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Archaeologies of the digital

I have great sympathy with Aycock’s (2021) fundamental proposition that archaeology should be at the forefront of the study of digital artefacts. Our pathways to that shared position, however, diverge from the outset. To begin with, some definitions would be useful to clarify my position. First, it is perhaps worth characterising the nature of ‘digital archaeology’ more precisely. For most of the past 60 years, digital archaeology can be seen as primarily concerned with exploring the practical uses of computer techniques and technologies, and the computations that can be applied to different kinds of archaeological data in the pursuit of analysis. It would be a mistake, however, to view digital archaeology solely in terms of a highly technical focus on digital technologies applied to archaeology. Not everybody, for example, needs to have the in-depth skills and knowledge required to create advanced software, write scripts or develop packages in order to do archaeology digitally. Furthermore, and most relevant to this debate, digital archaeology includes the study of digital tools and methodologies, and their incorporation into practice. To not include this aspect assumes the neutrality of digital devices, resulting in a digitally uncritical archaeology subject to the fads and trends of technological determinism. Digital archaeology is therefore perhaps best seen as a spectrum, in which archaeologists not only do archaeological research digitally, but also do digital research: creating archaeologies of code, of software, of digital design, of digital environments and of digital practice, for example. Consequently, digital archaeology (including computational archaeology) involves more than using computers “to understand the old rather than examine the new” (Aycock 2021: 1584). Secondly, a clearer definition of ‘digital artefacts’ would be useful, as Aycock uses the term in different contexts. Digital artefacts include the physical hardware devices ranging from computers to data loggers, and digital cameras to robotic devices. Digital artefacts may also be the software that runs on these devices, some of it embedded in the hardware itself, some of which—graphics packages or geographical information systems, for example—are loaded on demand and selected by choice, habit or availability. Digital artefacts also include the products of the hardware and software: the databases, graphics, images and 3D models, for example, which are increasingly born digital, although a proportion are still digitised from analogue sources. These digital devices, software and their outputs are interrelated and interdependent, and frequently entangled in ways that may be unpredictable. While we may seek to examine a piece of digital hardware in isolation, the reality involves considerable complexity, including the software that makes it function and the data outputs it produces, the array of design, implementation and operational factors, and the range of human and increasingly non-human decisions associated with them. Digital artefacts are therefore more than physical devices, software, data and outputs: overarching