Introduction

South Africa has a large number of archaeological sites that contain a wealth of heritage information. Unfortunately, some of these sites are fragile and, therefore, not open to the public. These sites could be used as resources for heritage education, but if the scholars cannot gain access to them then they lose a large portion of their value as educational resources.

A number of projects are underway to produce models of these (and other) caves using laser scanning. These models could be used to provide the public with a virtual representation of the heritage site. This representation should be widely accessible, allow users to explore and navigate through the site and allow them to view and examine the artwork found there. This would grant the public access to the heritage sites and enable them to be used effectively in education. An additional benefit provided is that researchers would be able to access the site from anywhere in the world.

Motivation

The Archaeology Department of the University of Cape Town (UCT) has been collecting data and information on many of these historical sites. Therefore, they have a large repository of images from the sites that is currently used for little more than cataloguing. Additionally, the Geomatics Department of UCT is in the process of recording laser scans of many of these heritage sites and would like for this data to be put to use. Understandably, both departments felt that these resources could be used to build a system to educate potential stewards and the general public about heritage and the importance of heritage sites.

Aim

The research question that the Cave Navigation component of the School of Rock Art project seeks to address is:

Is it possible to build a usable and useful 3D cave navigation system to encourage learning about rock art?