Digital Technology, Digital Practices: Incorporating Digital Techniques into Archaeological Excavation and Interpretation

Summary

Digital methods in archaeology have led to new ways of recording, analyzing, and presenting archaeological sites and materials, but these new methods are adopted within the context of previously existing practices of archaeological work. Some digital recording methods in excavation build upon and sometimes displace long-standing analog methods with proven results. Digital representations of cultural materials present novel interpretive affordances compared to analog representations that, while they suggest new possibilities for analysis and scholarly communication, also challenge traditional framings through which such materials have been understood. This paper discusses these challenges in the context of implementing a ‘born-digital’ site-recording methodology at Kaymakçı, a Middle and Late Bronze Age site in western Anatolia, focusing on the effects of new digital techniques on concepts central to archaeological practice such as accuracy and precision, diligence and orthopraxy, as well as implications for working with digital representations of cultural materials in the lab and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19961