I’ve been thinking a good bit about digital archaeology lately. This is partly because I’ve been working on a paper for this fall’s European Archaeological Association meeting and in part because I’ve been doing digital stuff over the last week or so.
My colleague Dimitri Nakassis wrote a little post about archaeology being hard over on the Western Argolid Regional Project page last week. This is a bit of a response in a series of photographs. I’m not so much arguing that digital archaeology is or isn’t hard, but that it is not very scenic or beautiful. I’ve spent some quality screen time over the past few days.
Yes, digital archaeology lacks all the glamour and raw physicality of working “in the field”, no doubt. The latter in part was why I was drawn to archaeology (physical versus intellectual) but as digital tools have increasingly been so central, screen time looms larger. No easy solution here for now but IF I WAS IN CHARGE all graduate students in archaeology would have to master the basics of databases, GIS, a scripting language like Python or R for statistical analysis … if only so I could have some time out in the fresh air.
I agree but the digital side is becoming much more prevalent. I found the simulations that’s people like Dr Rubio-Campillo from the University of Edinburgh is pioneering completly fascinating
I’m super excited about digital archaeology after seeing this video by BBC about Pavlopetri (in English with Greek subtitles) https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1h5e0d