Jeremy Huggett

University of Glasgow, Archaeology, Emeritus

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Jonathan Zittrain

Harvard University

Beat Signer

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Julita Vassileva

University of Saskatchewan

Costis (Konstantinos) Dallas

Vilnius University

Maurizio Forte

Duke University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Julian Thomas

The University of Manchester

Stefano R L Campana

University of Siena / Università di Siena

Enrico Cirelli

Università di Bologna

Yannis Hamilakis

Brown University

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Papers by Jeremy Huggett

Unravelling Archaeological Digital Infrastructures

Current Swedish archaeology, Feb 24, 2024

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Is Less More? Slow Data and Datafication in Archaeology

Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press is the publishing unit of the Cotsen Institute of Archa... more The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press is the publishing unit of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, a premier research organization dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and conservation of archaeological knowledge and heritage. It is home to both the Interdepartmental Archaeology Graduate Program and the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. The Cotsen Institute provides a forum for innovative faculty research, graduate education, and public programs at UCLA in an effort to positively impact the academic, local and global communities. Established in 1973, the Cotsen Institute is at the forefront of archaeological research, education, conservation and publication, and is an active contributor to interdisciplinary research at UCLA. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press specializes in producing high-quality academic volumes in nine different series, including Monumenta Archaeologica, Monographs, World Heritage and Monuments, Cotsen Advanced Seminars, and Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives. Through a generous endowment by Lloyd E. Cotsen, longtime Institute volunteer and benefactor, the Press makes the fruits of archaeological research accessible to scholars, professionals, students, and the general public. Our archaeological publications receive critical acclaim in both academic communities and the public at large.

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Disciplinary Issues: Challenging the Research and Practice of Computer Applications in Archaeology

Archaeology in the Digital Era, 2014

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Promise and Paradox: Accessing Open Data in Archaeology

Increasing access to open data raises challenges, amongst the most important of which is the need... more Increasing access to open data raises challenges, amongst the most important of which is the need to understand the context of the data that are delivered to the screen. Data are situated, contingent, and incomplete: they have histories which relate to their origins, their purpose, and their modification. These histories have implications for the subsequent appropriate use of those data but are rarely available to the data consumer. This paper argues that just as data need metadata to make them discoverable, so they also need provenance metadata as a means of seeking to capture their underlying theory-laden, purpose-laden and process-laden character.

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Core or Periphery? Digital Humanities from an Archaeological Perspective

Historical Social Research, 2012

The relationship between Digital Humanities and individual humanities disciplines is difficult to... more The relationship between Digital Humanities and individual humanities disciplines is difficult to define given the uncertainties surrounding the definition of Digital Humanities itself. An examination of coverage within Digital Humanities journals narrows the range but at the same time emphasises that, while the focus of Digital Humanities might be textual, not all textually-oriented disciplines are equally represented. Trending terms also seem to suggest that Digital Humanities is more of a label of convenience, even for those disciplines most closely associated with Digital Humanities. From an archaeological perspective, a relationship between Digital Archaeology and Digital Humanities is largely absent and the evidence suggests that each is peripheral with respect to the other. Reasons for this situation are discussed, and the spatial expertise of Digital Archaeology is reviewed in relation to Digital Humanities concerns regarding the use of GIS. The conclusion is that a closer r...

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Archaeologies of the digital

Antiquity, 2021

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Algorithmic Agency and Autonomy in Archaeological Practice

Open Archaeology, 2021

A key development in archaeology is the increasing agency of the digital tools brought to bear on... more A key development in archaeology is the increasing agency of the digital tools brought to bear on archaeological practice. Roles and tasks that were previously thought to be uncomputable are beginning to be digitalized, and the presumption that computerization is best suited to well-defined and restricted tasks is starting to break down. Many of these digital devices seek to reduce routinized and repetitive work in the office environment and in the field. Others incorporate data-driven methods to represent, store, and manipulate information in order to undertake tasks previously thought to be incapable of being automated. Still others substitute the human component in environments which would be otherwise be inaccessible or dangerous. Whichever applies, separately or in combination, such technologies are typically seen as black-boxing practice with often little or no human intervention beyond the allocation of their inputs and subsequent incorporation of their outputs in analyses. T...

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Virtually Real or Really Virtual: Towards a Heritage Metaverse

Studies in Digital Heritage, 2020

The hype surrounding the impending mainstreaming of Virtual Reality can seem to prioritize the di... more The hype surrounding the impending mainstreaming of Virtual Reality can seem to prioritize the digital above the critical. With the development of VR said to be at a pivotal point, there is an important opportunity to consider the emergence of virtual heritage and its potential futures. This paper argues that there is a disjunction between the present reality of virtual heritage and virtual reality, and discusses the twin challenges of presence and realism within virtual reality. In particular, it highlights a paradox inherent in virtual heritage and virtual reality and proposes the use of ‘loose-realism’ as a solution. Ultimately, the challenge is to address the claims that virtual reality represents a new class of information system, or metaverse, in order that virtual heritage fully engages with enquiry about the past.

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Is Big Digital Data Different? Towards a New Archaeological Paradigm

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020

Archaeological data is always incomplete, frequently unreliable, often replete with unknown unkno... more Archaeological data is always incomplete, frequently unreliable, often replete with unknown unknowns, but we nevertheless make the best of what we have and use it to build our theories and extrapolations about past events. Is there any reason to think that digital data alter this already complicated relationship with archaeological data? How does the shift to an infinitely more flexible, fluid digital medium change the character of our data and our use of it? The introduction of Big Data is frequently said to herald a new epistemological paradigm, but what are the implications of this for archaeology? As we are increasingly subject to algorithmic agency, how can we best manage this new data regime? This paper seeks to unpick the nature of digital data and its use within a Big Data environment as a prerequisite to rational and appropriate digital data analysis in archaeology, and proposes a means towards developing a more reflexive, contextual approach to Big Data.

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Resilient Scholarship in the Digital Age

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2019

Once scholarship might be characterised in terms of the lone scholar in an ivory tower, toiling i... more Once scholarship might be characterised in terms of the lone scholar in an ivory tower, toiling in libraries, reading, writing and communicating their research through conferences, journals and books, networking in person with small ' elite' disciplinary groups, and teaching small numbers of students (e.g. Pausé & Russell 2016: 8). The move to digital scholarship sees scholars acquiring information online and communicating with colleagues via email, video and social media, blogging and networking about research, analysing and archiving data online, submitting and reviewing papers and grant applications via the web, and producing a wider range of outputs including grey literature and podcasts, for example (Holliman 2010: 4). The association of new technologies with scholarly activity

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Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2018

Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and h... more Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and how archaeological and archaeologically relevant information and knowledge are made, what counts as archaeological information, and where the limits are situated. The aim of this position paper, developed as a part of the COST action Archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment (www.arkwork.eu), is to highlight the need for at least a relative consensus on the extents of archaeological practices in order to be able to understand and develop archaeological practices and knowledge work in the contemporary digital context. The text discusses approaches to study archaeological practices and knowledge work including Nicolini's notions of zooming in and zooming out, and proposes that a distinction between archaeological and archaeology-related practices could provide a way to negotiate the 'archaeologicality' of diverse practices.

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Whither Digital Archaeological Knowledge? The Challenge of Unstable Futures

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2018

Digital technology increasingly pervades all settings of archaeological practice and virtually ev... more 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.

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Archaeology and the new technological fetishism

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2004

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Data Legacies, Epistemic Anxieties, and Digital Imaginaries in Archaeology

Digital

Archaeology operates in an increasingly data-mediated world in which data drive knowledge and act... more Archaeology operates in an increasingly data-mediated world in which data drive knowledge and actions about people and things. Famously, data has been characterized as “the new oil”, underpinning modern economies and at the root of many technological transformations in society at large, even assuming a near-religious power over thought and action. As the call for this Special Issue recognizes, archaeological research is socially and historically situated and consequently influenced by these same broader developments. In archaeology, as in the wider world, data is the foundation for knowledge, but its capacity is rarely reflected upon. This paper offers just such a reflection: a meditation on the nature of archaeological digital data and the challenges for its (re)use. It asks what we understand by data: its etymology and comprehension, its exceptionality and mutability, its constructs and infrastructures, and its origins and consequences. The concept of the archaeological data imagi...

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A Manifesto for an Introspective Digital Archaeology

Open Archaeology, 2015

This paper presents a grand challenge for Digital Archaeology of a different kind: it is not tech... more This paper presents a grand challenge for Digital Archaeology of a different kind: it is not technical in and of itself, it does not seek out technological solutions for archaeological problems, it does not propose new digital tools or digital methodologies as such. Instead, it proposes a broader challenge, one which addresses the very stuff of archaeology: an understanding of how digital technologies influence and alter our relationships with data, from their creation and storage ultimately through to the construction of archaeological knowledge. It argues that currently this area is under-theorised, under-represented, and under-valued, yet it is increasingly fundamental to the way in which we arrive at an understanding of the past.

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Capturing the Silences in Digital Archaeological Knowledge

Information, 2020

The availability and accessibility of digital data are increasingly significant in the creation o... more The availability and accessibility of digital data are increasingly significant in the creation of archaeological knowledge with, for example, multiple datasets being brought together to perform extensive analyses that would not otherwise be possible. However, this makes capturing the silences in those data—what is absent as well as present, what is unknown as well as what is known—a critical challenge for archaeology in terms of the suitability and appropriateness of data for subsequent reuse. This paper reverses the usual focus on knowledge and considers the role of ignorance—the lack of knowledge, or nonknowledge—in archaeological data and knowledge creation. Examining aspects of archaeological practice in the light of different dimensions of ignorance, it proposes ways in which the silences, the range of unknowns, can be addressed within a digital environment and the benefits which may accrue.

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The Apparatus of Digital Archaeology

Internet Archaeology, 2017

Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses-technological, methodo... more Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses-technological, methodological, software, hardware, material, immaterial-which in their own ways and to varying degrees shape the nature of Digital Archaeology. Our attention, however, is perhaps inevitably more closely focussed on research questions, choice of data, and the kinds of analyses and outputs. In the process we tend to overlook the effects the tools themselves have on the archaeology we do beyond the immediate consequences of the digital. This paper introduces cognitive artefacts as a means of addressing the apparatus more directly within the context of the developing archaeological digital ecosystem. It argues that a critical appreciation of our computational cognitive artefacts is key to understanding their effects on both our own cognition and on the creation of archaeological knowledge. In the process, it defines a form of cognitive digital archaeology in terms of four distinct methods for extracting cognition from the digital apparatus layer by layer.

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Is Big Digital Data Different? Towards a New Archaeological Paradigm

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020

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Resilient Scholarship in the Digital Age

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2019

This paper addresses the nature of digital scholarship and discusses the challenges for digitally... more This paper addresses the nature of digital scholarship and discusses the challenges for digitally engaged researchers in archaeology and elsewhere who find that the move to digital scholarship alters the terms of engagement in both the institutional and the personal context. For example, digital methods can counterintuitively lead to increased workloads and expectations of availability, and they are frequently linked to managerialism and marketisation of scholarship. Paradoxically, digital scholarship can entail both a tightening of control through forms of surveillance and an increase in freedom to work in places and at times of choice. This gives rise to a heightened experience of stress and insecurity, and so this paper will argue for the need for resilience in scholarship, not at the institutional level where business resilience approaches are already applied, but at the community and individual level, to benefit most those who experience the risks and downsides associated with digital scholarship.

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Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and h... more Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and how archaeological and archaeologically relevant information and knowledge are made, what counts as archaeological information, and where the limits are situated. The aim of this position paper, developed as a part of the COST action Archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment (www.arkwork.eu), is to highlight the need for at least a relative consensus on the extents of archaeological practices in order to be able to understand and develop archaeological practices and knowledge work in the contemporary digital context. The text discusses approaches to study archaeological practices and knowledge work including Nicolini’s notions of zooming in and zooming out, and proposes that a distinction between archaeological and archaeology-related practices could provide a way to negotiate the ‘archaeologicality’ of diverse practices.

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Unravelling Archaeological Digital Infrastructures

Current Swedish archaeology, Feb 24, 2024

Download

Is Less More? Slow Data and Datafication in Archaeology

Critical Archaeology in the Digital Age

Download

Disciplinary Issues: Challenging the Research and Practice of Computer Applications in Archaeology

Archaeology in the Digital Era, 2014

Download

Promise and Paradox: Accessing Open Data in Archaeology

Download

Core or Periphery? Digital Humanities from an Archaeological Perspective

Historical Social Research, 2012

Download

Archaeologies of the digital

Antiquity, 2021

Download

Algorithmic Agency and Autonomy in Archaeological Practice

Open Archaeology, 2021

Download

Virtually Real or Really Virtual: Towards a Heritage Metaverse

Studies in Digital Heritage, 2020

Download

Is Big Digital Data Different? Towards a New Archaeological Paradigm

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020

Download

Resilient Scholarship in the Digital Age

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2019

Download

Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2018

Download

Whither Digital Archaeological Knowledge? The Challenge of Unstable Futures

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2018

Download

Archaeology and the new technological fetishism

Archeologia e Calcolatori, 2004

Download

Data Legacies, Epistemic Anxieties, and Digital Imaginaries in Archaeology

Digital

Download

A Manifesto for an Introspective Digital Archaeology

Open Archaeology, 2015

Download

Capturing the Silences in Digital Archaeological Knowledge

Information, 2020

Download

The Apparatus of Digital Archaeology

Internet Archaeology, 2017

Download

Is Big Digital Data Different? Towards a New Archaeological Paradigm

Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020

Download

Resilient Scholarship in the Digital Age

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 2019

Download

Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and h... more Defining what constitute archaeological practices is a prerequisite for understanding where and how archaeological and archaeologically relevant information and knowledge are made, what counts as archaeological information, and where the limits are situated. The aim of this position paper, developed as a part of the COST action Archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment (www.arkwork.eu), is to highlight the need for at least a relative consensus on the extents of archaeological practices in order to be able to understand and develop archaeological practices and knowledge work in the contemporary digital context. The text discusses approaches to study archaeological practices and knowledge work including Nicolini’s notions of zooming in and zooming out, and proposes that a distinction between archaeological and archaeology-related practices could provide a way to negotiate the ‘archaeologicality’ of diverse practices.

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Open Archaeology: Topical Issue on Challenging Digital Archaeology

by Davide Tanasi and Jeremy Huggett

Open Archaeology, 2015

In a digital environment increasingly characterised in terms of ‘big data’, cloud processing, cro... more In a digital environment increasingly characterised in terms of ‘big data’, cloud processing, crowd sourcing, social media, intelligent computing, etc., this issue will debate the future contributions of archaeological computing to the discipline with a view to developing a series of ‘grand challenges’ which seek to generate genuinely novel approaches and methodologies in digital archaeology and which represent radical paradigm shifts for the wider discipline and potentially beyond.

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