Archaeological Sandbox

The Archaeological Sandbox is a Tangible User Interface (TUI) for exploring digging sites and archaeological artifacts. It is developed for being used in the context of museums that want to reveal the relation of exhibited artifacts and the archaeological place of excavation they have been found at. Following the general approach of an Augmented Reality Sandbox, the Archaeological Sandbox uses a short throw projector to project a geographical map of a digging site onto the surface of a box filled with sand. The map contains hints for hidden excavation places. When a user digs at one of these hints, information about the corresponding place is shown on a second screen. If the user keeps digging, further information about the artifacts found at this place is additionally displayed.