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An Enchantment of Digital Archaeology: Raising the Dead with Agent-Based Models, Archaeogaming and Artificial Intelligence

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Series
Volume 1

Digital Archaeology: Documenting the Anthropocene

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An Enchantment of Digital Archaeology

Raising the Dead with Agent-Based Models, Archaeogaming and Artificial Intelligence

Shawn Graham

210 pages, bibliog., index, digital ABM teaching-guide

ISBN  978-1-78920-786-6 $149.00/£110.00 / Hb / Published (July 2020)

ISBN  978-1-78920-871-9 $29.95/£23.95 / Pb / Published (July 2020)

eISBN 978-1-78920-787-3 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781789207866


View CartYour country: - edit  Buy the eBook! $29.95info on epub formatRequest a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“I urge you not to dismiss this book as a niche or specialist treatise. While Graham may at times use a technical term or make a reference that is missed by the nondigital archaeologist, the overall message comes through clearly. Graham presents a strong case that active, playful, and enchanting approaches are good for archaeology. And while I assume that he would not expect everyone to be enchanted by the same methods or tools, his general approach to engagement with the past is one that can be applied to all aspects of archaeology.” • American Journal of Archaeology

“The aim and personable, essayistic, almost diary-style kind of writing is simultaneously avant-garde (for academic works) and fitting for our (post-)digital times and the digital field it covers. This combination is what makes it a very worthwhile and refreshing read.” • Angus Mol, Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities

“Many readers of this book…will find in this book inspiration and encouragement to pursue those ideas they previously discarded as wacky, frivolous or “not academic”; they are allowed to play, fail and be enchanted. There is huge value in this message.” • Tom Brughmans, University of Barcelona

Description

The use of computation in archaeology is a kind of magic, a way of heightening the archaeological imagination. Agent-based modelling allows archaeologists to test the ‘just-so’ stories they tell about the past. It requires a formalization of the story so that it can be represented as a simulation; researchers are then able to explore the unintended consequences or emergent outcomes of stories about the past. Agent-based models are one end of a spectrum that, at the opposite side, ends with video games. This volume explores this spectrum in the context of Roman archaeology, addressing the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of a formalized approach to computation and archaeogaming.

Shawn Graham is a digital archaeologist at Carleton University, where he is Associate Professor of Digital Humanities. He is a co-author with Ian Milligan and Scott Weingart of Exploring Big Historical Data: The Historian's Macroscope (Imperial College Press, 2015). He was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's 2019 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology for the creation of the Open Digital Archaeology Textbook Environment, o-date.github.io.

The appendices to this book form an ABM (Agent-Based Model) teaching guide hosted on the Berghahn Books Digital Archaeology platform, with interactive code available on GitHub. Pdocast with Augmented Humanity.

Subject: ArchaeologyMedia StudiesHeritage StudiesAnthropology (General)


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