Project description (the original proposal)

The aim of the project is to increase our knowledge of how emerging digital technologies can help our understanding and explanations of social history.

Within the period October 2000 - January 2001, we will conduct a pilot study for a novel multimedia product based around the Beeches Road Town House archaeological site in Cirencester.  Corinium (Roman Cirencester) was the major Roman administrative centre for south-western Britain, and the second largest town in Roman Britain.

The Town House was constructed in the mid to late fourth century and excavations have revealed the full outline of the building and a number of spectacular mosaics, including the Hare Mosaic. Cirencester has one of the most complete archaeological archives for the Roman period, including the largest excavation and study of a fourth century cemetery site in Western Europe. The latter has provided invaluable demographic information about the age, sex and health of the local population in the fourth century.  The town has a large provenanced coin collection which is a unique source of information about not only the economic life of the town but changes in occupation. 

One of the particular problems that the museum faces is how to relate an excavated archaeological site and the artefacts found there to the social history of the period.  This is where we think that new computer and communications technologies can help.

Multimedia and Internet-based technologies have been in use in museums for several years.  Though many consider them as ‘tools’ for the dissemination of secondary information concerning the museum’s resources, others have believed that they may have a deeper significance for both the methods of working within museums and the way that an informed public can interact with the collection.

Through the use of various visualisation tools (for example, 'avatar' technology) we will explore how to construct an experience that addresses a number of key issues:

• how to present history as a process of conjecture and exploration, rather than simply a matter of facts;
• how to represent a site and an historic period for which there is no single dominant explanatory narrative;
• how to represent social history through different viewpoints by using techniques from theatre such as characterisation;
• how to visualise aspects of historical reconstruction about which we are less than certain, without implying definite knowledge.

This will be a community-based project, involving the participation of a range of  ‘knowledge’ and ‘stake’-holders (e.g. local historians and teachers as well as Museum and University staff) in discussions, especially around the visual interpretation and representation of the past. 

The main outcomes will be a prototype world wide web site and a written report.

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