Core or Periphery?Digital Humanities from an archaeological perspective

Jeremy HuggettArchaeology, School of Humanities

The Archaeologist

The Digital Humanist?

Digital Humanities Journals/DisciplinesLinguistics

Literature

History

Philosophy

Archaeology

ArtMusic

Film

Theatre

Classics

Geography

0

50

Digital Humanities QuarterlyInternational Journal of Humanities and Arts ComputingLiterary and Linguistic ComputingComputers and the HumanitiesLanguage Resources and EvaluationProceedings of the Modern Language Association PMLAArts and Humanities in Higher Educa-tion

(IJHAC from 2007; PMLA from 2002)

TEXT

(Text-Image.com)

EXTERNAL

VI EW

TEXTUAL

FOCUS

‘Traditional’ terms

‘Traditional’ terms

‘Digital’ terms

The move to digital

• Maintain disciplinary identity

• Itinerant membership of DH?

• Spread of DH publication?

© jeffszuc.com

Digital Archaeology & Digital Humanities

© Christian Demma

Methodological Commons

(McCarty & Short 2002)

Methodological Commons

(McCarty 2005)

Digital Humanities & Digital Archaeology

• Archaeology deals with long-past pre-literate societies so it fits poorly within a logo-centric Digital Humanities

• Practices within DH and DA are drawn from elsewhere, not each other, or have developed independently

© Stuart Dunn

Digital Humanities & Digital Archaeology

• Archaeology deals with long-past pre-literate societies so it fits poorly within a logo-centric Digital Humanities

• Practices within DH and DA are drawn from elsewhere, not each other, or have developed independently

© Stuart Dunn

Humanities GIS

http://gap.alexandriaarchive.org/gapvis/index.html

http://hypercities.ats.ucla.edu/

... multimedia browsers or analytical tools?

Issues for Humanities GIS

© Wendy Bix

• GIS are reductionist• GIS are poor at dealing with

ambiguity and uncertainty• GIS are poor at handling

time• GIS are heavy on

visualisation• GIS are difficult• GIS require collaboration

with technical experts

(David Bodenhamer 2010)

Anxiety Discourse

Digital?

Tools?Building?

Coding?

Insufficiently specialised?

Excessively pragmatic?

www. hetemeel.com

The humanist turn?

© Andrew Stawarz