Traditional hunters explore a virtual world simulation of the early Holocene submerged landscape in Lake Huron, North America

This data block was created as part of a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project, titled Modeling Caribou Migrations and Traditional Hunting Strategies in a Virtual World Simulation. As part of a prior research project investigating a 10,000 year old submerged landscape in the Great Lakes, a Virtual World (VW) simulation of the landscape and of caribou migration within it had been developed. The goal of the current award was to introduce the VW model to Native Alaska communities and to solicit potential partnerships in adapting the model to an Alaska locality with the hopes of creating a model to explore precontact caribou behavior and hunting.
One important element of this preliminary work was the recruitment of traditional caribou hunters to evaluate and critique the existing simulation. Hunters donned the virtual reality headset and began to explore the area. As they moved around the simulated environment, their movement and facing was recorded, as was their oral commentary on what they were seeing. As this proposal largely concerned planning for future work and evaluating a virtual world simulation, it did not generate the quantities of quantitative information normally associated with archaeological research.
The data in this block were created during the testing of an augmented reality system while in the Native Village of Kotzebue. It includes the initial paths across the model landscape made by the hunters and their oral narrative while in the system. The tracks are presented as raw text (TXT) files. Maps presenting the tracks overlaid on the modeled topography in a Geographic Information System (GIS) are also provided. A recording of the oral commentary of each hunter is provided along with a time stamped transcript. The time stamping allows the commentary to be tied to the position and facing of the informant.