At home, visiting graves in Rome: VR environments as spaces for virtual collaboration

With data from a digital mapping campaign of funerary monuments in Rome we are working on a visualization and multi-person VR environment with integrated tools aimed at remote access and collegial collaborations. The past few years have highlighted for society in general the need to maintain work and continue development during periods where meeting physically for collaboration is not an option. However, for archaeological research conducted on an international scope these issues are not new, and the access to sites, objects, and colleagues has always been hampered by distance and funds. Using survey data from the cemetery Necropoli di S. Paolo on the Via Ostiense outside of Rome that were gathered by this team under the auspices of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina we have collaborated on the analysis and interpretation of the site from locations across the Atlantic – one of us is based in the States and the other in Europe. Our collaboration has been facilitated by the survey data itself as we have built digital visualizations of the cemetery for our analysis of the site. A scientific report of the work, work process, and findings of the project has just been published (Bargfeldt & Borbonus 2022). Additionally, we are working on a VR environment that gives multiple researchers access to the virtual site at the same time. Within this environment we are experimenting with various tools. Our VR environment will allow researchers from widely different regions to remotely access an archaeological site together, call in other specialist, and collaborate on relevant questions. The VR environment also has the potential to be converted into dissemination and learning scenarios for a wider public.