Using Computers in Archaeology by Lock Gary;

Author:Lock, Gary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

Towards digital places

As mentioned above, GIS is a technology that operates within wider arenas and these tensions concerning its epistemology are not unique within archaeology. It is generally recognised within the so-called GIS and Society debate that the technology brings with it certain assumptions, principles and practices about the way in which analysis and the acquisition of knowledge are pursued. Two general themes within this debate form an important background to the more specific interests of this chapter (Lock and Harris 2000). The first concerns the nature of data and argues that data do not exist but are created. Data are a social construction and the ‘for whom, by whom, and for what purpose’ is based within a mix of social, political and economic contexts and interests (Taylor and Overton 1991). The second theme concerns the potential exclusion from GIS of much information because it is qualitative and not capable of being measured and represented by the spatial primitives of point, line or polygon. The GIS and Society discourse recognises that alternative forms of knowledge representation are crucial to understanding the nature of place and are largely excluded from GIS, resulting in a single ‘capturing’ of an official view of reality which is heavily biased toward a scientific data-driven representation (Mark 1993). Indeed, it has been argued that one reason why GIS has been so spectacularly successful is because it represents a single non-contradictory view of the world (Harris et al. 1995). This is of particular interest for national and regional CRM systems and their ability, or inability, to incorporate alternative views of the past within a seemingly inflexible GIS.

Central to this discussion, and to an understanding of the mismatch between GIS applications and landscape theory, is how the relationship between people and landscape can be modelled within GIS. It is of interest here to consider the ideas of Michael Curry in his book Digital Places: Living with Geographical Technologies (Curry 1998). Curry classifies GIS into PaleoGIS and GIS2; the former, which is most of present GIS applications and certainly most, if not all, archaeological ones, are defined by their under-representation of the basic elements of human experience that give meaning to the world. Within Curry’s list of what is needed to overcome this under-representation in the construction of GIS2 is ‘the creation of community’, a return to a pre-modern past and an appreciation of community based on shared connections to place. Curry also includes an ability to represent time as an essential for moving beyond PaleoGIS, not only time as measured chronology but also ‘lived time’ as an experiential narrative. Implicit within any snapshot of a landscape (i.e. a GIS coverage) is time as past, structured through spatial relationships, and time as future represented by potential.

I feel that this notion of community has great resonance within archaeological applications, especially in the context of recent discussions of space, place and humanised landscapes. A community is held together by a shared set of constructed categories for making sense of the material and social worlds, categories that also allow for individual expression and development.

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