Digital archaeology and ‘D’ transforms?

[...]rather than having archaeologists conduct ‘excavations’ on the complex and layered code updates made over the course of a large open-source software project, maybe archaeology would more usefully contribute insights and cautions from its long history of struggle with difficult questions of stru...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Antiquity 2021-12, Vol.95 (384), p.1594-1596
Main Authors: Kansa, Sarah Whitcher, Kansa, Eric
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeological evidence
Archaeology
Archives & records
Collaboration
Cultural heritage
Debate
Digital technology
Excavation
Historic artifacts
Human acts
Human behavior
Human behaviour
Humanities
Information literacy
Open source software
Skills
Social research
Spreadsheets
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Summary:[...]rather than having archaeologists conduct ‘excavations’ on the complex and layered code updates made over the course of a large open-source software project, maybe archaeology would more usefully contribute insights and cautions from its long history of struggle with difficult questions of structure, agency, patterns and contingency in the study of past human behaviour. In attempting to understand the factors that shape archaeological evidence, Schiffer (1975) focused on ‘site formation processes’, which he broadly categorised as ‘N’ transforms (various natural phenomena, such as sedimentation and erosion) and ‘C’ transforms (representing the ‘disturbances’ caused by human behaviour) that shape the observability of archaeological patterns. What are the factors, such as hard-drive crashes, messy Excel spreadsheets, drop-down menu options, misread tag labels, rejected grant proposals and so on, that help shape the digital data that represent the archaeological record?
ISSN:0003-598X
1745-1744
DOI:10.15184/aqy.2021.130