From the cave to the virtual museum: accessibility and democratisation of Franco-Cantabrian Palaeolithic art

Highlights: Despite being a transcendental cultural manifestation in the history of humanity, there are hardly any open-access virtual repertoires of Palaeolithic art. The numerous photogrammetric studies carried out in successive archaeological campaigns to answer scientific questions can be used in educational and dissemination projects. In the framework of the authors’ outreach project called "PaleoArt-3D: regreso al pasado" a virtual museum has been created to make Palaeolithic art a more accessible and democratic heritage. Abstract: Palaeolithic art is a cultural manifestation of great importance to understanding the early history of our species. Through this artistic phenomenon, one can study aspects such as long-distance contacts, evidence of learning or the perception with which Palaeolithic humans were able to execute and memorise such precise details. However, there are few virtual repertoires that offer collections of Palaeolithic art. Accessibility to this type of archaeological remains is even more difficult considering conservation is prioritised over tourist visits. For these reasons, Palaeolithic art is today a type of cultural asset that is largely unknown to the population. The project "PaleoArt-3D: regreso al pasado" was created with the aim of democratising this heritage and making it more accessible. To this end, a virtual museum has been developed to exhibit digital models of parietal and portable art with complementary annotations for each one. The methodology includes a first stage dedicated to digitising examples of Palaeolithic art in caves or open-air stations and exhibited in Spanish and French museums. Next, the necessary infrastructure was designed to house the exhibition using specific software such as Blender. Post-processing tasks were carried out to reducing the number of polygons without losing quality. Finally, the museum has been uploaded to the Sketchfab platform to make it freely available online. It is hoped that this virtual museum will contribute to promoting and creating a more significant number of digital resources related to Palaeolithic art that are easily accessible to the public.