Reconnecting Artifacts and Place: A Review of Situated Visualization in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Despite the growing availability of digitized cultural heritage (CH) data, these artifacts are often disconnected from their original locations or contexts. This disconnection represents a missed opportunity to combine situated visualization, augmented reality (AR), and CH in ways that meaningfully embed digital information into physical spaces. We conducted a systematic literature review to explore this potential but identified only 17 relevant papers, suggesting that this intersection is underexplored in academic research. Our findings reveal inconsistencies in terminology across disciplines, limited cross-disciplinary integration, and a stronger emphasis on user experience within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) than on visualization. This suggests that much of the practical innovation in this area may currently reside outside formal research settings, missing opportunities to establish evaluation standards and reusable frameworks.