Interactive Virtual Archaeology: Constructing the Prehistoric Past at Avebury Henge

Avebury Henge is situated approximately 20 miles north of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, U.K. and contains the largest known Neolithic stone circle in Europe. It is part of the Avebury, Stonehenge and Associated Sites World Heritage Site but is less well-known than Stonehenge, despite being an impressive monument with a ditch and bank system more than 400m in diameter. In the past 20 years or so many computer-based simulations of archaeological sites around the world have been created, but many of these digital reconstructions lack both the ability to enable personal presence of the user in the virtual landscape itself, and the facility for users to interact with others and the virtual environment around them in real time. The project described in this paper aims to research the issues of presence and interaction in virtually reconstructed ancient landscapes through a reconstruction of Avebury Henge in a virtual world environment, as it might have been circa 2,300 BCE. This paper describes and evaluates the construction phase of the project in a virtual world environment.