Archaeology

Key concepts

• The early emergence of computing in archaeology
• Data storage and integration – the Archaeology Data Service and Archaeotools
• The role of ICT in excavation – Virtual Research Environment for Archaeology and geospatial archaeology
• The critical importance of integrating any new ICT-based tool or procedure with existing research practices

Introduction

“[A]rchaeologists should look beyond the short term when planning how to use a computer. The world of archaeology is likely to be considerably different in twenty years from now (2009), so archaeologists need to plan with future change in mind.”

J. Moffett, in Computers for Archaeologists , Ross et. al. (eds.), 1991.

The growth in the last ten years or so of e-Research methods across the academic spectrum, and their impact on archaeology, could not have proved Moffett more correct in his prediction. In many ways, archaeology differs significantly from other arts and humanities disciplines in its uptake, theory and application of computational methods. For one thing, computing has played a central role in the development of archaeology’s intellectual traditions for decades; and a coherent community of archaeological computing professionals is now well established. The thirty six year-old Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference provides a trusted international forum for this community to network and disseminate its outcomes at the cutting edge of technology, and for those experts to undertake critical assessment of that technology (see, e.g., Clark 2007: 11, and http://www.leidenuniv.nl/caa/). More broadly, the history of archaeology as a discipline can be broadly characterized by a progression from ‘antiquarian’ interest in aesthetically pleasing artefacts to the development of the principles of typology and the evolution of material culture in the late nineteenth century, to the present-day emphasis on systematic and consistent record-keeping (for an overview, see Lock 2003: 1-13). This progression may be seen as an ongoing, iterative transformation in archaeologists’ approach to, and relationship with, information .

In the past, many archaeological approaches have assumed that information handling, processing and visualization is seen as at best ancillary to, and at worst disconnected from, from the interpretive process of understanding the past. This is reflected in early treatments of the subject: in 1985 for example, Martin Carver wrote that ‘[i]n spite of, or perhaps because of, a great deal of breathless proselytizing, it is the computer’s relevance to creative archaeology that is still doubted, and it is the wisdom of investing precious thinking-time in such a potential wild-goose chase that must be weighed’ (Carver 1985: 47). The misperceptions Richards and Ryan identified in the same year, that computers are ‘black boxes producing magic answers’, operated by ‘practitioners of some mystical black art’ (Richards and Ryan 1985: 11) are likely to be less widespread today, due not least to the exposure of archaeologists to ubiquitous internet, email, and other digital technologies, both at home and at work. However, such critical caution is no more misplaced now than it was back then. Indeed the very existence of the archaeological community’s self-awareness (or perhaps outright scepticism) of the approach to computing and Information and Communications Technology provides an excellent background in which to consider the exponential growth and potential of e-Research in recent years. The following examples demonstrate how, in 2009, e-Research tools and methods, can contribute to the critical interpretive process of archaeology. What 2029 will bring is, of course, anyone’s guess.