Archaeology as immersive historical simulation

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.