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One has to wonder whether it is worth travelling far and wide to visit a site when you can do so in your own living room.
When I began studying archaeology nearly 70 years ago, my professor illustrated his lectures with the aid of glass slides projected through an antediluvian machine known as an epidiascope. He instructed Mr Hancock, whom he referred to simply as Hancock, to remove one black and white slide, and replace it with the next in line, from time to time barking out ‘sharper, Hancock’. Over time, we moved on to coloured images, then 35mm slides seen through a projector, until PowerPoint took over. Now, quite suddenly, we are experiencing another great leap forward, and, typically, much of it comes from China.
Hemudu is the Chinese equivalent of Çatalhöyük, and has such an aura that it even features on a set of Chinese postage stamps. In the 15 years since I last wrote about it in detail here, much has happened. I was able in December to visit it again and found that the site museum has been completely overhauled. Hemudu, which lies in lowlands south of the Yangtze River estuary, is significant because it documents the establishment of early rice farmers in a permanently occupied settlement. Like the Swiss lake villages, houses were raised on wooden piles to protect against the damp low-lying habitat, and to this day the foundations can still be seen. The anaerobic layer that enveloped the site has preserved a vast array of organic remains that usually remain invisible, such as fishing nets and baskets, the shoulder blades of cattle that were hafted to serve as spades, and the pits still containing harvested acorns. What particularly interested me in the new museum was an innovation that is increasingly to be seen in state-of-the-art exhibitions. It was a large area where the floor and walls serve as screens. On walking into it, you enter a prehistoric world. The prehistoric villagers are hard at work in their daily activities. Some are forming pottery vessels, others weaving or bringing in a slaughtered deer. Older occupants sit in front of their houses; children play.
After visiting the museum, we walked over to inspect the house foundations, and I thought at once of the remarkable dendrochronologies being obtained in Switzerland, where house constructions can be dated to the season of a calendar year. This must also be possible one day for Hemudu. Beyond the houses, we came to an archway embellished with a reproduction of a famous engraving on ivory, of two birds on either side of a flaming sun, that is often seen as symbolic of religious beliefs. Finally, we reached a lake, to remind us of the marshy habitat in which early rice agriculture began.
One reason why I was so interested in the virtual reality (VR) at Hemudu is that my son James, a Professor of Tourism, is currently involved in research into the implications of VR in both travel and education. He recently set me up on his headset, and I found myself exploring the interior of a Maori marae, a meeting house, as if I were actually there. After changing the source, I was crossing a lake on a canoe to visit a prehistoric settlement. It was so real that one has to wonder whether it is worth travelling far and wide to visit a site when you can do so in your own living room.
Enhancing the experience of a site visit is not new to me. Some years ago, I was asked to write and record a description of the bas reliefs of Angkor Wat, so that visitors could listen to my commentary as they perambulated along the 800-odd metres of carvings. One wall illustrated the Angkorian army on the march, each general aloft on his war elephant. As they hove into view, I had to recite their illustrious names – Vraha Kamraten an Sri Rajendravarmadeva, Vraha Kamraten an Sri Virendravarman, and more. Turning a corner, I explained the symbolic importance of the relief depicting the churning of the ocean of milk to extract amrita, the elixir of immortality. One relief, which still glints with the gold that once covered them, shows King Suryavarman II on his throne, surrounded by courtiers shielding him from the sun with their parasols, and fanning him to keep him cool. I sometimes wonder how many thousands of visitors have listened in.
Virtual pasts
A quick search now reveals how VR is taking off in museums round the world. The Louvre has launched a series of VR experiences that, as you might expect, reflect the riches of its exhibits. One can explore the world of Leonardo da Vinci and learn more about the Mona Lisa. Another explores the importance of exchange of valuable commodities such as carnelian, lapis lazuli, and gold. Once, I set off early on a Sunday morning to visit the Uffizi gallery in Florence before the crowds arrived. When I got there, the queue to get in was already 100m long and six people wide. Inside, after a long wait, we admired the paintings beyond a crowd of tourists’ heads. However, the Uffizi can now come into your living room, at your leisure, without any queue.
The British Museum is one of the most sought-after tourist destinations in the United Kingdom, with 6,500,000 visitors in 2024. Like the Uffizi, the queues can be long and the galleries crowded. But now, with Google Street View, you can explore them from home – I have just been looking at the collection of artefacts from Oceania. Better still, the Museum collections can be taken virtually into the classroom.
One of the responsibilities of we archaeologists is to bring what we find to as large an audience as possible. I am in the midst of a lecture series to the University of the Third Age here, entitled ‘The Clever Ape: a Brief History of Humanity’. The auditorium is packed, and there is a waiting list of those unlucky in the ballot for seats. There is a huge interest in the human past, and VR has the technology and the information at hand to create a new chapter in spreading the word. I sprinkle my presentations with clips taken from educational movies. In one of these, Kanzi the bonobo is seen intently using his hammer stone to detach a sharp flake, then walking to a box sealed with a rope. Kanzi then sits and severs the rope to open the box and get at the waiting banana. In another clip, we all enter Bruniquel Cave in France to wriggle through the limestone passages and reach the remarkable Neanderthal structures there. A third movie takes the audience into Lascaux to admire the rock art, an actual visit no longer possible for the interested tourist.
We are also living as artificial intelligence (AI) takes hold, completely upending our trust in the media and what we see on digital platforms. Just ask, and you can generate in seconds images or movies on any subject you choose. This game-changer can come to the service of VR, too, by returning extinct societies from oblivion. There are two of these that stand out as candidates for such treatment, and both do so because illustrations of their own lives are preserved for us. The Dian chiefdom of Yunnan Province in China is a prime candidate, because they cast miniature scenes of daily life in bronze and attached them to their ceremonial drums. The drums were then placed in elite graves. From these, we know their hairstyles, dress, armour, and weaponry. One scene depicts an aristocratic lady covered in gold at her loom, with a ring of court ladies in front of her weaving. Two thousand years ago, there was a party in a fine house raised above ground on piles. Horses are attached to the posts, a groom sleeps on the ground while the party-goers feast. A furtive glimpse through an upstairs window reveals a couple having a private tryst. Then we can see the Dian at war with their enemy, a deer hunt, and a musical ensemble in full swing.
A second candidate for a VR show comes from Santorini. Covered in a deep layer of volcanic ash that erupted 3,500 years ago, houses in the town of Akrotiri are still standing. I have always been fascinated by a depiction of the town from the sea that was found at the site. There is an elegant boat being rowed before our eyes, beyond which town houses are seen, with the occupants going about their business. Out in the countryside, we see two deer fleeing from a lion. Countless other possibilities spring to mind: a reconstruction of life at the Bronze Age settlement of Must Farm, rituals taking place at Stonehenge, the burial of an Egyptian pharaoh at Giza, or the Valley of the Kings. Many young people were attracted to archaeology back in the 1950s, when the BBC programme Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? was so popular that its two stars, Glyn Daniel and Sir Mortimer Wheeler, were successively voted TV Personality of the Year. With VR and AI twinned, we stand at the threshold of another standout venture in archaeology.
Charles Higham is a Professor at Otago University in New Zealand, and an authority on Cambodia's Angkor civilisation and Ban Non Wat in Thailand.
Images: courtesy of Charles Higham
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