This is a Communicating Research to Public Audiences (CRPA) award that addresses the issues around the Chacoan people and their impact on the Middle San Juan region of New Mexico during the era of 1050-1150 AD. This area and its people have been the subject of interest to the Archaeological field with studies and a PBS documentary suggesting solar system awareness and use. This prooject goes beyond the past data providing modern interpretation of the site and the Chacoan people's impact via migration. The primary collaborators on this project are the Center for Desert Archaeology, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Salmon Ruins Museum, and the Mesa Verde National Park (National Park system).
The project design includes exhibits at two museums (Aztec Ruins National Monument and Salmon Ruins) with interactive touch-screen computer systems which enable the visitors to digitally tour the Aztec and Salmon pueblos viewing architecture, artifacts, and the landscape of the Middle San Juan area. Visitors will also be able to manipulate 3-D animations, deriving their own experiences and choices. Finally, there will be fixed interactive displays. In this way, the visitor will be able to go back and recreate the past. Using the methods and artifacts participants will be able to derive the migration of the Chaco peoples and their impacts on the pueblos. It is anticipated that the digital media will be shared on the internet for extended impact. Evaluation by outside consultants consists of front-end and summative analyses.
The intended outcomes include increasing the knowledge of local citizens using the interactive exhibit with two languages and cultural correctness. Youth will be served in a similar manner. In addition, the participants will be acquainted with the techniques used by the scientists thereby imparting logic, methodologies, and interpretation skills.
With support from the National Science Foundation and Archaeology Southwest, preservation archaeologists Douglas Gann and Paul Reed have created a digital touch screen exhibit entitled Chaco’s Legacy. This project is the culmination of years of research and programming. The exhibit opened on May 2, 2014 at Aztec Ruins National Monument and Salmon Ruins Museum, near Bloomfield, New Mexico. Through the Chaco’s Legacy exhibition, museum visitors can immerse themselves in the Chacoan landscape. A touch screen enables people to tour the Chacoan world through time and across space, interactively exploring eight monumental great houses, including Pueblo Bonito, Salmon Pueblo and the West Pueblo of Aztec, several small villages, some pueblo room interiors, two ceremonial spaces, and hundreds of ancient objects, all dating between about A.D. 850 and 1200. The Chacoan landscape users navigate is a photorealistic digital model generated from photographs taken especially for the project. Archaeology Southwest created hundreds of 3D reconstructions of architecture and objects through a photogrammetric process using actual museum collections and a synthesis of nearly a century’s worth of published archaeological data. The digital infrastructure that drives this exhibit has been developed into a tool we are calling Chronological Virtual Reality (CVR), a content management system for building interactive exhibits. The system enables people to explore ancient places through defined pathways. Each stop on a virtual path can share text, 3D models, audio narration, and the views of scholars and Native American experts.
