Participatory action design research in archaeological context

This chapter presents an overview of the results of an interdisciplinary collaboration between several domain experts in the frame of archaeological projects. Since 2001, different independent interactive systems have been co-designed, developed, and tested on the field, in the frame of the “Tarquinia Project” carried out since 1982 in the ancient Tarchna, one of the foremost Etruscan cities, by the Università degli Studi di Milano. The adoption of a semiotic approach to a participatory action design research process with the involvement of domain experts led us to a better understanding of the main characteristics but also the challenges of the archaeological practice and helped us to apply technology in a better and efficient way. The currently undergoing work is focused on the co-design of a cloud of services aimed at integrating all the tools into a bigger framework to support the archaeological practice in a more pervasive way.