Will Virtual Reconstruction of Çatalhöyük be Abandoned Due to High Rent Rates in Second Life?

Virtual Çatalhöyük is one of the most well-researched and painstakingly executed ancient world reconstructions in Second Life. But with the rent due, and funding tight, can the researchers keep the environment alive? I spoke to creator Colleen Morgan about the problems of creating reconstructions for high-rent platforms.

Model Town

Over 9,000 years ago, a group of Neolithic people began to build a mud-brick settlement on a hill overlooking the Konya Plain of Turkey.  The structures were placed closely together and the people moved from place to place by accessing the roofs with interior or exterior ladders. Scholars believe communal activities took place on the roofs of the buildings, including the use of communal ovens. 

The people of Çatalhöyük plastered their homes and kept them scrupulously clean.  Excavators have found little trash among the domiciles.  Midden mounds containing refuse and food waste were found outside the village perimeter.  The people appeared to have a vibrant spiritual life.  Over 2,000 figurines of humans and animals have been found since the site was first unearthed in 1961 by Sir James Mellaart.  Murals depicting hunting scenes, wild aurochs, deer and men with erect phalluses embellished the walls within some of the structures.

Analyses of animal remains to determine their age at death indicates that the population fed themselves primarily by hunting, initially supplemented with a few domestic sheep and goats.  The archaeological records shows that as time passed, however, more adult animals were kept and cattle remains increased in proportion, perhaps indicating the development of the processing and consumption of dairy products. 

The remains of granaries contained wheat, barley and peas and archaeologists have found evidence that almonds, pistachios and fruit were apparently harvested from trees growing along the banks of the Carsamba River. 

Potential UNESCO World Heritage Site

Although Çatalhöyük initially received a great deal of international attention following its excavation by Sir James Mellaart in 1961 because of the apparent density of the population center (scholars estimate Çatalhöyük housed up to 10,000 people at its peak) and the unique artwork discovered there, it has only recently been added to the list of sites being considered for designation as World Heritage Sites. 

However, an international archaelogical team lead by Ian Hodder of Stanford University have revealed a vast amount of information about the site since they reopened the site in 1993.  Now, the site has been recreated in Second Life using much of this new information so researchers and the interested public can explore Neolithic life in the ancient Mediterranean basin.

The Open Knowledge and Public Interest research group, (OKAPI), who wished to encourage a "multivocal, reflexive engagement" with current interpretations of Neolithic life drawn from the new finds, invited researchers from the University of California at Berkeley to digitally document a single structure at Çatalhöyük, Building 77, and produce media that could be used not only to enhance the virtual reconstruction of the site but provide additional educational materials about the project.

Twelve faculty and students took up the challenge although few had any formal computer graphics experience.  However, their efforts were coordinated by Noah Wittman, Program Manager of the Open Knowledge and the Public Interest Project at UC Berkeley, who had 15 years experience developing technologies, online platforms and social networks. 

The Virtual Landlord

The group chose to construct their virtual Çatalhöyük in Second Life and virtual land, dubbed OKAPI Island, was rented from Linden Labs.  Students with Photoshop experience and/or experience with Blender or Maya were sought after, although previous computer graphics experience was not a requirement to participate in the project.  Snap Z and Screenflow were also used to produce machinama clips of activities within the virtual environment.

One team member, Colleen Morgan, shared her experiences creating virtual Çatalhöyük and integrating artefacts discovered there using the building tools provided by Second Life in the article (Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology, which appeared in the Journal of the World Archaeological Congress in 2009. 

Morgan was surprised by how the construction of objects within the virtual environment made her ponder architectural issues that excavation of the actual site had not resolved. She writes:

The in-game creation engine is a modified CAD model, where the user manipulates geometric shapes, adding, subtracting, and piecing together the objects to achieve the desired results. This requires the archaeologist to approach artifacts, architecture, and the landscape from a different perspective; one that requires an additive, accretive process, breaking down the object into component parts instead of viewing excavated materials as a whole.

For example, when I was creating an oven, a persistent and pervasive architectural feature that had been excavated repeatedly at Çatalhöyük, I struggled with the hard linearity of the Second Life building model; in building the square base of the oven I knew that in reality the plaster and mudbrick oven had rounded corners.  When adding the roof of the oven, I had to decide how the smoke came out of the top, and how much, a topic that has been extensively debated at Çatalhöyük, as experimental archaeology has proven that smoke from the ovens would quickly fill these windowless, doorless dwellings. The responsibility to interpret the archaeological evidence was in my hands, made concrete by constructing a simple model of an oven. The significance of the observation and accurate interpretation of architectural details became more than an abstract necessity for the archive but a concrete force driving the subsequent gathering of visual materials and hereto unrecognized details that would aid the later implementation of a virtual model.

Forced to Interpret

I spoke with Colleen Morgan about her experience. "As a participant who is generally uninvolved in the final, ‘‘cooked’’ interpretation of the excavated materials at Çatalhöyük, making these interpretive decisions while recreating the room interior challenged my perceptions of the site, and made me truly engage with some of the questions that as an excavator I had pondered only in passing while filling out my data sheets," she admitted.

She also pointed out how an object creator can embed descriptions in objects and note any uncertainties in form or function that have been deduced by the archaeologist so visitors have the opportunity to speculate further and not necessarily accept the representation as fact.

"Participation in the past is not limited to a ‘‘look but do not touch,’’ static, ‘‘correct’’ model." Morgan observes.  "This changeable, constructed past remains connected with the present day, an active, lived-in place that is part of a continuum."

I was surprised by Morgan's disapproval of the use of NPCs (non-player characters) to impart information in virtual environments, though.

"Turning people of the past into mere mouthpieces for their architecture diminishes the rich potential of reconstructions to impart information about complex lifeways," Morgan states.  "Using programmable objects [instead] allows avatars to act as their own guides to the past, populating the re-created ancient landscape with avatars of people interested in the past, interacting with artifacts and taking on roles suggested by these artifacts."

Perhaps she would reconsider if such NPCs were equipped with a natural language interface and an artificial intelligence engine so information could be imparted by answering a visitor's questions in a conversational format.

Although work continues for the time being on OKAPI Island in Second Life, the virtual geographic location of the Çatalhöyük reconstruction, Morgan points out major problems surrounding efforts by academics to share their research with each other and the interested public through such creations in Second Life.

"...often these projects are created by academic institutions as a one-off event, launched, and then abandoned. The Sistine Chapel re-created by Vassar in 2007 created a sensation due to the incredible amount of detail employed, but has not been elaborated upon since then, nor does it offer much history or background of the structure. Many of these sites show signs of neglect, much like heritage sites that have been left in disrepair in the real world. Finally, the sustainability of these virtual sites is also questionable, as students graduate, academics shift in interest, and funding runs out. As of 2008, OKAPI island costs $1800 per year for land-use, an expense that cannot be maintained perpetually without significant supporting institutional infrastructure. Objects created in Second Life are generally untranslatable to other platforms, and reconstructions that run out of funding can face serious data loss."

In addition to her work on OKAPI Island, Morgan has been involved in the digitial documentation of archaeological data for the Presidio in San Francisco.  She is now working on an archaeological game with other collaborators in Oakland, California.

As a technology professional with over 20 years of experience in academia, I wholeheartedly agree with Morgan's assessment of the problems that must be faced by research teams who choose to invest both significant time, effort and ultimately budget to produce historical reconstructions in a commercial environment like Second Life.  During my service, I repeatedly witnessed the "one-offs" later abandonded, sometimes within a single academic year, and the closure of entire research units when additional funding was not forthcoming, usually due to a change in political priorities in Washington.  The single most financially prohibitive aspect of Second Life is the marketing of infinite virtual real estate as a finite, and very expensive, resource.  The outlay of $1800 per year may seem trivial to a large corporate firm (commercial creators are actually charged much more) but it's a substantial sum to a small, publicly funded research unit.  What is even more tragic is the loss of public investment that occurs each time one of these projects is abandoned.  Virtual reconstructions based on research represent a cultural legacy as tangible as the archaeological remains on which they are based.

What is needed is a Creative Commons environment structured administratively like Wikipedia with shared models stored in a Wikimedia archive.  Virtual "land" should be made freely available to anyone wishing to invest the time to develop it.   Raising the ongoing capital to fund the server farms needed to host the environment could be accomplished through a non-profit organization that accepts donations much like Wikipedia does now.  Standards could be developed to prevent or mitigate negative human behaviors that invariably accompany communal endeavors and enforced through a volunteer supervisory structure much like Wikipedia uses today to maintain content quality and expunge graffiti.

Another alternative could be a commercially funded environment structured like Blogger where a land account would be freely available and models could be selected for inclusion like page elements are now.  A model warehouse much like Google's warehouse that contains public Sketchup creations could be accessible to either obtain or store models created by system users.  An "apps store" could parallel the warehouse for commercial creations that could be purchased with micropayments with the commercial host collecting a percentage of the profits.  In-world advertising could be made available to developers much like Google Ad Sense ads are managed today.  Associate ads could also provide some compensation to in-world developers for the time and effort spent in the development process much like the system used by bloggers.  All developed "islands" could be accessed and navigated if set to "public" permissions just like blogs are today.  "Private" islands or "Group" islands could also be created with access managed by the particular in-world developer like group or private blogs are today as well.

At least in this alternative commercial model, content that has already been created would not disappear because of a developer being unable to "pay the rent"!  Although no longer tended, the heritage creation should not collect trash if permissions are set properly when grant funding, user attention or sponsorship ends.

Slideshow of my Visit to Virtual Catalhoyuk:

To view the slideshow in full screen visit this link. If you click on Options and check the box to display titles and descriptions you will find out more information about the people who built this interesting neolithic settlement when you click on each image.

Find out more about our virtual worlds here at Heritage Key such as King Tut Virtual and Stonehenge Virtual, or dive right in and start exploring them for yourself. You're virtually there!

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About The Author

Mary Harrsch (follow me: e-mail or )

Last three pieces by this author:

Aztec Pantheon Exhibit at the Getty: was Mesoamerica Won Through a 'Just War'? | Percy Jackson and the Olympians Take Shortcut to Athens via Nashville Parthenon | Clash of the Titans' 3D CGI are Food of the Gods

Photographer, instructional technologist and consulting systems analyst who travels the world photographing historical art and architecture and publishes articles about historical topics, particularly the ancient world.  My photography has appeared in productions for The History Channel and Canadian Public Broadcasting, educational texts in the U.S.