Files
Download Full Text (3.6 MB)
Description
Beyond outlining some of the experiences and outcomes of the conversion of the University of Cincinnati’s excavations at Pompeii to a “paperless” project, particularly through the highly publicized adoption of iPads to record our archaeological fieldwork, this paper is about our discipline’s polarized response to such developments. In particular, it aims to set the pessimism about paperless methods, held by a sizable demographic, within a wider socio-academic context. Much of it is about admitting we have a problem: that is, a disciplinary consternation for changes to the ways we record data and produce knowledge in the field. More than a defense of the use of tablet computers over pieces of paper to record archaeological fieldwork, what follows is ultimately a call to balance our commonly romanticized views of experience and tradition in the ways we do things with the intellectual value in exploring new ideas and developments in core methodology.
Publication Date
10-4-2016
Publisher
The Digital Press @ University of North Dakota
City
Grand Forks, North Dakota
Keywords
archaeological recording, digital data, fieldwork, iPad, paperless archaeology;, Pompeii, tablets
Disciplines
Classical Archaeology and Art History
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Ellis, Steven J.R. “Are We Ready for New (Digital) Ways to Record Archaeological Fieldwork? A Case Study from Pompeii.” In Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology, edited by Erin Walcek Averett, Jody Michael Gordon, and Derek B. Counts, 51-75. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2016.
Comments
For Supplemental Material see: https://mobilizingthepast.mukurtu.net/collection/12-are-we-ready-new-digital-ways-record-archaeological-fieldwork-case-study-pompeii