Immersive Archaeology. Photo (cc) John Lester

Second Life is one of those things I’m wary of, like Facebook. There’s plenty of people getting excited about them both, but it seems like a very insidous way of building into a gated community and a proprietary format. Electric Archaeology has persuaded me that Second Life could be worth a second look.

Shawn Graham has put up two posts. Archaeology in Second Life…. Where to begin? and Planning archaeology in Second Life (2). Eric Kansa has been throwing around some brilliant ideas as well at Digging Digitally looking at 2nd Life and Archaeological Databases. In my head till now Second Life has been next door to Doom, Quake and Half-Life, but not as compelling due to the lack of gore. The archaeological models I’ve seen have been painstakingly created, but they’ve always seemed unrealistic. Partly because of the limitations of technology, but also because they tend to be re-creations of monuments and artefacts in pristine condition. Between them Shawn and Eric have shown Second Life could be much more interesting if you take another approach and try and build a virtual excavation.
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