The forthcoming lecture of the Norwegian Institute at Athens will be given by Dr.Jeremy Huggett (Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Archaeology, University of Glasgow), which will take place on Wednesday, 3 December 2025, at 7:00 p.m. (EET).
Dr. Huggett will deliver a keynote lecture titled “Gone Digital: How Has Digitalization Changed Archaeology?” as part of the Data and Technology Politics in Archaeology Workshop, the second volume of the Exploring the Layers of Digital Archaeological Practice workshop series (2024–2027). While the workshop itself is closed to the public, the keynote lecture is open to a wider audience and will be held at the Norwegian Institute at Athens in a hybrid format, allowing for both in-person participation and online attendance via Zoom.
Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
For in-person attendance:
Please register by contacting [email protected]
For online attendance:
Please register using the following link: https://uib.zoom.us/meeting/register/5HsYcREeSyiTgSNEBaT_Cg
Abstract
It’s perhaps surprising to realize that digital archaeology is now some seventy years old. Looking back into this prehistory of digital archaeology from the present day, it’s clear that a great deal has changed over the intervening years, and the pace of that change has become increasingly rapid as time has passed. Archaeology has become ever more mediated and augmented by a growing variety of digital technologies embedded in day-to-day methods and research, but what have been the effects of this digitalization on archaeological practice over the years?
This presentation will argue that the consequences of digitalization extend far beyond the development and implementation of new tools and novel devices. Going digital is about more than the ability to do more, to do things faster, to use ever larger amounts of data, and to use new tools that offer previously unconceived facilities. As the digital becomes embedded in practice it becomes increasingly challenging to understand its influences through time: what might have been lost as well as gained. The digital mediates our engagement with the past, both enabling and constraining thought and action through the devices we use. How has digital mediation influenced our practice and our engagement with the past? As digital objects increasingly substitute for the material, how do perceptions of archaeology and its evidence change? How is archaeological thought and understanding affected by a growing reliance on the digital? And what are the implications for the practice of archaeology now and in the future? Looking back on the process of digitalization we can begin to understand our responses to key changes and past developments that have occurred and build on that learning as we move forward into the future.
Biographical Information
Dr. Jeremy Huggett is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, where he taught archaeology and computing from 1990 to 2020. He was one of the original consortium members behind the creation of the Archaeology Data Service in 1996 and subsequently served as chair of the management and advisory committees at various points in the intervening years. He is currently a vice-chair of the ADS Management Committee. He is also an Advisory Editor of Internet Archaeology, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He has written widely on aspects of digital archaeology and blogs at introspectivedigitalarchaeology.com.