Whither digital archaeological knowledge? The challenge of unstable futures

Abstract

Digital technology increasingly pervades all settings of archaeological practice and virtually every stage of knowledge production. Through the digital we create, develop, manage and share our disciplinary crown jewels. However, technology adoption and digital mediation has not been uniform across all settings or stages. This diversity might be celebrated as reflecting greater openness and multivocality in the discipline, but equally it can be argued that such diversity is unsustainable, and that standards are insufficiently rigorous. Regardless, all positions face the possibility of being severely tested by some large-scale external event: on every continent we witness economic and political upheaval, violence and social conflict. How is digitally mediated knowledge created, managed, and disseminated by archaeologists today, and how secure are the means by which this is achieved? To investigate this question we apply the futurity technique of scenario analysis to generate plausible scenarios and assess their strategic strengths and weaknesses. Based on this analysis we propose some measures to place archaeology in a more robust knowledgescape without stifling digitally creative disruption.