HIST3000|CLCV3000 Fall 2021 Department of History, Carleton University

Once the excavation is over, what happens to the information created through archaeological research? How do archaeologists use digital technologies on site, in the lab, or on the web? This course explores the intersection of digital technologies and computing with archaeology. We will explore the ways theory gets embedded into computation; perhaps there is even a theory of digital archaeology? We will explore how digital technologies allow us to ask questions that would otherwise be impossible to ask. We will consider the ethical ramifications of our digital tools and opaque algorithms. We will also look into the ways that computational creativity in archaeology allow for novel engagements with the past, thus moving us into a digital public archaeology.

You will read, watch, listen to, and discuss the class materials via various online tools including Hypothes.is and Github (Speaking of Hypothes.is, highlight a word on this page and see what happens). We do not use cuLearn in the course. We work on the open web instead. Successful completion of this class involves doing a series of exercises each week designed to push you out of your comfort zone, AND to be a collegial and generous scholar engaging with, and helping your peers to achieve success. What is challenging for one student will not necessarily be challenging for another, and I expect you to push yourself and pull others along as you go. Thus open and honest reporting of what works and what hasn’t worked, is a meaningful aspect of this course. Again: You don’t need to be techy to succeed, but you do need to be willing to embrace when things go ‘wrong’.

The Most Important Idea

Archaeology’s genesis was in racism, and colonialism.

Digital technology’s birth was in the violence of war, and the control of systems.

If you put those two things together without taking into account the implications then we’re in for a lot of trouble.

So what I want to know is, can digital archaeology be taught, be learned, be practiced, in such a way that we unpick those two trajectories, those two monstrous births, and use digital archaeology to better understand communities, empower people, and give better, more compelling, more truthful stories about what it means to be human?

Archaeology isn’t necessarily about the past. It’s about the materiality of the past and present and in many ways, the future. We try to understand what it is to be human through the extended abilities that tool use, that objects and their agencies, give to us. The digital tools we use and are entangled with extend humanity in powerful ways - and in 2020, it’s easy to see how digital technologies have extended humanity’s worst impulses.

It’s going to be uncomfortable. Not only that, this is the first iteration of the course. That makes you my accomplices. There will be things we try here that will not work. That’s why part of the exit ticket for this course will be for you to rethink the one part of the course that was most affecting for you to make it better, but also, to think through who it might harm.

Text/Tech

To the best of my ability, all materials will either be open access materials on the web or materials made available to us through MacOdrum Library or the University. You will not be required to purchase any set text or software.

We will be using elements of the Open Digital Archaeology Textbook Environment https://o-date.github.io; we may in fact re-write parts of it as a result of our work, in which case you will be credited as a co-author.

Having a reasonably up-to-date computer will make life easier for you; if you use a chromebook or a low-powered laptop (eg, less than 8 gb of RAM), this will require us to think creatively about some of the work, but should not present an insurmountable obstacle. A good internet connection will make life easier, but I realize that not everyone is well-served by our tech oligopolies. Please let me know if these situations apply to you so that we can work out a suitable plan of action.

Class format

This class will be delivered online, asynchronously. A Discord server will be used to provide a social context to our work, for help, and for collaboration. Learning materials will be curated on this open course website, and might include a variety of modalities. There will be no required synchronous chats or lectures. Students will maintain course research notebooks on the web (which may be anonymous or pseudonymous or made private provided access is shared with me).

Why?

I’ve taught online for a variety of institutions, using a variety of formats and approaches. I like teaching asnchronously because I believe it is a kinder approach to complex topics, especially when there is a second layer of difficulty - basic digital literacy, in this case - which intersects with the content, my learning goals for you, your own personal situations - in ways I cannot always anticipate or know.

Since I cannot know these things, I do not believe that I should bludgeon you with content; I do not think that ‘rigour’ is demonstrated by forcing you to join me at set times; I do not believe that face-to-face work is somehow more ‘scholarly’ than other kinds of work. Right now, with the world the way it is, I want to build a structure that opens possibility space for you to engage with this topic, and with ‘digital archaeology’ when you encounter it beyond this course, in ways that will push you forward as a scholar and citizen.

For this to work well, it requires you to be on the same page as me. There is a lot of flexibility built into this course, but it does require you to try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. The key thing is always to tie what you’re doing with what you’re reading and what you’re thinking. That ‘second layer of difficulty’ will come with practice. But how it intersects with everything else: that’s where the learning happens.

It might seem a bit macabre or ‘off’ somehow to build some of our work around the ways the dead are memorialized in Canadian graveyards, in this time of pandemic (see week two). I wrestled with this. But I settled on doing this for a variety of reasons. One, the simple reason that getting you outside and doing one variety of archaeological work and thinking through how tech intersects with field work and the realities of space is a valuable exercise; two it gives us data that we can work on later as the weather grows colder; and more importantly - three - we don’t often talk about death in modern Western culture. Memorialization and its practices can reveal much about past human groups, but in the gaps with our present day, can teach us much about ourselves.

…and that is why this course is the way it is. No doubt, things will break, and some things will work better/be more effective than others. We will roll with it.