Internet Archaeol 15. Goodrick and Earl. Conclusion

5. Conclusion

It can be seen that problems resulting from the lack of implementation of virtual archaeology are three-fold. Firstly, there are misconceptions that virtual archaeology is expensive, very complicated or both and secondly that there is a lack of readily available information to enable archaeologists to undertake virtual reality projects. Finally, that virtual archaeology is a technical realm — in fact so much of what continues to require debate and attention lies beyond the technicalities of nodes and algorithms.

The tools and methodologies for the routine development of virtual reality and visualisation models within archaeology are available. We are no longer dependent on future developments in hardware and software. As it becomes more obvious that virtual reality has not provided the return on its investment that the industry had anticipated, future developments will probably be limited. For archaeologists to make best use of these technologies we must combine efforts in the investigation of current techniques, and pursue the development of new techniques only where needed. Most importantly, we must bring them together, make them available and standardise their adoption, if we are fully to utilise the potential of our archaeological data.