Resource: Getting Started in Digital Archaeology

From the resource:

Digital archaeology, as I have conceived it here, is not about computation in the service of finding the answer. It is about deforming, and thinking through, the various networks and distributed agencies that tie us to the past and simultaneously make it strange, that enchant and confound us. There are any number of courses on the books at universities around the world, any number of tutorials on any number of websites, that will walk you through how to do x using software package y, and when you know exactly what it is you need to do, these can be enormously helpful.

The best strategy for deformance however is to play. Play around – you’re allowed! Try things out. See what happens when you do this. But we – as the academy, as the guardians of systemized knowledge – have managed to beat playfulness out of our students. What’s more, when you’re just starting out, and you’re not sure of the terminology, not sure of even what it is you’re after, what question you’re really asking, it is easy to succumb to information paralysis – too much information means you’re not able to act at all. The strategy I take with my own students is to make it safe to fail, safe to play around, what Stephen Ramsay famously called the screwmeneutical imperative. To do this, you need to have someone model productive failure, to have someone to point to who is trying things out and reporting back on what has worked and what has not. Beyond this, there is therefore no magic recipe, no silver bullet:

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