The 1st International Workshop on Virtual Archaeology – Museums & Cultural Tourism will be held in Delphi (Greece) in September 25-28, 2013. The workshop is organized by the University of the Aegean, Dept. of Mediterranean Studies, Laboratory of Archaeometry (GR), in collaboration with the University of the Aegean, Dept. of Product and Systems Design Engineering (GR), the Athena-Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies (GR), the Duke University, Dept. of Classical Studies (US), under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports.

Aims and Scope

The debate on issues concerning digital processing and presentation of museum collections, monuments and sites started in the late 90s and it continues today.

Interest now focuses on the relationships between museums, artifacts, digital technologies and the Web (WWW), and their role in the redefinition of the museum itself as “communication engine”. The interaction between real ontologies, the empirical perception of material culture – objects – and their virtual ontologies – the digital representations – creates new perspectives in the domain of data analysis, data sharing, data contextualization and cultural transmission. In this way, every museum is a meta-museum since artifacts, sites and objects exist in relation and interaction with cultural processes. The meta-museum promotes the action of recontextualization of sites and objects, otherwise impossible in an exhibit or museum display. In other words, in the digital domain, a museum artifact is the outcome of a very sophisticated informational and communicational process, contextualized in a virtual network of relations. The museum and its collections are themselves a site or a “sitefact”, because they create new contexts and territories of knowledge.

The international workshop entitled VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY: Museums & Cultural Tourism aims at investigating all new trends in the field of digital (e.g., online, virtual) museums, virtual communities, archaeometric studies, digital cultural tourism and related topics.

The workshop is open to students, museum and cultural heritage professionals, scholars, archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, IT specialists and engineers and others working on digital applications in cultural heritage, public and private museums, etc. The workshop is intended to enable collaborations and projects on Greek and international archaeological case studies.

Topics include, but are not restricted to, the following: Visualizing archaeology and heritage in 3D, Virtual Communities, Virtual museums, Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality applications, Serious Games, Interaction Design, Museums, Narrative and Virtual Storytelling, Handheld and mobile technologies, Web 2.0 and Social Networking in cultural heritage, Interactive installations in museums and heritage sites, Digital Hermeneutics and Museum Studies, Data mining and digital archives, Data, digitization, documentation, Digital technologies for archeological research, Digital Cultural Tourism, Copyright in the Digital Age, Museum Digital Resource Management, Digital preservation of historical & traditional practices, Quantitative and qualitative evaluation, Virtual Educational approaches, Virtual Archaeometry

Important Dates

Submission of Title & Abstract (500 words): June 1, 2013

Acceptance notification: July 31, 2013

Deadline for early registration: August 5, 2013

Submission of Full papers: October 31, 2013

Registration

Early Registration fee (until 5th of August 2013): 200 Euros

Late Registration fee: 250 Euros

Registation includes:

Transportation to and from Delphi: pick-up from Athens International Airport to Delphi on September 25th, at 16.00 the latest. Departure from Delphi to Athens on September 28th.

Accommodation in Delphi (B&B) for 3 nights

All lunches, dinners and coffee breaks

Workshop material

Airfare and extras at the hotel are not included in the registration fee.