This page has three main sections:
- Archaeology at Gressenhall, a brief discussion of the current state of archeological work at the site
- Workhouse Objects, a small gallery of some of the artifacts found at Gressenhall
- Empathy in Digital Archaeology, an examination of the discipline’s ability to foster and promote empathy
Archaeology at Gressenhall Workhouse
At the most basic level, archaeology is the study of the things that humans throw away or leave behind. It is not just the study of artifacts and places from long ago. Historical archaeology encompasses a broad spectrum, from the beginnings of writing up through the modern era. Even for a site like Gressenhall that has detailed historical records and a surviving structure, archaeological evidence can help to expand and deepen our understanding of the people that lived and used the site in the past.
The 2005 excavation report details findings from multiple trenches dug during drainage work on the site. Some of the original brick foundations of the stable used by the Guardians were found in the building’s former location. The area behind the chapel has a layer of cobblestones just below the surface; underneath this at the north end was an old wall extending from the boiler room. Brick foundations were found in the laundry yard, although no building has stood there since 1846, when the laundry building itself was built. The men’s work yard yielded “substantial brick wall foundations” as well as flint foundations, a combination that suggests actual buildings instead of just dividing walls. Excavations also uncovered the probable location of the pump house.
Excavation work in May 2007 uncovered a section of brick wall foundation in the Learning Center Yard. This was a very targeted excavation designed to determine if the wall’s foundation, or wall footing, still existed. The wall’s location was marked on the 1813 Enclosure map (pictured below) and the trench was positioned to uncover the foundation.
In very recent news, an untouched rubbish heap was found in the woods of the site in March 2016, and excavation work will commence in summer 2016.
Workhouse Objects
Artifacts were found during the excavations, and additionally during renovation work on the former workhouse building. Such artifacts can help give us a glimpse into what life would have been like at the workhouse. Children probably used the cloth and rubber balls to play games, proving that even though they had to make toys out of collected scraps, they still had time to play and be children. A glass saltshaker like the one pictured below likely would have been used by the master, matron or Guardians during one of their meals. Finally, the wooden reels would probably have been used by women working at the spinning wheels.
Hover over the images below for descriptions and the location where they were found, or click on one to see it in higher resolution.
Empathy in Digital Archaeology
Archaeologists constantly deal with questions of interpretation and presentation. In the post introducing this page, I wrote briefly about some of the objects that have been found in the workhouse and the ways in which they help us to fill out the stories of the people who lived there. One aspect of archaeology that plays a central part in this project is digital archaeology, the building of interactive 3D models that can help viewers understand a space more fully.
In theory, digital experiences help viewers to empathize with the experiences of people who have come before them. In practice, the situation is considerably more complicated. Digital experiences are on their way to helping empathy, but not all of the pieces work well enough at the current juncture to accomplish this goal.
Over the course of this project I’ve looked at many different digital archaeology projects, including Virtual Paul’s Cross, the Pudding Lane recreation, the Great Fire of London game (Flash required), Rome Reborn, the Digital Hadrian’s Villa project (Flash required), and the Villa Oplontis project.
Each project takes a different approach to creation and use. Two specific examples are the Villa Oplontis project and the Rome Reborn project. While neither model has been released to the public, very little overall is known about the model of the Villa of Oplontis. The website doesn’t have a development blog, screenshots, or a video walkthrough. The Rome Reborn project, on the other hand, has an active development blog, with screenshots depicting new models and video flyovers of the updated model.
Most of these projects focus heavily on the visual aspect when recreating the experience of visiting the sites. The Virtual Paul’s Cross is the notable exception to this, with its main focus being on an auditory recreation, with a lower-quality reconstruction of the church to help situate the viewer within the space. The Rome Reborn project is ambitious, but well-executed. The videos of the model, which include small humans moving about within the space, give it more of a lived-in, used feel than a project like the Pudding Lane recreation.
Both the Pudding Lane and Villa of Oplontis projects put a good deal of time and effort into accurately modelling their respective sites of interest, but especially in the case of Pudding Lane, the model felt eerily empty. The Villa of Oplontis project’s goal with the model isn’t actually to promote empathy at all; rather, its goal is to provide a ‘physical’ sense of the space to act “as an index to the information gathered by the 42 scholars contributing to the four-volume publication” (Clarke 2012, pg. 54). It is still a valuable resource, but it doesn’t promote understanding of and empathy for people living in the past.
Research has shown that immersive virtual environments, even ones populated by heavily simplified avatars, can help to reduce negative stereotyping (Yee and Bailey, 2006, pg. 1). As far as I can tell, none of these projects are calculated or designed to help their users empathize with people from the past. I argue this in part because, as already noted, most of the models are unpopulated. Empathy arises from interacting with other people, being able to see their body language and facial expressions and hear their voice. That connection to people is almost wholly absent from all of these recreations.
Most of the current applications of digital experiences are derived from archaeology. In that respect, it has been groundbreaking; the Villa of Oplontis project was able to recreate decorations and sections of the villa based on recovered fragments and archival photos and drawings from the original excavation (Clarke 2012, pg. 61). As Diane Favro noted, there are different degrees of accuracy and precision in different models, and thus the overall effect of viewing them varies as well (Favro 2012, pg. 274–275). If technology improves to the point that most consumer-grade computers are able to accurately render not only a complex 3D model, but also a realistic number of functional avatars to populate it, there would be a sea change in the effect of digital experiences. Empathy requires more than “real-time digital reconstructions [that] make space palpable” (Favro 2012, pg. 274). David Austin has written at length about the concerns inherent in presenting archaeology to the public. One of his central propositions is that “archaeology is a performance art of the past” (Austin 1998, pg. 163). In a digital recreation, this is literally true, as the user is interacting with (performing in) a representation of the past.
In the case of the Gressenhall model, the goal is to promote empathy and understanding of the lives of the inmates, masters, physicians, and others who interacted with or lived in the workhouse. Their stories will be told through interactive text-based stories situated within the workhouse model, such as this one. These stories will hopefully contain some models of the types of artifacts and materials that would have been used by their protagonists.
References
Austin, David.1998. Private and public: an archaeological consideration of things. na.
Dennis, Megan. 2007. Report on an Archaeological Excavation at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse, Dereham, Norfolk.
Diane Favro. 2012. “se Non È Vero, È Ben Trovato (if Not True, It Is Well Conceived): Digital Immersive Reconstructions of Historical Environments”. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71 (3). [Society of Architectural Historians, University of California Press]: 273–777.
Excavation Report Summer 2005. Norfolk Rural Life Museum Gressenhall.
Yee, Nick, and Jeremy N. Bailenson. “Walk a mile in digital shoes: The impact of embodied perspective-taking on the reduction of negative stereotyping in immersive virtual environments.” Proceedings of PRESENCE (2006): 24-26.
