Abstract
Digitally-mediated practices of archaeological data require reflexive thinking about where archaeology stands as a discipline in regard to the ‘digital,’ and where we want to go. To move toward this goal, we advocate a historical approach that emphasizes contextual source-side criticism and data intimacy—scrutinizing maps and 3D data as we do artifacts by analyzing position, form, material and context of analog and digital sources. Applying this approach, we reflect on what we have learned from processes of digitally-mediated data. We ask: What can we learn as we convert analog data to digital data? And, how does digital data transformation impact the chain of archaeological practice? Primary, or raw data, are produced using various technologies ranging from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)/Global Positioning System (GPS), LiDAR, digital photography, and ground penetrating radar, to digitization, typically using a flat-bed scanner to transform analog data such as old field notes, photographs, or drawings into digital data. However, archaeologists not only collect primary data, we also make substantial time investments to create derived data such as maps, 3D models, or statistics via post-processing and analysis. While analog data is typically static, digital data is more dynamic, creating fundamental differences in digitally-mediated archaeological practice. To address some issues embedded in this process, we describe the lessons we have learned from translating analog to digital geospatial data—discussing what is lost and what is gained in translation, and then applying what we have learned to provide concrete insights to archaeological practice.
Highlights
Digital archaeology has burgeoned over the past decade, with archaeologists tending to focus on data acquisition tools such as terrestrial laser scanning (Remondino et al 2009), airborne LiDAR (Chase et al 2011; Prufer, Thompson & Kennett 2015; von Schwerin et al 2016), photogrammetry (Saperstein 2016), or on visualization using virtual and augmented reality
In the first part of this paper we introduce a historical approach for digitally-mediated archaeology
We summarize the lessons we have learned from our experiences in transforming analog data to geospatial digital data, discussing what is lost and what is gained in translation, and applying what we have learned to provide concrete insights to archaeological practice
Summary
Digital archaeology has burgeoned over the past decade, with archaeologists tending to focus on data acquisition tools such as terrestrial laser scanning (Remondino et al 2009), airborne LiDAR (Chase et al 2011; Prufer, Thompson & Kennett 2015; von Schwerin et al 2016), photogrammetry (Saperstein 2016), or on visualization using virtual and augmented reality. In contrast to digitization which ‘replicates’ original data, datafication creates derived, or new data, which requires human translation (interpretation) and encourages unique considerations for archaeological scholarship Datafication of both born-digital and analog formats offer archaeology more than either can do alone. In the second part of this paper, we discuss several examples of translating analog data to geospatial digital data including: (1) converting maps originally generated with alidade and plane table to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data, (2) converting hand-written field notes into GIS data, (3) integrating multi-source data (i.e. vectorized maps, GNSS, total station, and airborne LiDAR), (4) processing data to generate georeferenced 3D models, and (5) analyzing digital data in different software for scholarly research and interpretation. We take Wood’s historical approach and apply source-side criticism to text, maps, and 3D models
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