Experiencing the Lost and Invisible: AR Visualisation of the Past at Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey

This project will use innovative and disruptive augmented reality (AR) to immerse members of the public in their prehistoric heritage. This proof-of-concept project will deliver an immersive audio-visual experience allowing visitors to encounter the hidden history at one of the most important prehistoric sites in Britain. We will combine innovative approaches to archaeological narratives and artistic representation, enabling people to walk back through time at Bryn Celli Ddu Neolithic chambered tomb. Visitors will use their smart phones or tablets to experience the site over the course of its history, peeling back the layers to discover the history of the place and landscape, through which they can move, stop and engage with digital archaeology.

Bryn Celli Ddu is a late Neolithic passage tomb, excavated in 1929, now partially and perhaps unsatisfactorily, reconstructed. It is one of the most important prehistoric monuments in northwest Europe, and attracts c.10 000 visitors annually, with considerable implications for the quality of archaeological interpretation provided to members of the public, and significant economic value to Anglesey. The monument and its landscape - the subject of this AR representation - is unique in the complexity of its archaeological remains. The landscape has over 10,000 years of human activity: ranging from Mesolithic hunter gatherers; a causewayed enclosure raised by the earliest Neolithic farmers; a later Neolithic henge, stone circle and passage tomb; associated ceremonial deposition of pottery and polished stone axes; a series of burial cairns; and a landscape of at least 12 prehistoric rock art panels. The complexity of the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape has rightly led to comparisons with Stonehenge.

AR, creative visual reconstruction, and sound-art will allow visitors to experience the changing development of this important monument from the deep time of prehistory to the present. It will allow them to interact with three-dimensional textured models of the artefacts from the site whilst standing in the burial chamber, and pull back layers of soil to reveal the buried archaeology. This project will develop and refine the digital technologies and data to provide a rich, textured, immersive experience, within which members of the public can encounter a prehistoric monument in the full complexity of its time-depth and landscape connections. This project will place Bryn Celli Ddu at the centre of the circle of place-memory-performance: the physical remains of the past in its landscape; the cultural memory of artefacts now in museums; and the experience of multi-sensory immersion in the environment.

Heritage is often presented to a non-specialist audience as static: the protected site, the conserved object, or the listed building. As a result, both the time-depth of physical heritage, and the connections between artefacts, monuments, places and landscapes are made invisible. Digital technologies allow us to re-immerse monuments and artefacts in their past contexts, and to do so in a manner that provides maximum accessibility to public stakeholders - the very people on whose behalf this heritage is preserved. The project will be delivered bilingually in English and Welsh, targeting one of the Welsh Governments areas of exclusion, and will emphasise visual narratives and audio representations, as ways of telling that move beyond simple dialectic forms of public engagement.

By developing the necessary technology and connections between specialists, this project will serve as a proof-of-concept that will be scaled to an appreciation of prehistory nationwide in phase 2 of the call. We will produce a prototype app-based AR system and online VR version to allow access for those who cannot physically visit the site. Evaluation and testing of the system will provide essential information on the challenges and rewards of scaling up the technology to wider applications.

Experiencing the Lost and Invisible is a proof-of-concept project, and as such we see defined pathways to impact as an outcome of this stage, as noted in the funding call document. However, even at this stage of the research, there are potential positive impacts for a range of stakeholders.

Local Communities, Schools and the Public

Bryn Celli Ddu plays an important role in the local community - it is a well-known site, with regular visits by school groups, archaeological volunteers, the druid community, and attendees to open-day events. The impact on these groups is the deepening of understanding rather than attracting new visitors. School groups, either through AR interaction on site, or through the use of the VR version in the classroom, will be able to explore the detailed archaeological data, and see the associated artefacts that are usually inaccessible in a classroom setting, or never visible whilst visiting the site.

Local people will be able to experience the results of the archaeological research that they have either taken part in or witnessed in previous years, rather than having to study hard-to-access unpublished reports. They will be able to see the artefacts held in museum storage that cannot be accessed without appointments or that are held in institutions outside the local community.

The bi-lingual aspect of the project will be of particular benefit to Welsh-language first speakers, who are traditionally excluded from the English-dominated heritage narrative. Bryn Celli Ddu is also located in a 'Communities First' area of economic deprivation in Wales, and as such will have significant social and educational impact.

Museums

Museum collections and dynamic means of accessing them lie at the heart of the project. Smaller local museums, such as Oriel Ynys Mon and Gwynedd Museum and Art Gallery in NW Wales, do not receive the public exposure or funding of larger national museums. By incorporating their collections, virtually, in our AR experiences their valuable custodial role will be highlighted and new visitors attracted from socio-economic groups that, whilst ready for technological engagement, may only rarely visit museums themselves.

Public Sector Agencies

As a non-academic project partner, the Welsh heritage agency Cadw can expect significant benefits from this research, both at this stage and as the project expands in later funding rounds. Cadw's statutory role is the preservation of heritage, whilst ensuring public access and education to the widest range of people, including BME or socio-economic groups that traditionally engage less with heritage. The crossover with the educational and social impacts outlined above are clear, but the technological elements of the project, and the outcome of dynamically experiencing the past, will positively engage younger members of the audience with Bryn Celli Ddu and, in later phases, other sites of historic interest. Media attention that attends technological developments in the heritage sector will also benefit Cadw through positive public exposure and an increase in heritage tourism.

Artistic and Creative Industries

The artistic community in Wales and the creative industries more generally, stand to benefit from this project. Whilst artistic engagement with heritage in Wales is currently very healthy (due largely to the efforts of our project partners at Cadw), it could be broadened through digital interventions alongside the more traditional, physical works. The integration of artistic work with digital heritage is at the core of this project - at this stage, sound-art has been selected as the key component to deliver an immersive experience. Going forward, artists will benefit from being involved in a digital project that will spread their work to a wider audience, including those who are keen to participate with digital technologies, but who sit outside the core constituency of those who regularly engage with artistic works.