Visitor Movement and Tracking Techniques. A Visitor-Sourced Methodology for the Interpretation of Archaeological Sites

Abstract

This paper describes on-going research investigating movement and behaviour patterns of visitors in archaeological sites as a way of informing interpretive planning. A critical point of this study was the development of a hybrid methodology for collecting and assessing data on visitor movement around archaeological sites and of the things that visitors value the most during their visit. This paper demonstrates the methodology developed mainly at Gournia, a Minoan archaeological site of eastern Crete in Greece. Apart from recognised forms of observation and the collection of qualitative data, technologies such as Geographical Positioning System body tracking, geo-tagging and applications of Geographical Information Systems were employed. The interpretation of the processed data provided a better insight and an overview of the site's affordances for movement and as well as the weaknesses of the current interpretation infrastructure. Additionally, the methodology extends to a visitor-sourced approach to reveal the site's ‘hot spots’ by combining hotspot analysis with a thematic analysis of the geo-tagged images captured by visitors.