Driving engagement in heritage sites using personal mobile technology

The use of smartphone and tablet devices is now becoming more common in heritage and museum settings. The aim is often to further develop public engagement with tangible and intangible cultural heritage, explain and explore existing information about artefacts, sites and cultures and present new information in engaging and accessible ways to a range of audiences. Community archaeology groups are becoming alert to this trend and wish to engage with it too, particularly for 3D exploration of built archaeology and the artefacts associated with it. This poses a number of challenges that differ from those for artefacts and documents in museum settings alone. It also poses contextual challenges in relation to specific and highly engaged user groups like community archaeologists. This paper describes completed apps which have been designed to address some of these unique challenges of interpreting and exploring 3D digitally reconstructed historic buildings for community heritage groups.