New media, it is maintained, constitute a path forward in attending to the multisensory, ambiguous and ineffable qualities of material presence. In complimenting the scenographic modes of archaeological documentation as detailed in the previous chapters, my purpose here is to discuss the specific digital media engaged with in this dissertation and the action of each. Indeed, by bringing different instruments, media (predominately new), skills, and knowledge to bear upon the material pasts of the Southern Argolid countryside I am able to retrace, reiterate and rework the landscapes documented by AEP in new ways. This endeavor spawns a series of questions. How do we best manifest the material presence of landscape given these new modes of engagement? And, more specifically, what qualities of the material world, which paper-based media filter out, are we to attend to? Indeed, what can we actually learn from attending to such aspects of the material past?

I address these questions in the context of the social software, sound media, peripatetic video and digital templates I employ. This dissertation is accompanied by a ‘wiki’ which collates a complete archive and these various digital media in a single on-line forum. Much space in this chapter is given over to a discussion of the implications of these modes of engagement for archaeology. Yet before so doing, I first touch upon some of the ways in which archaeologists have enlisted computer technology in their practice. I subsequently contrast the qualities of both digital and paper-based media. Indeed, the ‘userly’ aspects of new media and the publication outlet of the Internet have placed the ability to bring more ineffable qualities of the material world and the richness of the associated archive to the fine-edge of the ‘final document.’ Furthermore, I suggest we may also think beyond the computer as the primary interface with new media presentations and mobilize other modes of articulation that are possible through located media (Witmore 2004).

Archaeology, it should be emphasized, in attending to something so utterly complex as the material past, benefits from as many forms of documentation and articulation as possible (cf. Hodder 2000). With the 19th century scenographic modes, it has been argued that we reduce and filter out a great deal of the complexity, material presence and ambiguity which can be mediated through digital modes of articulation. Digital media also reduce. But, as they manifest something of the qualities sieved away through paper-based modes of articulation, these disparate media are held as complimentary. Yet is this too much information?

Some might appropriately object that this media explosion spawns an endlessly proliferating archive and that the enrollment of so many modes of documentation leads to, quoting Gavin Lucas, ‘a cacophony of materialization’ (2005a). While selectivity is a necessity in archaeological practice, this interest in new media, it should be stressed, is not a simple issue of proliferating various media for their own sake. My argument is that we can only anticipate for future generations by giving something of our practice over to multiplicities and ambiguities (Serres 1995, 136). Furthermore, as there is more to understanding the material world than meaning, such qualities are constitutive of our experiences of landscape. Such articulations are important for addressing the presence of things (Olsen 2005). More will be said of this below.

Forward to: New media and archaeology

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