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Annual Review of Anthropology...

Annual Review of Anthropology Current Digital Archaeology Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 Colleen Morgan Department of Archaeology, The University of York, York, United Kingdom; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2022. 51:213–31 Keywords First published as a Review in Advance on archaeology, virtual reality, posthumanism, materiality, ethics, craft July 26, 2022 The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at Abstract anthro.annualreviews.org Digital archaeology is both a pervasive practice and a unique subdiscipline https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-041320- within archaeology. The diverse digital methods and tools employed by 114101 archaeologists have led to a proliferation of innovative practice that has Copyright © 2022 by Annual Reviews. fundamentally reconfigured the discipline. Rather than reviewing specific All rights reserved technologies, this review situates digital archaeology within broader theo- retical debates regarding craft and embodiment; materiality; the uncanny; and ethics, politics, and accessibility. A future digital archaeology must move beyond skeuomorphic submission and replication of previous structural inequalities to foment new archaeological imaginaries. 213  INTRODUCTION Digital archaeology is a vibrant subdiscipline within archaeology. Operating as a collective term for many kinds of practice, digital archaeology has been used to describe methods and theory that stem from the use of digital technology to investigate and communicate the past. Though at first primarily technological and skeuomorphic in practice and intent, digital practice has encour- aged creativity, empathy, examinations of power and structural abuse, investigations of design, and posthumanism and transhumanism and has fundamentally reconfigured practice and the under- standing of craft within archaeology. Digital archaeology is at once both highly visible as a practice Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 and increasingly invisible as archaeologists become accustomed to using digital tools. Morgan & Eve (2012) wrote, “[W]e are all digital archaeologists” (p. 523), whereas Huvila (2018) posited, “[T]here is no digital archaeology” (p. 1) and one could argue convincingly from either position (see also Huvila & Huggett 2018). The porous and shifting nature of digital archaeology is evident throughout this article. Indeed, the range available for deploying digital tools contributes to ongoing boundary reclas- sification and neologisms to describe the field. Digital archaeology has at times been termed “cyber-archaeology” (Forte 2011) or “virtual archaeology” (Reilly 1990) with an emphasis on vir- tual reality and “phygital archaeology” (Reilly et al. 2021) or “cyborg archaeology” (Morgan 2019) to highlight mixed digital/physical experiences and interventions in archaeology. There is some discussion and unpacking of these terms by Tanasi (2020) and of the relationship of archaeology within the larger digital humanities (see also Watrall 2016). Tanasi (2020) further provides a useful snapshot of the discourse and distribution of degree programs in digital archaeology and the differ- ences between disciplinary categorization in North America and Europe. For example, academic positions for digital archaeologists are advertised in Europe, whereas in North America digital spe- cialists are associated with a broad range of disciplines such as history, world heritage, and classics and are instead classed as digital humanities positions (Tanasi 2020, p. 33). As a subdiscipline, it has been subject to what is called an “anxiety discourse,” wherein the “identity, nature and academic le- gitimacy of archaeological computing was questioned and concerns expressed about its theoretical core, the rigour and relevance of its methodologies, the value of its outputs, and the extent to which its contributions were recognised as having any significance to the broader field” (Huggett et al. 2018, p. 43). This discussion is taken up again in the Conclusions section, but the recent and ongo- ing growth in digital archaeology has resolved some anxieties regarding its durability, usefulness, and significance within archaeology and larger debates in anthropology and digital humanities. A burgeoning practice within digital heritage also emphasizes the creation of interpretive ma- terials, the curation and documentation of objects, and the examination of the digital reception of heritage, particularly through social media. Indeed, many important contributions to digital archaeology and digital heritage have manifested as digital ephemera in blogs and Twitter con- ference presentations (for example, Delgado Anés et al. 2017). That this review focuses primarily on academic, peer-reviewed contributions may therefore be considered a weakness to a fulsome understanding of the subject. Beyond a focus on presentation and reception are highly technical discussions within digital heritage as well; for example, the Journal of Cultural Heritage regularly features complex analyses of digitization of museum objects with regard to research and preser- vation (e.g., Melendreras Ruíz et al. 2022) and ephemera (e.g., Tuno et al. 2022). Cutting-edge visualization practice is reported in professional conferences such as the internationally renowned 2and3D Photography conference hosted by Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands in cooperation with the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography in the United Kingdom. For example, in 2021 Kurt Heumiller discussed his work with the Museum of Modern Art in capturing Van Gogh’s Starry Night in 3D. 214 Morgan  It is perhaps unsurprising then to note that describing the entirety of practice within digital heritage and digital archaeology is outside the scope of this article. Happily, several scholars have published useful overviews of many topics, including remote sensing (Casana 2021), computa- tional archaeology (Grosman 2016), and high-density survey and measurement (Opitz & Limp 2015). There are excellent discussions of the development of techniques in spatial analysis and geographical information systems (GIS) (Earley-Spadoni 2017, Gillings et al. 2020, Gupta & Devillers 2017, McCoy 2020, McCoy & Ladefoged 2009, Wheatley & Gillings 2013), social net- work analysis (Brughmans 2013, Brughmans et al. 2016, Peeples 2019), and agent-based modeling Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 (Romanowska et al. 2021). This field has an incredible culture of sharing and engagement with open science (Marwick et al. 2017, but see Fredheim 2020) and collaborative digital pedagogical approaches (Cobb et al. 2019, Graham et al. 2019). These reviews reveal the extent of digital prac- tice but also the characterization of digital archaeology as individual skills or techniques in service of particular fields of inquiry. Rather than review a set of skills or techniques, I instead discuss dig- ital archaeology as a site to think with and theorize from. As such, some of these subjects appear as interwoven into broader themes that can illuminate current and future developments within digital archaeology as a site of critical inquiry. In this review, I discuss digital archaeology along four interlinked themes with considerable and inevitable crossover between them. These themes—craft and embodiment, materiality, the uncanny, and ethics, politics and accessibility—demonstrate how digital archaeology is respond- ing to and reconfiguring broader debates within archaeology and anthropology at large. In iden- tifying these themes, I have unmoored practice from specific technologies and situated individ- ual methods in broader political and theoretical debates. I therefore situate digital archaeology within practice-based research, defined as a “principled approach to research by means of practice in which the research and the practice operate as interdependent and complementary processes leading to new and original forms of knowledge” (Candy et al. 2021, p. 2). Practice-based research emphasizes the “way the making process itself leads to a transformation of ideas,” centering the creation of “artifacts” or objects and the communication of this new knowledge to others (Candy et al. 2021, pp. 29–30). While this method has been the largely unstated approach of some practi- tioners (e.g., Ferraby 2017, Graham 2020b, Hacıgüzeller 2017, Morgan & Eve 2012, Reilly et al. 2021, Watterson et al. 2020), engagement with the robust literature supporting practice-based research would alleviate some of the conceptual crises as previously delineated within digital ar- chaeology (Huggett et al. 2018). Finally, a focus on these themes describes a digital archaeology that explores ways to prefigure a better future through our investigation of the past. Prefigurative practice, as drawn from anarchism, is the understanding that the “means create the end” (Borck 2019, p. 231) and resonates with a focus on practice-based research. Considerable issues have come up in digital archaeology with regard to access and inequality, deskilling, reproduction of corrosive and oppressive narratives of the past, boosting late capitalism and contributing toward the impact of climate change. I discuss these issues throughout the text, through the costs and affordances of digital archaeology. CRAFT AND EMBODIMENT Using computing technologies to gather, manipulate, and store data has been central to the de- velopment of digital archaeology. Researchers have provided several accounts of the history and trajectory of digital archaeology (Beale & Reilly 2017, Evans & Daly 2004, Huggett 2015, Lock 2003); one particularly compelling example is the autobiographical account given by Tringham (2015), who describes her use of punch cards, hypertext, websites, and database narratives to create recombinant histories of Neolithic people. Through the many technologies used by archaeologists, it has become increasingly clear that archaeological practice is changing. This www.annualreviews.org Current Digital Archaeology 215  shift is demonstrated in the account of archaeological visualizers offered by Opgenhaffen (2021a) who draws on her experience as an archaeological illustrator to determine the chaîne opératoire of digital 3D visualization (see also Opgenhaffen 2021b, Perry 2015). This change has generally been heralded as providing great savings in time and cost and as contributing toward democratizing knowledge production (Roosevelt et al. 2015, Taylor et al. 2018). Of particular note is the volume Thinking Beyond the Tool: Archaeological Computing and the Interpretive Process (Chrysanthi et al. 2012), which positions the tools used for digital archaeology as prosthetic extensions of self and contains insightful investigations of analytical and visualization strategies in archaeology. Others, Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 notably Caraher (2019), have been more critical, even proposing “slow archaeology” in reaction to neoliberal pressures that plagued the discipline and protesting the perceived loss of autonomy and the erosion of enskillment through the use of digital tools. Furthermore, the use of digital tools has provoked an investigation of analog or by-hand methods in archaeology, including map mak- ing (Flexner 2009), photography (Morgan 2016, Shanks & Svabo 2013), and illustration (Morgan & Wright 2018, Morgan et al. 2021), and their roles in archaeological knowledge production. Digital technologies have also changed how archaeologists embody their craft, how they perceive the bodies of past people, how they delegate perception of archaeological evidence, and how archaeological interpretations are disseminated. Taylor & Dell’Unto (2021) note that while skeuomorphic emulation of analog tools by digital technologies socializes these technologies and makes them more likely to be incorporated into practice, this emulation may inhibit truly transformative uses of these technologies. One of the first observations that members of the Aide Memoire project made, in conducting research on digital drawing and craft in archaeology, was of the awkward, uncomfortable stance that archaeologists took while drawing archaeological remains on a tablet (Morgan et al. 2021). This observation was followed by several more that showed how digital tools acted to distance archaeologists from their observed subject and sub- sequently led to insights into mental model creation in support of archaeological interpretation. Drawing is a “forcing function” (sensu Van Meter & Firetto 2013); the drawing cannot progress until the subject of the drawing, the archaeological remains, is fully understood, causing the person to exercise meta-cognitive awareness and control (Morgan et al. 2021, p. 616). The Aide Memoire project survey of archaeologists found social and political ramifications in the change to digital recording in archaeological fieldwork. These manifested primarily in a resistance to digital tools that echoed Caraher’s (2019) perception of erosion of enskillment and that mourned the loss of by-hand drawing as a way to reflect on and engage with archaeological remains (Morgan et al. 2021). Yet Sapirstein (2020) found that the greater efficiencies allowed by the use of digital recording allowed engagement with a more thoughtful recording process (see also Danis 2019). Digital technologies have changed not only how archaeologists embody our craft but also how we imagine past embodiment. Dead Man’s Eyes, a project by archaeologist Stuart Eve, provides an augmented reality overlay that simulates past vision and viewsheds (Eve 2014, 2018). This work ac- companies auditory projects that reconstruct past soundscapes that are acoustically accurate (e.g., Cooper 2019) as well as augmented olfaction (Eve 2017). The integration of multisensorial ap- proaches is perhaps a reaction against the early dominance of the visual within digital archaeology through GIS and persisting through photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning (Eve 2018; see also Frieman & Gillings 2007, Wickstead 2009). Archaeological entries into multisensorial transhu- manism verge on the uncanny, which is further described below, but I have argued (Morgan 2019) for the creation of a cyborg archaeology that integrates posthuman principles to create a viable interstitial space where things from the past and from the present can commingle in commen- surate space. This approach draws from posthumanist feminists such as Haraway (1985, 2016), Barad (2003), and Braidotti (1997, 2013) and runs parallel to ongoing materialist and ontologi- cal discussions among archaeologists [for example, in the issue on “Debating Posthumanism in 216 Morgan  Archaeology” in Cambridge Archaeological Journal (Gardner et al. 2021)]. The contribution of dig- ital methods and artifacts to these discussions has heretofore been limited but compelling. For example, Stobiecka (2020b) discusses an advertising campaign that equipped ancient sculptures with 3D-printed artificial limbs to argue for a prosthetic archaeology that promotes a “materi- ally oriented digital practice” (p. 336). Engagement with feminist posthumanism and understand- ing the past through digital embodiment has manifested in OTHER EYES, a project that cre- ates mixed-reality avatars based on bioarchaeological data from Romano-British human remains. OTHER EYES explores the digital embodiment of past people to evoke empathetic responses Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 from present people, a proposition that is both uncanny and ethically fraught (C. Morgan, M. Alexander, A. Parker, L. Hampden, M. Holst, Z. Kamash, E. Drew, and M. Carroll, forthcom- ing). Avatars can lend feelings of immersion and copresence (for further discussions of presence in heritage, see Pujol & Champion 2012), a form of self-expression in our deserted digital archaeo- logical ruins. One of the past people selected for the project has altered mobility, which decenters normative, able-bodied perceptions of the experience of past personhood. Finally, there has been some experimentation with the algorithmic delegation of archaeological investigation, interpretation, and dissemination. For example, Opitz created a digital environment with a model of Knowth, a Neolithic passage site in Ireland, and found that the rock art associated with the passage was not necessarily important to the visual experience of the place, a view that runs counter to the received interpretations of archaeologists (Opitz 2017, p. 1220). There has also been work on the detection of archaeological sites by combining remote-sensing techniques with machine learning (e.g., Davis et al. 2021). The ArchAIDE project developed a workflow and an app that uses automated image recognition to identify and classify ceramic sherds (Anichini et al. 2020). Another team designed a chatbot, ChatÇat, to interact with users from the Çatalhöyük Facebook page to provide automated answers but also to attempt to challenge the assumptions of people interacting with the bot (Roussou et al. 2019). I have characterized this technological delegation of archaeological work as part of a cyborg archaeology (Morgan 2019; cf. Stobiecka 2020b); such transhuman interventions can also be linked to the concept of the extended mind (Clark & Chalmers 1998) and as part of digital cognitive agency in archaeology (Huggett 2017, Rabinowitz 2016). An emphasis on craft and embodiment within digital archaeology brings a satisfying fleshiness to methods that have been used with relatively little consideration of their construction of the lived experiences of people in the past or of their impacts on the bodies of people living today. Posthuman feminist scholars have noted the particular importance of embodiment in the context of virtual, dematerialized futures (Hayles 1993, p. 14), and I have echoed these in discussions of a posthuman digital archaeology (Morgan 2019). An empathetic understanding of both would en- courage a more thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the past and more solidarity with the current crippling labor conditions and alienation of commercial archaeologists. More experimen- tation with the expressive, fleshy affordances of experiencing the past beyond the boundaries of the human would be welcome. Posthuman approaches to digital archaeology have great imaginative potential. Materiality That the digital is material is well established; archaeologists have been exploring the boundaries of this materiality, mixing media archaeologies with archaeological methods to understand com- puting assemblages, video games and virtual environments, and 3D printing. Media archaeology focuses on understanding media culture through methods inspired by the archaeologies of power and knowledge of Michel Foucault and “excavations” of modernity by Walter Benjamin (Parikka 2012). Piccini (2015) notes that media archaeology and archaeology as such share “concerns with www.annualreviews.org Current Digital Archaeology 217  dismantling and reconstructing media technologies in order to reveal secret histories and lost lineages” (p. 5), yet archaeology as such has relatively little impact on scholarship regarding the materiality of digital media (p. 3). In the same dedicated forum on media archaeologies in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, media archaeologist Jussi Parikka (2015) outlines a program of shared research interests in abandoned hardware and digital waste and the profusion of digital objects and the curation crisis (p. 13). Indeed, archaeologists have been intervening in this digital– material space for some time, and this review focuses primarily on case studies generated from archaeologists. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 Most discussions of archaeologists examining digital artifacts begin with Finn’s early “excava- tion” of Silicon Valley (Finn 2002) and survey of computer collections (Finn 2003) which heralded the superabundance of material waste that is a marker of late capitalism. Various computing ma- terials have been investigated through archaeological methods. Moshenska (2014) uncovered a USB drive during a community excavation in London and described the exterior condition of the drive as well as the contents, which revealed an assemblage of schoolwork, MP3s, and MPEG movie files, including some adult content. Beale et al. (2019) examined the computer mouse as a means to challenge technological determinism at the moment of obsolescence. Perry and I (Perry & Morgan 2015) excavated a hard drive, during which we found the application of archaeological methods to a digital context both absurd and illuminating, and noted the interplay of Foucauldian media archaeologies, forensic digital archaeology (recovering data from dead drives), and digital archaeology. Within these digital archaeologies, cell phones are a particular locus of interest. Archaeolo- gists have been working toward using tablets and smartphones for archaeological recording, cit- ing paperless workflows as important to innovations in fieldwork (e.g., Ellis 2016). The earliest examination of the cell phone as a digital artifact is Newland’s (2004) Master’s dissertation on the archaeology of mobile phones. Newland combined approaches from science and technology studies with fieldwork such as an urban walking survey to identify and photograph types of base stations, documenting a protest and the destruction of a mast, which has resonance in the 2020– 2021 protests rooted in the misidentification of 5G cell phone service as a cause of the spread of COVID-19. Maxwell & Miller (2013) discuss the utopic and dystopic aspects of cell phones, allud- ing to their ability to “deliver happiness, development, and revolution” as well as increased social fragmentation, alienation, and environmental destruction. Robb (2021) discusses the materiality of cell phones through a fictional plenary address to a material culture conference in the future. He traces familiar archaeological tropes regarding innovation and the use of technology, noting the future as being characterized by “obligate symbiosis” and a “new integrality between things and the people they make” (Robb 2021). Finally, I have noted the utility of by-hand drawing of cell phones using archaeological recording standards to support archaeological pedagogy, in terms of both teaching detailed, professionalized observation of artifacts and exploring the cell phone as our most intimate artifact and emotional connection to objects (C. Morgan, forthcoming). The above excavations focused primarily on the broader social context, the hardware, or the user interface and generally did not include an examination of code. Reilly et al. (2016) performed such an investigation, recovering the earliest animated virtual tour of a cultural heritage recon- struction, the Old Minster in Winchester, United Kingdom (Burridge et al. 1989). During this investigation, Reilly’s team managed to convert the code and modernize the models, eventually creating a 3D print, but cautioned that 3D models “have a very limited shelf-life” and may prove inaccessible to future historians and curators (Reilly et al. 2016, p. 39); other uses of these models are described below. Similarly, computer scientist John Aycock (2021) implored archaeologists to prepare for the profusion of digital “things” and identified archaeogaming as a particular nexus of interest for such investigations. Archaeogaming explores video games, coding, and 218 Morgan  virtual environments, encompassing creation, representation, and dissemination of archaeological interpretations (cf. Reinhard 2018). There is a large and thriving archaeogaming community with a burgeoning list of publications. Pertinent to this discussion of digital materiality, Reinhard (2018) discusses the use and adaptation of the Harris matrix for software stratigraphy of the video game No Man’s Sky. He concludes that archaeological visualization techniques are useful for documenting software development. In my response to Aycock’s invitation to explore digital things as archaeologists, I drew from an artifact, flint, in the popular Minecraft sandbox video game to examine Deleuzian notions of repetition and interplay between the concept of flint and Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 the code manifestation of such (Morgan 2021a). Another intervention in this area is Mol’s (2019) “In Gold: A Materiality Simulator,” a playful take on Ingold’s (2007) request at the beginning of Materials Against Materiality to find a stone and immerse it in water. In Mol’s video game you must try to read Ingold’s entire article while keeping the stone wet. The stone refuses to obey, jumping out of the bowl of water, and the text subsequently fades from view, resulting in a hilarious, playful, and frustrating experience that perhaps mirrors the encounter with Ingold’s text. Digital materiality is also the subject of an important, recent issue of Museum & Society (pub- lished in 2021); the contributions of these papers speak directly to challenges in archaeological interpretation of digital objects, covering affordances, assemblages, provenance, copyright, and embodiment (Arvanitis & Zuanni 2021, p. 143). Ireland & Bell (2021) examine low-performance digital things as “weak surrogates,” to “creatively interrogate the conditions of the ‘in-between’ of physical and digital forms” (p. 150; cf. Morgan 2019). Through the village of Asinou in the Troodos foothills in Cyprus (unphotogenic, mundane yet affective) and a model created through Agisoft PhotoScan, the author explores the potential for reflexive engagement grounded in practice-led methods. Jeffrey et al. (2021) build on Jeffrey’s (2015) past consideration of authority and authen- ticity in digital objects to understand the agency of digital objects through a virtual reality exhibit, the Digital Laocoön Immersive, a response to the 2014 and 2018 fires at the Mackintosh Building of the Glasgow School of Art. It offers a digital replica of a plaster replica of Laocoön, a marble classical statue (itself likely a replica of a bronze statue) that was badly damaged and restored in 2014. The digital version remained the only version of the statue left after the next fire completely destroyed the plaster replica in 2018 ( Jeffrey et al. 2021, p. 167). The authors call on assemblage theory and the extended object (Deleuze & Guattari 1987) to shuffle through this elaborate ver- sioning, connecting to authenticity as determined by creator communities. Finally, they make kin between and with the objects by likening the assemblage of Laocoön replicas to a family ( Jeffrey et al. 2021, p. 178). Exploring digital artifacts and places, people, and things through relationships (eschewing networks) helps dismiss a perceived and misconstrued immateriality of digital things. Finally there is a broader and arguably more urgent discussion in the materiality of digital things, which is the climate impact of digital archaeology. Climate impact is a broad-ranging concern in terms of resources used to create digital things, the mining of rare earth materials to create hardware and its eventual disposal, and the maintenance and cost of our digital archives. Taffel (2015) approaches electronic waste as a media archaeologist, noting the particular violence of material encounters with digital detritus, earning low wages “while conducting work whose numerous harms are not understood by the laborers themselves, and who often lack any formal education and are often children” (Basel Action Netw. & Silicon Valley Toxics Coalit. 2002, p. 26; cited in Taffel 2015, p. 83). The pace and proliferation of digital artifacts are mentioned by Aycock (2021), and while these present exciting opportunities for archaeological investigation, I cautioned that “a full preservation and documentation effort would increase our own participation in the mass extinction event currently occurring under ‘Empire,’ what Bergman & Montgomery term as the ‘organised destruction under which we live’” (Bergman & Montgomery 2017, p. 25; Morgan 2021b). Although there has been continuous encouragement for the evaluation of the appropriate www.annualreviews.org Current Digital Archaeology 219  use of digital technologies for archaeology (Beacham et al. 2006), a more active proscription against using resource-heavy digital tools and an encouragement toward degrowth principles (e.g., Flexner 2020) would temper the impact of burgeoning technological growth in archaeology. The Uncanny The Digital Laocoön Immersive includes a haunting visual: a legion of Laocoöns, digital, physical, some emerging from the dark, some retreating from view ( Jeffrey et al. 2021). This visualization is perhaps unsurprising, as Jeffrey (2015) has previously described the past as a “very weird place” Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 and the digital object as having a strange immateriality (pp. 145–46). This sense of weirdness or the uncanny that can occur in digital archaeology is worth further investigation. In his discussion of the uncanny, or the Unheimlichen, Freud (1957) links the concept to novelty, unfamiliarity, and intellectual uncertainty. He cites Jentch in identifying that the feeling manifests in particular with respect to “doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate” (Freud 1957, p. 226). Freud notes that “an uncanny ef- fect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality” (p. 244); he notes a particular link to past ideas that are not commensurate with modern understanding of causality. Finally, he identifies the important association to a setting perceived as real as opposed to that which is perceived as fiction. Moshenska (2006) notes that “archaeology is an inherently uncanny subject” (p. 91) in his discussion of the spectacle of anatomical dissection and the archae- ological gaze, as it “brings dead people, dead places and dead things into the world of the living” (p. 98). He argues that the uncanny spectacle of archaeology as mediated through popular culture contributed to the alienation of the public audience from archaeological practice. Other contem- porary archaeologists have strived to make the familiar strange through disassociation (Buchli & Lucas 2001, Graves-Brown 2011). It is similarly reflected in Lowenthal’s (1985) use of the L.P. Hartley quote, “The past is a foreign country,” to describe the reception of heritage. Linking to the digital, Mori et al. (2012) draw from Freud in their discussion of the famed “un- canny valley” in which increased verisimilitude of robotic near-humans provokes unease in the human audience. Digital resurrection of the dead has increasing jus in popular culture, from dead movie stars appearing in new films to a deep fake of Lewis Binford singing “Copacabana” cre- ated by archaeologists using an app. Does approximating past people, places, and things through digital technology thrill us through a sense of power over and control of these things, or is it the frisson of recognition, entering what I have characterized as an “interstitial space” where digital present and digital past dwell in commensurate space (Morgan 2019)? Graham characterizes this phenomenon as “practical digital necromancy” wherein archaeologists are creating “zombies,” resurrected partial people “animated by a limited set of appetites and urges and responding to its wider environment in limited or particular ways” (Graham 2020b, p. 11; cf. Hertz & Parikka 2012). He is speaking particularly about agent-based modelling which he specifies is “not to try to justify stories of the past, but to generate new stories” (Graham 2020b, p. 14). Tringham (2019) notes el- ements of the surreal in her work with prehistoric speech and ASMR in the “spirit of playfulness, subversion, and participatory exploration” (p. 350). Mol (2020) discusses “dark phenomenology” in her exploration of animism in Roman cults and virtual reality with the Iseum Campense Virtual Histories Project. I have written more broadly about the digital monsters created by archaeolog- ical interventions, in that they “should not be a seamless, transhuman integration of machine and body to transmit ideas about the past, but should invoke a monstrous disruption, interfering with both our understanding of the past and current sense of self” (Morgan 2019). Digital monsters are created by synesthetic interventions and failure that begets creativity (sensu Graham et al. 2019; Ireland & Bell 2021). 220 Morgan  Ethics, Politics, and Accessibility Digital archaeology has long been the domain of white men, though like the early histories of both computing and archaeology, there have been significant and unrecognized contributions from others. More recently, the field has had greater participation and attending critique from white women, but it has a long way to go before being able to serve as a more inclusive subdiscipline in archaeology. Digital archaeology and computational archaeology are viewed as more objective and scientific, with masculinist overtones, whereas digital heritage is associated with outreach and mu- seums and is arguably feminized. Boundary-keeping regarding who is a digital practitioner within Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 archaeology can be divisive; there are those who are skilled specifically in certain technologies or visual production and those who can creatively rethink or critique the use of these technologies, but these qualities are rarely imbued in the same people and are often subject to differing rewards (Perry 2015). With the burgeoning pace of innovation, even those who were once skilled can be rapidly left behind. Digital technologies and online access are still unequally distributed across the world, and there are growing indications that digital tools contribute to intensive resource exploitation and degra- dation, climate change, and adverse mental health outcomes. Structural inequalities and white privilege and power that are still central in archaeology can be compounded through practices in digital archaeology such as unequal access to digital resources, the choice of subjects to digitize, and the retention and maintenance of digital archaeological data. Rico (2017) discusses the many drawbacks that come with the adoption of digital technologies, noting that increased adoption of technology “contributes to the perpetuation of a culture of expertise that is embedded in the dominant heritage paradigm” (p. 218). Bonacchi et al. (2018) reveal how depictions of the past on social media directly contribute to the construction of political identities. The COVID-19 pan- demic has shown us how useful it is to have access to digital archives, artifacts, and even entire sites. There are immense digital archives of cultural materials, but these are far from universal or secure. Which materials are deemed important enough to digitize, to make available, and to maintain in perpetuity? Which parts of our past are thus made obscure, inessential, invisible? It is therefore welcome that attention to harm reduction and accessibility within digital archaeology is growing, which I discuss in terms of ethics and politics. Investigators have been developing ethical frameworks for digital archaeology and heritage. A relatively early intervention by Colley (2015) outlined many of the pertinent issues, including un- even distribution and exclusion, deceptive claims of democratization, data standards, authenticity and authority in 3D audiovisual simulations, privacy standards and social media, and indigenous critiques. Richardson (2018) expands this discussion to examine ethical standards around digital public archaeology and data collection from digital media. Graham (2020a; see also Dennis 2016, Khunti 2018) situates ethics in archaeology as applicable in archaeogaming, also making a paral- lel argument to Brazelton’s (2020) examination of Minecraft as operating within a settler-colonial framework. The most nuanced case studies are identified by bioarchaeologists who have discussed the particular ethical problems presented by the display of human remains on websites and the sharing of osteoarchaeological digital data (Hassett 2018, Huffer et al. 2019, Ulguim 2018). Fi- nally, Dennis (2020) discusses the “failures” in ethics in digital archaeology with regard to codes of conduct, with a lack of institutional oversight combined with a lack of “consensus-led ethical guidelines” (p. 212). These concerns are mirrored in the 2018 Computer Applications and Quan- titative Methods (CAA) statement on ethics (Brughmans et al. 2018). In this discussion of ethics, it is worthwhile to revisit the discussion of deontological codes, ethics, and politics set forth by González-Ruibal (2018). In his review, González-Ruibal (2018) notes that ethics and its association with “morals, virtuous behavior and policy” is in contrast www.annualreviews.org Current Digital Archaeology 221  to politics, which invokes “equality, enfranchisement, conflict, power asymmetries, social justice, political economy, and capitalism” (p. 346). In my previous work, I have emphasized a political and ethical engagement with digital archaeology rooted in feminist epistemology and emancipatory archaeology (Morgan 2012) and formed an early intervention in the documentation and display of digital archaeological data captured from human remains [Boutin & Morgan 2013 (2009)]. This early intervention relied on ethical codes that were formed through state or institutional power, so this statement could come under critique as another set of ethical principles without particular engagement with political action. In the process of forming ethical principles for the Other Eyes Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 project, we used a consensus process based on anarchist principles, with advocacy for the dead, and participation of representative stakeholders (C. Morgan, M. Alexander, A. Parker, L. Hampden, M. Holst, Z. Kamash, E. Drew, and M. Carroll, forthcoming). Though ethical discussions in digital archaeology are ongoing, political engagements are only beginning to proliferate. There has heretofore been relatively little engagement with the greater political ramifications of digital archaeology, including questions about the privileging of state societies or institutional power through the continual reconstruction of churches and castles or the potential for the use of digital archaeology for prefiguration of more egalitarian futures (but see Perry & Taylor 2018). Some excellent projects have addressed accessibility and decoloniza- tion within digital archaeology, particularly within virtual reality and 3D reconstruction. Ongo- ing research and work by González-Tennant (2013) in the Virtual Rosewood research project has demonstrated the ability for 3D reconstruction and virtual reality to create impactful interven- tions for social justice (Figure 1). Cook (2019) created Built on Bones, an augmented reality skele- tal overlay for architecture, revealing buildings that are related to colonial legacies. Perhaps the most fully realized collaborative project is Nunalleq, Stories from the Village of Our Ancestors, a digital educational resource for children in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region on Alaska’s Bering Sea coast (Figure 2; Watterson & Hillerdal 2020). The project is codesigned between academic Figure 1 Rosewood: An Interactive History (RAIH), a digital simulator using gaming technology to explore Rosewood, Florida, an African American town destroyed during a 1923 race riot. Image provided by Digital Heritage Interactive, Diana Gonzalez-Tennant, and Edward González-Tennant. 222 Morgan Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 Figure 2 Nunalleq: Stories from the Village of our Ancestors is an interactive educational resource for children which tells the story of the archaeological excavations of a precontact Yup’ik sod house in Quinhagak, Alaska. Image provided by Alice Watterson, John Anderson, and Tom Paxton in collaboration with the Nunalleq Archaeology Project, University of Aberdeen, and Qanirtuuq Incorporated in Quinhagak, Alaska. researchers and a wide consortium of indigenous community members and combines archaeolog- ical data with contemporary indigenous knowledge to create an interactive resource to empower children to “take ownership of their history and heritage” (Watterson & Hillerdal 2020, p. 222). Interventions are not always limited to 3D reconstruction within digital archaeology. An in- sightful issue on mapping and historical archaeology in the International Journal of Historical Ar- chaeology features GIS used to map power and resistance, including the 1733 St. Jan Slave Rebellion in the Danish West Indies (Norton 2020), experiences of suffering and death surrounding undocu- mented migration (Gokee et al. 2020), and indigenous uses of space through radical placemaking (Townsend et al. 2020). Also notable is the Mukurtu content management system, which “em- power[s] communities to manage, share, narrate and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways” (https://mukurtu.org/about; Christen 2011). These are a few examples of projects that show the potential for restorative justice work with digital technolo- gies in archaeology. Perhaps the most controversial political intervention with subsequent discussions surrounds Oxford’s Institute for Digital Archaeology 3D modeling and reconstruction of the triumphal arch from Palmyra. The arch was met with general plaudits from popular media and condemnation from archaeologists who were concerned with the funding, symbolism, lack of stakeholder consultation, and disconnect from critical heritage discourse by the creators of the model (Khunti 2018, Rico 2020, Stobiecka 2020a). In particular, Yazdi & Massoudi (2017) note that “there are no traces of blood stains in the reconstruction site” (p. 451). Kamash (2017) led an intervention that productively queried the model by conducting place-based research while the model was located www.annualreviews.org Current Digital Archaeology 223  in Trafalgar Square. She and a team of students invited responses on postcards from visitors to the site; these responses highlighted the alienation of the model to colonial surroundings and positioning of the uprooted arch. 3D printing has also been explored by others as a way to more widely distribute artifacts and skeletal remains, for replacement after repatriation, and for interpretive displays. 3D-printed ob- jects are archaeological artifacts themselves, of course, and archaeologists have been exploring how they evoke emotional responses as interpretive materials (Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco et al. 2018, Galeazzi 2018). Digital reproductions and 3D printing have been used by artists to protest Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 47.212.200.32 On: Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:25:30 colonialism in what is known as the Nefertiti Hack, wherein a 3D scan of the iconic Nefertiti bust held in the Neues Museum in Berlin was purportedly clandestinely created and then used to print a 3D copy (Geismar 2018, p. 111). It was later understood that this hack was actually a leak of an existing 3D scan. Isaac (2015) discusses indigenous repatriation of artifacts and the power that 3D reproductions can have to transform relationships through coproduction. Through consultation with clan members, the National Museum of Natural History created a 3D replica of a Tlingit Dakl’aweidi clan killer whale crest hat or Kéet S’aaxw. This replica then became an important site of cultural and clan memory (Hollinger et al. 2013) and demonstrates digital archaeological practice in service to restorative justice principles. Isaac (2021) further notes that “through the creation of these digital/object/beings these projects have given the Tlingit more agency in for- malizing their expectations about the responsible or moral treatment for these, as well as for their ‘kin’ or other related object/beings in museums.” CONCLUSIONS Although digital archaeology has been primarily a method and is emerging as a theory, it has been discussed as a continual process of becoming (sensu Lock 2003, p. xiii). Technological vanguardism is celebrated within the community of digital archaeologists as we continue to experiment with digital methods to investigate the past. These methods are then absorbed into general practice or set aside as they prove to be too unwieldy or outmoded. Some have argued to “stop talking about digital archaeology” in order “to continue doing archaeology digitally” (Costopoulos 2016, p. 1), and much technologically aided practice is tedious and menial and does not necessarily contribute