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How Technological Innovation Can Drive Greater Accessibility and Inclusivity in Archaeology - Ep 212
645 Plays6 months ago
Archaeology is always seen as a field pursuit and for the most part, it is. However the interpretations of archaeology should be accessible to all. Our guests today, Dr. Alessandro Sebastiani and Dr. Laura Morabito presented their thoughts on accessibility in archaeology at the World Archaeology Summit in Alula, Saudi Arabia in September 2023. They discuss things like 3D reconstruction and VR as tools to bring people to archaeological sites and research without physically bringing them there.
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- Chris Webster
Twitter: @archeowebby
Email: [email protected] - Paul Zimmerman
Twitter: @lugal
Email: [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode 212
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 212. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today we talk about accessibility in archaeology through technology. Let's get to it.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the show everyone. So the introduction is unique to the podcast for this show, but I just want to let everybody know this is being cross posted on both the archaeology show and the archaeo tech podcast. So if you're coming to us from either one of those and you don't know the other show exists, go to arc pod net.com and check out the other show because we've got great content, but different content on both most of the time.
00:00:45
Speaker
However, this time around, we have a topic that was brought to us specifically for the Archaeology Show, but it's such a technology focus that I thought we would cross the post this over to Archaeotech.
Co-host and Guest Introductions
00:00:57
Speaker
And Rachel can't join me on this one for Archaeology Show people, because in our RV, sometimes that just doesn't work out with having two people on this recording platform. But Paul can join me, and he is my co-host on the Archaeotech podcast. Paul, how's it going? Going fine. I'm glad I'm still your co-host. It's been a while since you've recorded.
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, I kind of took that opportunity while you've been gone to just a little bit, take a little bit of a break from that. Cause my work is really ramped up. So that was good. So, but hopefully we can get some more architect episodes in the can and keep that show going. So yeah, we have some topics queued up, so that's good. We do indeed. Yep. So, all right. Well, we've got two guests today and they are Dr. Alessandro Sebastiani and Dr. Laura Morabito.
00:01:41
Speaker
And they wrote a paper, it's an AWAS thought leadership paper. That's what it says on top here. And it says, how technological innovation can drive greater accessibility and inclusivity in archeology. And we're going to have them introduce themselves right now. So the first one listed on the paper here, I'll just go in order. Dr. Alessandro Sebastiani, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us what your background is and what you're doing these days.
00:02:04
Speaker
Hello, Chris, Paul and Laura. It's good to be here with you. I'm Dr. Sebastiani and I'm an Associate Professor in Roman Archaeology at the Department of Classics at the University of Buffalo in the SUNY system. And usually, I work on Roman staff and the trust insight, but ultimately, the reward insights.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I had the pleasure of the opportunity to join the World Summit in Alula in September and here I am for you. Okay. Excellent. And Dr. Laura Morabito, why don't you introduce yourself?
00:02:43
Speaker
Hi everyone, thanks for having me today. So I'm Laura and I'm currently working at the Royal Commission for Alul in Saudi Arabia but I recently changed roles so I might get my job title completely wrong but at the moment I work as cultural heritage zoning and designation manager so working more at the regulatory aspects of protecting heritage in Saudi Arabia.
00:03:06
Speaker
In my past life, though, I was a landscape archaeologist and I specialized in reconstructing prehistoric or in general ephemeral and endangered landscapes. So that's what actually brought me from central Italy to the Middle East and the deserts of Alula, ultimately.
00:03:23
Speaker
Okay.
World Archaeology Summit Goals
00:03:24
Speaker
Well, the World Archaeology Summit that was held in Nalula is really what brought all this together because some of the organizers of that have reached out to the archaeology podcast network and were interviewing people that were affiliated with that. And Laura, I think you mentioned you helped set that summit up. Can you tell us a little bit about what that was and what the goals of that archaeology summit were?
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah absolutely so the thing is archaeology is obviously a very popular topic in many conferences throughout the world and the archaeology of the Arabian Peninsula specifically is a major topic of several conferences which are
00:03:59
Speaker
all held in Europe, mostly Europe. We really wanted to achieve two things through this archaeology summit. The first one was to bring global attention and the global discussion on archaeology inside the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in Saudi Arabia, where the country is really seeing some major changes in the attitude and relationship with heritage in the last few years. The other thing we wanted to achieve was to bring this global discussion
00:04:28
Speaker
alive and keep it interesting through discussing things which are usually not typically tackled in academic conferences on archaeology.
00:04:38
Speaker
Awesome. Well, that brings me to the paper that we wanted to talk about because Paul and I talk about technology and archeology all the time. And I'm not sure that we've ever, Paul, discussed how technology can drive accessibility and inclusivity specifically.
Technology and Accessibility in Archaeology
00:04:54
Speaker
I think we, inherently, I think we, some things can just because of the nature of the technology and how it's presented, but I don't think we've ever actually talked about this, have we?
00:05:02
Speaker
Certainly, now it's a direct topic. I mean, it's something that we bring up here and there every now and then about accessibility in particular. You, for example, are a big fan of distributed kind of platforms, Zoom meetings and the like, conferences that people don't have to go to in person necessarily, but can attend virtually and so on. It says one avenue towards accessibility, but that's not what this paper is talking about. It's a broader scope, I think.
00:05:29
Speaker
Alessandro, can you tell us a little bit about what this paper is? Again, the title is How Technological Innovation Can Drive Greater Accessibility and Inclusivity in Archaeology. What is this broadly about? Give us the abstract and how it came about. Well, definitely the idea behind the paper was to show that there are possibilities and we were trying to explore possibilities on how we can grant access to cultural heritage, which sometimes can be thought
00:05:58
Speaker
as a certain way an alien topic or something that only peers in academia can discuss or enjoy. So the idea of the paper was to mostly, I think, provoke new thoughts, a new direction on how technology can help to strengthen the gap.
00:06:19
Speaker
between what we do in the field as academic people, let's call it, and what, for example, local communities and global tourism can achieve and can taste in a certain way from cultural heritage or from our work. So that was the idea of the paper, which came out from, in a certain way, a summary of many sessions that were held in Alula at the summit.
00:06:47
Speaker
So we're talking about accessibility in the field. What are some of the areas that we can think of where archaeology has not been very accessible and how is technology that you guys are discussing trying to bridge that gap? The thing is what we were trying to do both in the paper and at the summit in fact is to try and broaden a bit the meaning of what accessibility means in archaeology because obviously
00:07:10
Speaker
making archaeology accessible. We immediately think about way to actually physically access the heritage side and archaeological side. But what we wanted to discuss as well was how can people access the discipline of archaeology? How can people be enabled to study archaeology, to enter the job market as archaeologists? How can people access the tools, including technological tools,
00:07:37
Speaker
that are now common for the discipline. And that's where accessibility and technology get a bit intertwined, because it's a very complex balance. Technology can make life, including the life of an archaeologist, or passionate about archaeology, much easier. But whether this technology is accessible in itself, then that's a different story. And it requires a lot of discussions.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, a couple of things you guys mentioned in the paper is 3D reconstruction, which inevitably leads to virtual and augmented reality. And especially with the release of, you know, Apple's Vision Pro headset, which is expensive, but is kind of a game changer in the way that it works. I have a, well, what's now called a meta quest, but I've got the Oculus Quest 3, which is what more people understand it as. And then I also had the two before that. So I've had one for about four years now.
00:08:32
Speaker
And through apps like Blue Planet VR, we've interviewed people from there, Lithodomo's VR. We've interviewed people from there. They're putting together 3D reconstructions in a virtual environment so people can go visit these places and see them, these ancient cities and archaeological sites and things like that. And I would imagine
00:08:54
Speaker
at some point in the future, they'll
Impact of VR and AR in Archaeology Education
00:08:56
Speaker
be useful for research as well. I don't think they're quite good enough right now for people to, you know, maybe do additional research. It just maybe helps to visualize what's going on. But for people who have never visited these sites, I feel like this kind of stuff is, is definitely making it more accessible for at least people who can't get there physically, but maybe for people who can't even explore if they do get there physically. What do you guys think about the possibilities behind VR and augmented reality? Alessandro. Yes, I think.
00:09:23
Speaker
Definitely, archaeology is moving in that direction. And I will make a personal example from my research project in South of Tuscany. And we are trying to develop virtual reality solutions in conjunction with engineers and robotics at UB to show and disseminate the otherwise humble remains of Hellenistic houses in the middle of nowhere in Tuscany. And in this particular case, we are experimenting with Oculus Quest.
00:09:53
Speaker
technology to help visitors understand the past, understand the buildings and everyday life in a rural small village or the first center in BC through there. We are doing this in a certain way to grant more accessibility as we were saying.
00:10:11
Speaker
because not everyone can reach the site. But if we create a solution that is downloadable into a personal device, people from the comfort of their houses literally can visit every single excavation or every single monument. And there are also examples for Roman Athens, already a reality, although it's a virtual reality.
00:10:36
Speaker
where they would fly over. And this is a company basically reconstructing ancient Roman imperial time. And by buying the license, people can literally fly over the imperial realm, stop buying monuments, fully reconstructed according to the archaeological research.
00:10:56
Speaker
and experience literally living in Rome of the second century CE for, you know, after an hour. And these I think has incredible perspectives in the future. Yeah. I think that's one of the really cool things that I think this technology can do is not just show you what it looks like today. So you can visit these sites, but show you what it looked like in the past and really immerse you in it. I mean, that's subjective. Of course, we need to have really good information to be able to reconstruct that pass, which is
00:11:26
Speaker
why archaeologists exist, which is exactly what we do. So the more information we can give, the better the model gets. Exactly. At the same time, if you're talking just about accessibility for tourists, it's a great opportunity. But these may be
00:11:44
Speaker
can become, you know, the next generation of teaching archaeology in classrooms instead of having textbooks with pictures, which are great, of course, and we all study on them by making a room full of students with visas and digital reality devices, flying over the room, flying over accents or smaller excavations and learning directly by visualizing.
00:12:11
Speaker
rather than just reading or having the look of a picture of a 2D picture. So there's room for lots of innovation. There is not only about research, but it's also about teaching and learning.
00:12:26
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I can imagine how different it would be, you know, when I went through school and when anybody listening to this went through school, if instead of sit here listening to the professor speak and looking at pictures, just literally walking around Pompeii with your professor in a virtual reality environment, right? That would have just been so much more engaging, I think. Yes. And also imagine the reduction in costs. Okay.
00:12:53
Speaker
For example, I mean, it's always good to travel abroad and we cannot, you know, eliminate the first-hand experience. But yet, you know, we cannot always travel to Pompeii or to India or to Arabia, Saudi Arabia or Latin America and check in a certain way and pace and experience the monuments. So it could be a revolution.
00:13:17
Speaker
All right. Well, let's take a break. And on the other side, we'll keep talking about this cause I absolutely love this topic as Paul knows. So we will continue doing this on the other side back in a minute. Welcome back to the archeology show, archeotek crossover. I'm not going to say episode numbers cause I don't know either of them right now.
00:13:35
Speaker
That's okay. We're back here and we're talking to Alessandro and Laura about a paper they wrote on essentially technology and accessibility and archeology. So we were talking about virtual reality and augmented reality before the break. Laura, what are your thoughts on this topic as, as not only a teaching tool, but also an accessibility tool for the general public.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think you both touched on two very important and very interesting topics for me. So the first one is, in general, making archaeology more accessible. And digital reality and augmented reality have an opportunity also to make our work as archaeologists more accessible, like very often the very technical or very niche studies we do only sit in obscure publications that pretty no one
00:14:21
Speaker
than us sometimes. And an example of that is, for example, we gather on certain sites a large number of environmental data about past weather, past environment. And it's really difficult to communicate those data to a wider audience. And visual reality and augmented reality really have a strong potential in that and making our niche and obscure work more accessible to the general public.
00:14:49
Speaker
So that's one thing. And then when it comes to teaching possibilities, I think that this type of technology and more have an enormous potential for inclusivity and accessibility when it comes to opening archaeology to people with disabilities. And this is a subject that it's really dear to me. And I think that
00:15:11
Speaker
There's still a long way to go on making archaeology accessible to people with various types of disability, both as visitors and as professionals in archaeology. This sort of reality, augmented reality, can really help, especially in the teaching part, teaching archaeology at university or at various degrees of
00:15:32
Speaker
of education and can support, can really support certain types of disabilities. Think about, for example, potentially associating headset devices, VR devices to hearing aiding tools and other things like that. It can really have a lot of potential. I think there is a lot to explore there.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah. I was thinking of people who are visually impaired too. That's one thing that we have a really hard time making accessible because archaeology is such a visual pursuit. You know what I mean? Like we just, we, we observe things. I mean, we literally call it observation most of the time, just looking at stuff and that makes it very difficult for people visually impaired. Paul, you had a follow up to this.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a follow-up that's maybe a little bit of a redirection, but it was hinted at here a couple of times, especially around teaching. Laura had mentioned that most of the conferences tend to be centered around Europe, mostly European scholars. The conferences often are in Europe, and so this conference in Alola was a bit of an inversion in that it was bringing people from around the world
00:16:41
Speaker
to the place that they were studying, as opposed to taking the materials and the information and disseminating it someplace different.
Decentralizing Archaeological Data
00:16:49
Speaker
And that opens up some really interesting possibilities for how we can make the entire field more inclusive. And we've talked a lot about general public.
00:16:57
Speaker
But I'm thinking, since I started working in Saudi, actually, let me back up. I used to work in Jordan and in Yemen for my dissertation, and Saudi was this blank area between. And since I've been working there, I've been filling in this blank between.
00:17:12
Speaker
And the best part of it is not just learning about it and working there, but the Saudi scholars that I've met and worked with. And so I'm seeing and don't have any coherent thought about this, but I'm seeing somehow that we can start using this technology to decentralize out of Europe, out of the US, to decentralize some of the production of archaeological information back to the places in the world where they are. I was just wondering,
00:17:36
Speaker
Alessandro or Laura, if either of you have any insights into how we can start using technologies to democratize to some extent, to disperse where the information comes from and to make it more inclusive in the sense of more people from the source countries involved directly in the production of archaeological knowledge.
00:17:55
Speaker
Yes, I finally started. I got a couple of thoughts about that. I mean, I never worked in Saudi Arabia, for example. I only was invited to speak at the summit, which was an excellent opportunity to bring together experts from different disciplines with diverse approaches to cultural heritage. And they came from all over the world.
00:18:21
Speaker
or more or less all over the world. And that was a fantastic opportunity to start a dialogue on how to promote and enhance and value cultural heritage. And all the different sessions had the task of creating intellectual bridges across disciplines on the sense of history and cultural heritage to make academics and professionals interact on solutions that both material
00:18:49
Speaker
and intellectual but at the same time to enhance the accessibility because it was a fantastic opportunity and it would be great to have this kind of summit not only in Europe and US as we are used to but also in other countries and then to make all the videos all the discussions available on the internet for free so that people from all over the world can contribute maybe with a paper
00:19:17
Speaker
or with a solution by receiving the feedback and the results of these large summits and symposia. So I think technology can help that by streaming the Congress or at least by recording the sessions, make them available to everyone. We've basically got access to internet and we can easily just follow up
00:19:45
Speaker
with ideas and solutions, maybe proposing and creating something new. That is an excellent point because I've heard from conference organizers before when we first started the Archaeology Podcast Network 10 years ago. I was approaching certain conference organizers here in the United States for some of the big conferences that happened like Society for American Archaeology and Historical Archaeology, and then some of the more regional ones as well.
00:20:09
Speaker
about either recording podcasts at the conference to release and then also streaming the content. And they were very afraid that they were going to lose their deposits or not have enough people attend the conference physically to not lose money on the venue that they...
00:20:25
Speaker
they purchased. And I'm just not sure that's true. I attend conferences sometimes on podcasting. So conferences about podcasting and you can buy a virtual ticket for these conferences almost every single time. So you can either have access to all of the professional quality recordings, video recordings of the sessions. Even if you attended, you have a website you can go to if you buy the virtual ticket to have access to that after you attended, or you can just buy the virtual ticket.
00:20:53
Speaker
and don't have to go at all. And yet they still have thousands of people show up at these things because some people really get a lot out of the face-to-face interaction. And plus sometimes there's workshops and things like that that you just can't do virtually. Well, you can, but they don't do it typically at a conference.
00:21:09
Speaker
So I totally agree. I think people would still attend these things. Some people would, and a lot more people who just physically can't would still be able to benefit from the data. At the same time, I'm thinking about graduate students or undergraduate students who would love to attend conferences, which comes with a prize.
00:21:29
Speaker
And so maybe they're not going to attend in any case, but as you said, if they got a visual ticket, maybe, you know, we can reduce the gap and grant accessibility, more accessibility to a wider broader audience who might be interested by us know the resources to join, you know, the in-person event. Right. Laura, do you have thoughts on this type of conference topic?
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, generally, it's very, very tough to find the balance between virtual and real, it's a very complicated thing to grasp for many of us and for many academics for sure. But I really wanted to get back on this point, and also what Paul was mentioning about democratizing archaeology, which is a form of
00:22:17
Speaker
accessibility in itself, and democratizing not only the participation and sharing of knowledge, but the production of data. It's really a fundamental point nowadays, again, thinking of the colonializing, especially the archaeology of certain areas of the world and the Arabian Peninsula is one of those. Finding ways to democratize data production in archaeology is really part we should be doing daily.
00:22:44
Speaker
And I think this brings us swiftly to a very clear other example of problematic relationship between virtual and real, intangible and tangible. And that's remote sensing. So remote sensing might be one of the most powerful tools to democratize data production in archaeology. And we have some really good examples of that, for example, with the Yamina project, endangered archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa project.
00:23:13
Speaker
So this project is really centered on remote sensing and mapping archaeology to remote sensing, but also teaching local communities in the various countries of the MENA region, training them to learn, to the tools, to the technology, to reading maps, producing maps, and so on. And I think that's a very powerful way of empowering local communities in producing data firsthand.
00:23:39
Speaker
That said again there's always the good old other side of the coin so is that dangerous to share location of archaeology to make so obvious that location archaeological sites can be accessible to everyone.
00:23:58
Speaker
Do we want that? Do we want control on that? The answer is probably we should reconsider what we do when we work abroad, when we work with local communities and work a lot on awareness way before technological progress in data production archaeology.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, this brings in a lot of the conversations lately about fair and care, and especially what you just were talking about there. Is it good to share all these locations? And the care, what stands for collective benefit, authority to control responsibility and ethics, it definitely falls within that authority and responsibility realm of the care principles. But I think it's interesting that these are concepts that are
00:24:41
Speaker
starting to permeate more and more discussions of archaeological data, archaeological research, access. We've used accessibility a million times already in this podcast. And that these are general principles that people are ascribing more and more to, but that there's also internal conflicts within them, which makes it a really challenging challenge. Brilliant. Really challenging to approach. Very challenging challenge. Yeah, indeed.
00:25:11
Speaker
Okay, well, why don't we take our final break and then we'll come up and wrap up our thoughts on this topic on the other side, back in a minute. Welcome back to the final segment of this Archeology Show, Archeotech crossover episode. Again, check out both shows if you don't know the other one exists at arcpodnet.com or search for the other one on your favorite podcast player, whatever you're listening to this on right now, and you will find an entire catalog of shows for both of those. Both of these shows actually started
00:25:40
Speaker
very early on in the archaeology podcast network history. So we're up well over 200 episodes in both. So that's a lot of content for you guys to listen to. Okay. So this is a great topic for me. I really love it because I'm, I'm, I'm just waiting. And I know there's been like little niche things that have happened like this, but I'm really waiting for a conference to happen a hundred percent virtually, right? While we're talking about conferences.
00:26:04
Speaker
And I just don't know if the will is there because it still takes organization, still takes people to do it. Somebody would probably need to fund some of the organization of it. You could even charge if you wanted to. Just because it's virtual doesn't mean it doesn't have cost, right? That's for sure. But then we also run into the problem of talking about accessibility. Just not everybody has a way to access a virtual conference, right? So these headsets are coming down in price as far as VR goes.
00:26:33
Speaker
but there's still several hundred dollars, but I would argue way cheaper than a conference ticket most of the time when you talk about travel and hotels and things like that. So maybe we need somebody to just put something like this together so we can see what it looks like, just see what it is. So have any of you guys been in discussions or heard anybody discussing this in any real sense of having something like this? Or is it all just theoretical and maybe we should do this, but nobody's really planning it.
00:27:03
Speaker
Well, I guess, unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic, I think it accelerated the topic. Because of course, for a year and a half, basically all the conferences, the big international and national conferences were suspended. But then, you know, a new way started, which first was fully online,
00:27:26
Speaker
And then now it's moving towards hybrid. So certain sessions are in person, some other can be online, remote. And I think, you know, as we move forward in the days, there must be a new compromise, because we know now that technology can allow people to attend.
00:27:47
Speaker
without traveling in a certain way and we still get the same content as you mentioned before maybe we don't get all the events arranged around an in-person conference but yet it's possible you know to discuss and to promote knowledge also remotely and it's quicker and faster in a certain way and so
00:28:11
Speaker
I don't know if the conversation will develop in the next couple of years or if it takes a decade, but surely we are going in that direction, I think. I think so. Laura, you had thoughts on this too. Yeah. Well, hopefully we'll go in that direction because I've heard of weddings being held virtually. I've heard of fairs and tech fairs being held.
00:28:37
Speaker
virtually, but not archaeological conferences or academic conferences in general. And Chris, you're absolutely right. There are costs involved in that. There are challenges, technological challenges and accessibility to the technology both very simply to the internet can be more challenging than than we think. So yeah, hopefully in the future, there will be at least some attempts to consider this alternative way of attending academic events and conferences.
00:29:07
Speaker
I do note that in the computer programming world, there have been attempts at doing this. Depending on the planning and the technology platform that they're on, they are more or less successful. But one of the constant complaints about them is that people go to conferences in order to see their friends and their colleagues to actually
00:29:28
Speaker
spend time together. To me, the bigger challenge is how to make it feel like you're actually attending an event together. I'm kind of curious. I hadn't heard that about the weddings, but I'm kind of curious if the attendees of the wedding feel like they're participants or if they're just bystanders watching in.
00:29:45
Speaker
Well, in a good virtual environment, I always bring up Second Life because they actually did this really well. Your volume changes with proximity to somebody virtually within the environment. So the closer you get to them, the more you can hear them, just like in real life. And if you were to hold a virtual conference in some sort of venue that has that capability and plenty of them in the
00:30:07
Speaker
the meta world do right there's lots of different worlds within there that you can and different apps and things like that where you could hold something like this and you can even do it. For free from a venue standpoint at least not necessarily for an organization standpoint and you can still have these conversations and i think people would be.
00:30:25
Speaker
I don't know. Let, let me back up because I think this whole concept, you hear this all the time that, well, the reason I attend a conference is because I want to see these colleagues that I only see, you know, once every couple of times a year when I attend these conferences and like, well, maybe if we had a more virtual reality existence that you'd see them more often and that would no longer be the case. So, you know,
00:30:45
Speaker
we can collaborate more because that's one of the accessibility things, right, is collaboration. Not only accessibility for conferences and for sites and the public, but the ability to collaborate virtually and to really see things and work with things that you're working on with people who are in someplace else entirely. With 3D reconstruction, like you guys said, the ability to quickly scan objects, bring them into this virtual environment, hand them back and forth.
00:31:11
Speaker
If you're going to discuss something along those lines, go to a site and participate in doing these kinds of things. Heck, even in the future, maybe we'll have robots on site doing the digging with our virtual shovel, and then we got a robot with a shovel on site. Following our movements, just like doctors do.
00:31:29
Speaker
a little too much, but maybe not because one of the other things you guys mentioned with artificial intelligence and how that's starting to come into archaeology a lot more, which we didn't actually even talk about in the show yet.
AI in Archaeology: Potential and Applications
00:31:41
Speaker
But maybe in the last few minutes here, what do both of you think about artificial intelligence and things like, you know, chat, chat, GPT and Google's Gemini. Now they're calling it instead of Bard and different tools like that as far as archaeology and this whole concept of accessibility. Laura, I'll start with you.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, I'm not extremely familiar with AI applications in archaeology, like wider AI, but I've done a bit of work with again, on remote sensing and a lot of reading on how AI and deep learning techniques can be used for remote sensing, and they're really doing
00:32:14
Speaker
wonders in terms of accelerating and facilitating our job to identify anomalies in satellite images. So that's brilliant. That's sad. I also know a couple of colleagues who got grants with a proposal written by chat GPT. So perhaps it's not that it's something to explore. I didn't even think about that. I will not disclose the names.
00:32:41
Speaker
Nice, nice. Alessandro, what about you? Yes. Well, it's curious that we're dwelling to AI because I just spent the last week to engineers from the department of computer sciences, specifically robotics. And we explored a lot because I had questions for them like, okay, it's artificial intelligence going, you know, to substitute in a certain way human beings.
00:33:11
Speaker
And, you know, in between jokes, what I've learned is that he's there and I've learned it from professionals, okay? I'm an amateur of GPT. There, artificial intelligence will support and is designed, at least at this stage, to support research and not to substitute people in research.
00:33:33
Speaker
These came obvious in the moment when we were doing 3D models outside of a Roman system underground. They used their tablets with LiDAR technology.
00:33:51
Speaker
Literally two minutes, we had a 3D model ready, you know, for Metafest or any other kind of devices. But there were gaps because, you know, the tablet couldn't get every single corner or every single detail. And here comes the artificial intelligence helping and supporting. So they were able, you know, to provide
00:34:15
Speaker
a few lines of code, I think, and ask artificial intelligence to fill the gap of the 3D model and to smooth it so that it's something that produces more pleasure when you look at it. And in that case, I immediately understand the potential of artificial intelligence, which is to help and to support
00:34:39
Speaker
our research, providing fast tools to produce certain 3D models or virtual reality environment and so on and so forth. So in a certain way, again, it's going to be
00:34:54
Speaker
a big challenge for the future. I guess there must be regulations on the use of artificial intelligence, but it may support and help and in a certain way to speed up processes that otherwise could take months and we can do, you know, in 10 minutes or two hours. And that is going to be an enormous research tool.
00:35:18
Speaker
Well, I feel like artificial intelligence is in the same phase that say, I don't know, the internet was when it first became popular. People saying, Oh, you can't trust anything out there. You can't do anything. And then now it's a tool that we can't work without. Right. So I have no doubt that it will get there.
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, and talking about using the scanning with the tablet, I've done that with my phone, quickly recording archaeological features, soil profiles, and the like, and that was absolutely unheard of a few years ago. I mean, we've only had these cell phones that could do all this stuff for a decade and a half now, and I can only imagine how quickly everything is. So for me, when we think of technology,
00:35:59
Speaker
and expanding what we can do with it, I always have to remind myself that, geez, it's a fast-moving, fast-changing world. And what seems really kind of crazy right now in a few years might be normal and easy.
Reflections on Technology and Cultural Heritage
00:36:12
Speaker
All right, well, do either of you, I'll start with Alessandro, have any final thoughts or things you'd like our audience to know related to this topic of accessibility and archaeology? Alessandro, go ahead.
00:36:24
Speaker
Yes, basically what I would like to add is that the wider use of technology, of the internet, and as we mentioned, artificial intelligence can only help accessibility cultural heritage and that accessibility gets, you know, different perspectives and
00:36:46
Speaker
In my personal opinion, it will enhance not only the big large monumental sites like Pompeii, Rome, or Alula, but also what we consider minor sites in a certain way, which are spread all over the world. And instead we can grant access to wider knowledge to everyone, to technology. We will need to work on that.
00:37:13
Speaker
Of course, it's not immediate. And again, it needs regulations, it needs, you know, proper concepts, but still it's a powerful tool that we have to make history, which is basically our common path as humankind accessible to the largest possible audience in the world. Wow. Well said. Laura, what are your final thoughts on this topic?
00:37:38
Speaker
Absolutely no completely agree with with Alessandro and just a reminder that obviously we had a lovely conversation of technology and accessibility and so on and obviously our point of view is extremely privileged so we are all archaeologists we made it we will leave with what we like to do we have a laptop we clearly have internet if we are talking here and so again our point of view today is very privileged I think that it's important to remark again that
00:38:08
Speaker
we need to have more and more uncomfortable conversation. Times are mature now to go beyond thinking that innovation is a synonymous of technology because that's not always the case. Times are mature to have conversation about what technology implies in terms again of accessibility, making archaeology accessible, but also sustainable and more inclusive in general.
00:38:33
Speaker
Excellent. Well, this has been a great show for our archaeotech audience. It tends to be largely archaeologists, so I feel like they're used to Paul and I having this conversation. But for the archaeology show audience, they tend to not be archaeologists, just people who are interested in archaeology. I imagine people on that show
00:38:52
Speaker
are finding this topic fascinating because a lot of them may want to attend a conference virtually or at least the public aspect of a virtual conference if we were to have something like that and maybe even explore some of these other applications that allow us to see sites. I mentioned Blue Planet VR is one of the ones on Meta.
00:39:12
Speaker
And we interviewed the founder of Blue Planet VR on a podcast years ago. And they've got some really cool stuff that they're doing, largely archeological and geologically focused. So check them out. And then Lithodomos VR as well. I'm not sure if they have a MetaQuest app yet, but they have their own thing going on with basically virtual ancient site tourism, right?
00:39:33
Speaker
They've got a lot of the big famous ancient sites that they've gone and done photorealistic reconstructions of. So you can literally walk around and inside of these environments and then hear sights and sounds and things like that. So anyway, it's a fun transition time I feel like that we're in with archaeology.
00:39:52
Speaker
See where all of this goes. All right. Well, we really appreciate having you guys on the show. Thank you very much. And again, if you got anything else that you ever want to talk about, please contact us and we will bring you back on. Thanks, Laura and Alessandro. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you both. And thank you, Paul, for joining in this conversation. Well, I'm glad I could. All right. We'll see everybody.
00:40:19
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash Archeotech. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paulatlugol.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:40:45
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.