A Hitchhiker's (brief) Guide to the Ontology of the Digitisation of Archaeology
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-03-14

What is the difference between an interaction, or a transaction, with an archaeological object in real life and one based entirely in the digital domain? This paper seeks to answer this question by taking a philosophical standpoint. Rather like finding how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big space is, the ontology of digitising archaeology is rather daunting, so this paper will try to summarise the key points. Virtual archaeology has concentrated on the geometry and visual aspects of archaeological residues (Reilly 2014). Cyberspace presents a post-geographical and post-historical space where archaeology becomes merged with the present and the future. I will argue that the consumption of content through a digital medium (as opposed to an ‘analogue’ one) profoundly affects cultural heritage in ways which have not been thoroughly considered in archaeology, through multimediality, interactivity, and virtuality (De Mul 2010). Topics include the existential crisis of using personal assistants, simulations that could be confused with real objects, and the unstable nature of digital images, which all impact upon the consumption of cultural heritage in their own way, and challenge the assumption that ‘information that goes into databases is far too perfect and too often a perfect view of the world’ (Cripps 2012). 

Alistair Galt