Populating Reconstructed Archaeological Sites with Autonomous Virtual Humans

Significant multidisciplinary efforts combining archaeology and computer science have yielded virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites for visualization. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the difficult problem of populating these models, not only to enhance the quality of the visualization, but also to arrive at quantitative computer simulations of the human inhabitants that can help test hypotheses about the possible uses of these sites in ancient times. We introduce an artificial life approach to populating large-scale reconstructions of archaeological sites with virtual humans. Unlike conventional “crowd” models, our comprehensive, detailed models of individual autonomous pedestrians span several modeling levels, including appearance, locomotion, perception, behavior, and cognition. We review our human simulation system and its application to a “modern archaeological” recreation of activity in New York City’s original Pennsylvania Station. We also describe an extension of our system and present its novel application to the visualization of possible human activity in a reconstruction of the Great Temple of ancient Petra in Jordan.