Thinking Differently? How Digital Engagement, Teaching, and Research Have Influenced My Archaeological Knowledge

Summary

Having been a professional archaeologist for a very long time, I have used a variety of different tools. Since 1988, I have actively employed digital tools for archaeological research, teaching, and public engagement. This work has primarily been based in the Midwestern US, and has included both prehistoric and historic sites. In this paper, I highlight three examples and discuss the epistemological implications of the digital tools. The first is a Wisconsin projectile point book prepared almost completely from a digital database I created. The second is a flipped classroom whose focus was a report jointly written by the students in the class, as well as their own separate projects. The final example examines the extensive social media work done as creator and Director of the Michigan State University Campus Archaeology Program. In each example, the work could certainly have been accomplished without digital tools, but the tools significantly changed the way that I and the other participants thought about and conducted the archaeological work. These epistemological shifts in thinking have had significant, and I argue positive, impacts on archaeological research, teaching, and engagement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeological Epistemology in the Digital Age

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15872