Archaeology and Interdisciplinarity after the Digital Turn
I’m quite happy to announce that my latest article just came out in Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice. The piece is called “Archaeology and interdisciplinarity after the digital turn” and is part of a special issue on interdisciplinary approaches to history.
What’s it about?
The article explores how archaeology – and especially digital and computational archaeology (DCA) – has always been inherently interdisciplinary, and how this has intensified dramatically since the digital turn. But rather than just talking about this in abstract terms, I wanted to show concrete examples of what this actually looks like in practice.
I chose three case studies that represent different levels and types of interdisciplinary work: Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), machine learning applications for archaeological texts, and archaeogaming. Each of these demonstrates something different about how disciplines can work together and enrich each other.
The three case studies
RTI is a fascinating imaging technology originally developed by Hewlett-Packard that archaeology quickly adopted and adapted for its own purposes. The technique allows researchers to virtually relight photographed objects, revealing details invisible to the naked eye. I discuss how this has been used on everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to ancient coins. I also discuss how archaeology, in turn, has contributed to the further development of this technology.
The machine learning section focuses on the work of Alex Brandsen, who developed a search engine called AGNES that can actually understand archaeological texts. Anyone who has tried to search through archaeological gray literature knows the frustration: searching for “Bronze Age Netherlands” won’t find documents that talk about “1,500 BCE” or “3,500 years old.” Brandsen’s work addresses this fundamental problem and increased site discovery by thirty percent in one case study.
And then there’s archaeogaming – a topic close to my heart. Also a topic that I’ve been teaching at the University of Cologne for years now. The article discusses how this emerging field helps us understand how the past is communicated through video games, from Indiana Jones to Lara Croft to more thoughtful representations like Heaven’s Vault. I even got to mention “The Schliemann Experience,” a game created by students in my archaeogaming seminar.
Why multivocality matters
The theoretical thread running through the article is the concept of multivocality. In archaeology, this usually refers to including different voices – indigenous communities, the public, non-experts – in interpreting the past. But I argue that interdisciplinary work is essentially the academic version of this same principle. By bringing together different disciplinary perspectives, we enrich our interpretation of the past with multiple viewpoints rather than relying on a single, potentially limited, lens.
This isn’t just about finding answers to research questions. It’s about the recognition that different disciplines see different things and ask different questions. Together, they can produce interpretations that none of them could achieve alone.
Where to find it
The article is now available online at Taylor & Francis: https://doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2025.2610136.
It’s part of a special issue that brings together perspectives from various historical sub-disciplines. If you’re interested in how different fields approach interdisciplinarity, the whole issue is worth a look.