Is Digital Data Different?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological data is notoriously tricksy: while we appreciate it is always incomplete, frequently unreliable, often replete with unknown unknowns, we nevertheless make the best of what we have and use it to build our theories and extrapolations about past events. Are data in a digital environment any different? Is there any reason to think that digital data alter this complicated relationship with archaeological data? If it does, how, and what are the implications for our use of such data? And if not, why does the shift to an infinitely more flexible, fluid digital medium not change the character of our data? As we are increasingly subject to algorithmic agency, this paper seeks to unpick the nature of digital data, a prerequisite to rational and appropriate digital data analysis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23671