The Junction Earthworks Trail Tour App

Concept, design and development of a downloadable app for the Junction Group Earthworks, a Native American earthworks complex built by the Hopewell culture nearly 2,000 years ago. The site is located just outside Chillicothe, Ohio. The app includes an interactive map of the trail loop, and visualization of the digitally restored earthen enclosures in videos, 360-degree panoramas and Augmented Reality.

Client: Heartland Earthworks Conservancy

• Recreating the Earthworks

  The main goal of the project was to provide visitors of the Junction Group site with a tool to help visualize the mounds and understand the scale and size of this Native American site.

• Wayfinding System

  Printed signage is complemented by the app and in-depth videos and interviews. Each sign location offers app users a 360-degree rendered panorama of the virtually restored complex from that position.

• Maximizing the digital reconsruction

  A digital scale-model of the complex opens in augmented reality, where users can zoom in, explore, and choose various map overlays, including a historical old engraving and recent magnetometer data.

Technology Strategy

Our proposed mobile application capitalizes on both the universal presence of smartphones and recent advances on handheld hardware processing capabilities. Many smartphone owners are also familiar with augmented reality apps, from social media AR filters to IKEA catalogs.

Comprehensive interpretive tool

Visitors of the site can open content windows corresponding to the sign locations, and simulate water on the ditches. This combination of new tools, and how they interact and refer to each other, gives visitors innovative and uniquely effective ways to grasp the complex history, formal precision and vast scale of this ancient ceremonial center.

Main goals

Our approach can help mitigate three main problems related to this vanished heritage, allowing visitors to visualize the virtual reconstruction through their smartphone’s screen, at their own pace; compare the builder’s original concept with the current site’s condition; and explore the earthworks complex from varied point of view including eye level and aerial view.