. The cache page, including the description and logging tasks, must assume a basic knowledge of preservation of historical monuments. Caches must be developed to provide “a unique experience of the feature”. The authors will present findings of a Heritage Cache pilot project along the Upper German-Raetian Limes in...

Immo TRINKS1| Matthias KUCERA1| Wolfgang NEUBAUER1| Philipp AMON2 | Martin PFENNIGBAUER2 (1Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology, Vienna | 2Riegl Laser Measurement Systems, Horn, Austria) Keywords: endangered cultural heritage, high-resolution laser, large-scale geophysical archaeological prospection Abstract: Documenting endangered cultural heritage through integration of high-resolution laser scanning and large-scale geophysical archaeological prospection   Standing cultural heritage in form of architectural remains is endangered due to weathering, erosion, accidents, gradual decay and vandalism, while buried cultural heritage is mostly threatened by intensive agricultural land use, in particular deep ploughing, greenfield development and not insignificantly the cutting of drainage trenches, amongst others. Modern technology in form of remote sensing methods, primarily laser scanning, and non-invasive geophysical archaeological prospection methods, such as magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar measurements, can under suitable conditions permit the time- and cost-efficient documentation of the structures of archaeological interest. Being beneficial to rescue and exploration archaeology as well as to archaeological research alike, the recorded digital data preserves the cultural heritage as virtual copy and permits the investigation of buried archaeology without disturbing the site. Commonly, 3D surface documentation methods and subsurface prospection are applied and presented separately. The full integration of the high-resolution prospection data with 3D digital terrain models harbours a great, so far widely untapped potential for enhanced data analysis, visualisation and interpretation. Using examples from archaeological prospection and 3D documentation case studies conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology with its partner organizations at World Cultural Heritage sites and outstanding archaeological monuments we demonstrate the integration of 3D surface models acquired with laser scanning and subsurface archaeological prospection...