Archaeological and Digital Ethics as a Critical Component of Digital Literacy

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While digital literacy typically refers to one’s ability to utilize and navigate various digital platforms, recent literature demonstrates a need to broaden our framing beyond the development of practical skills to include understanding the impact of those technologies in contemporary society. This is of increasing importance as digital media become part of the standard archaeological toolkit and as we venture into largely unknown territory with emerging platforms/technologies (social media, drones, 3D modelling, 3D printing). Pulling from literature on "critical making" in the digital humanities and reflecting on scholarship on digital literacy in archaeological and heritage contexts, I frame digital and archaeological ethics as a critical component of digital literacy. This would have significant implications for digital archaeological pedagogy/curriculum and could also reframe how we evaluate competencies with various technologies. It will also likely impact conceptions of capacity building and collaboration with various archaeological stakeholders, particularly as more community-engaged projects advocate for co-production. Being digitally literate, as I frame it, would prioritize identifying the purpose, intent, and impacts of using digital technologies prior to digitization as well as knowing when digitization may not be appropriate at all.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24840