Internet Archaeology 6: Digital Publication theme

The potential use of the Internet by archaeology in the organisation and institutionalisation of archaeological knowledge involving a shift from hierarchy to networks and flows, is considered. That the Internet may simply translate old forms of elite knowledge into new forms, increasingly excluding the un-networked is seen as a potential danger of this development. It is argued that care needs to be taken to provide different modes of access for different groups and to find ways round the exclusive tendencies associated with the dispersal of any new technology.

This paper outlines why and how I have used hypermedia technology and the World Wide Web in the construction of my Ph.D. thesis, how the end result compares with my initial aims and what I would do differently if I could start again. I also discuss how I persuaded my supervisor and the University of Wales to accept a doctoral thesis written in HTML and submitted on CD-Rom, and how my examiners coped before and during the viva.There are also sections about my perspective of the problems and potentials of hypermedia writing in future archaeology. Among the most important challenges are, in my view, questions of permanent accessibility and necessary changes of reading habits. The benefits of publishing without commercial publishers, and making use of non-linear writing, expressing intertextuality, and keeping the text open-ended and thus 'alive' will become obvious when they are used more radically than is often the case now.

It is asserted that the provision of authoritative, interpretative, syntheses is what archaeologists seek through publication. Further, that the first real challenge of the digital age has been to balance this trend and in contrast to archaeological practice over the last two decades, a shift toward the dissemination of raw data is being witnessed. This move towards dissemination to put it on an equal footing with publication and synthesis is here considered both irrevocable and fundamental. The provision of interactive data will begin to allow the formation of new relationships between archaeologists, archaeological organisations and the practice of archaeology. The range of digital provision which may be expected within a medium-sized archaeological organisation is demonstrated with reference to the situation at the University of Birmingham and Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU).

This paper will describe the Levi Jordan Plantation web project http://www.webarchaeology.com/ in which interactivity is seen as more than just providing web site visitors with buttons, sound bites and video clips, and multivocality as more than the passive presentation of "diverse pasts". Collaborators (including archaeologists and descendant community members) are attempting to use web site content as well as various on-line mechanisms to promote conversations about the past between archaeologists and the public, and between members of the public with each other. This paper will describe the specific strategies being used, and will comment on the theoretical, epistemological, and practical challenges that archaeologists face in this new communicative environment.