Deconstructing the Digital Infrastructures Supporting Archaeological Knowledge

Abstract

The last 30 years have seen significant investments in the development of digital infrastructures to support archaeological practice. From field recording systems to national data archives, these have come to play an increasingly dominant role in the collection, management, and access to the data used in the creation of new archaeological knowledge. Although a lot of attention has been paid to the technical creation of such systems, much less is said about the wider political, cultural and social aspects of these infrastructures. Focusing on large-scale national or transnational data infrastructures, this paper seeks to lay the groundwork for such an inquiry by making the infrastructure the centre of analysis, rather than its technical aspects. The paper asks how infrastructures emerge, are sustained, become embedded in practice, and how they subsequently contextualise and influence the formation of archaeological knowledge. The underlying and frequently hidden complexities of infrastructures and their nature as always under development should make a critical understanding of their implementation and application, the opportunities they offer, the constraints they impose, and the perspectives they adopt, an important precursor to their knowledgeable use in practice.