Augmented Reality to Enhance Visitors’ Experience at Archaeological Sites

After archaeological excavations are completed, many of the sites are prepared for visitors by including things such as (1) scientific interpretations of what the uncovered structures might represent, (2) reconstructions of ancient structures and (3) historical items or artifacts found during excavations. In addition to these, technology including augmented reality (AR) can be used to provide additional information on site. We study how currently popular global location-based AR games are supplementing the visitors experience at three archaeological sites in the Levant: Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo and Tel Gezer by inspecting virtual points of interest (PoIs) in the game Ingress Prime. In the three locations, the virtual PoIs are linked to real world locations, however, they cover only a fraction of the visible archaeological structures. A bias was seen in the PoI names and descriptions towards certain archaeological interpretations. We propose location-based AR games should utilize as rigorous information of archaeological sites as possible, in order to provide players the possibility to learn real history in an accurate way.