Theme:
2. Archaeological Sciences, Humanities and the Digital era: Bridging the Gaps
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Surveying in Archaeology in the Digital Era: Rethinking Old Procedures and Imagining New Standards
Content:
Field data-collection has greatly evolved due to ever-advancing Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which has found an increasing place in archaeology. Particularly, archaeologists are faced with the problem to document the three dimensions of archeological contexts (width, length, and depth), and their evolution in time (the so- called 4D), as well as to document the continuum of archaeological landscape, considering the single archaeological feature (e.g. a site or a stratigraphic unit) as part of a more complex geographical palimpsest.
In this session we would like to present and discuss the impact of digital technologies on the every-day practices of the topographical survey, within the different sectors of in-field archaeology, as well as to highlight the limits and the implicit and explicit theoretical and methodological consequences of these practices.
Recent digital survey workflow are mostly focused on three main approaches: a Processual style analysis (collection and analysis of large datasets), a Phenomenological style analysis (often focused on using reconstructions to study the perception and feeling of ancient environments), and the development of applications for Heritage management and valorisation (such as tourism/educational application or conservation). However, hardly anyone is focused on methodologies for field surveying, even if the characteristics of the digital data themselves - in particular their level of resolution and their informative value/limits - are, almost spontaneously, generating a new momentum in the debate about epistemological processes in archaeology.
We seek papers presenting case-studies and considering aspects of self-criticism and self-awareness of topographical data-collection and management workflows, as well as related to the analysis of the level-of-detail and level-of-information-need of the archaeological data acquired with digital technologies.
Keywords:
Topographical survey, Digital archaeology, Theory and methods, 3D archaeology, Data level-of-detail, Level-of-information-need
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Marco Cavalazzi (Italy) 1,2
Co-organisers:
Tyler Johnson (United States) 3
Cristiano Putzolu (Italy) 1
Affiliations:
1. Università di Bologna
2. University of Michigan
3. Kelsey Museum of Archaeology - University of Michigan
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