Matt Edgeworth (2014) has recently sought to consider how the computers used by archaeologists mediate the production and reproduction of archaeological knowledge (2014, 41) and the way the act of archaeological discovery has changed since his innovative ethnographic study of an excavation was carried out around 1990. In particular, he points to the way that the ‘site of discovery’ has in some instances moved to the computer screen from the physical world. He describes how the archaeological workplace has changed in the intervening years, and estimates that most archaeological project managers now spend an average of 70-80% of their time working in digital environments (2014, 43). He points to the increased pace and quantity of work that is consequently achieved, which may lead to an increasingly stressful working environment. That is not to say computers are involved across the board – as he says, some areas of archaeological work remain resistant to computerisation with excavation itself remaining a largely manual process despite the various attempts to use computers onsite (2014, 45). As a result, he suggests archaeologists typically move in and out of different modes of perception – from computer-based work to manual work and back again (2014, 47).
Category: digital archaeology
Digital transformation?
The digitisation of archaeology over the past twenty years or so could be said to be an unprecedented transformation of the subject. The move from field notebooks (or quite literally in some cases the backs of envelopes, receipts, bus tickets and the like) to site databases, the move from desktop recording and hand logging to digital data capture in the field, the move from local databases to distributed databanks, the introduction and development of CAD, GIS, 3D modelling, and a host of innovations such as agent-based modelling, reflectance transformation imaging, structure from motion, and increasingly refined and ‘intelligent’ search tools … all these would seem to support the idea of a digital transformation of the subject. The democratisation of technology appears to underline this – the fact that we have moved from a time when computers were in the hands of a few, usually academic, archaeologists to a situation in which everyone has a computer in their pocket, in their bag, and on their desk.
Developing Digital Stories
Ola Henfridsson (2014) has recently argued that developing compelling stories is perhaps the most important mission of the qualitative information systems researcher. “A powerful story … may inspire us to take action, whether it is within the realm of knowledge, the realm of practice, or at the intersection between the two.” (2014, 356).
Shouldn’t the same be said of the digital archaeologist – shouldn’t we be developing our own narratives?
What is Introspective Digital Archaeology?
Introspective Digital Archaeology seeks to examine the ways in which digital technologies within archaeology may have changed what we do, how we do it, how we represent what we do, how we communicate what we do, how we understand what we do, and how others understand what we do. This is in contrast to the more traditional approach, in which archaeological perspectives of digital technologies tend to cluster around the context of application, accounting for and justifying the use of a particular digital methodology in a specific circumstance. An introspective approach to Digital Archaeology represents a much wider and more fundamental approach to the understanding of the digital transformation of archaeology and considers the intermediation of digital technologies at every stage of the production of archaeological knowledge.
