A postphenomenological perspective on digital and algorithmic archaeology

Gabriele Gattiglia

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2022, 33.2, 319-334; doi: 10.19282/ac.33.2.2022.17

Abstract

Digital technologies are not neutral tools; rather, they mediate our knowledge of material evidence. This contribution stems from the reflections on the sidelines of the ArchAIDE project, which developed AI tools to recognise ceramics and attempts to answer questions, among others, on how technological intervention takes place in archaeology, particularly through AI, and if such effects are disruptive concerning epistemology and hermeneutics. Postphenomenology and material hermeneutics have been considered to describe the relationship between archaeology and digital technology. In the AI age, Archaeology’s challenge is to recognise technology as an actor (or maybe as an agent) on whom we depend on extracting meaning and, at the same time, as something that partially reflects our hermeneutic. The algorithms have digital technological intentionality that creates information, performs hermeneutics in our place, and finally directs archaeologists what to read. This act of knowledge is performed instead of ours. If, in Heidegger’s ontological inversion, science becomes dependent on technology and, in a sense, a tool of technology, in the same way, archaeology has become dependent on technology and entrapped by it.

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