Introduction: a critique of digital practices and research infrastructures

Abstract

Digital Humanities might appear a recent phenomenon. Yet almost seventy years have gone by since Father Roberto Busa initiated his Digital Humanities project: the computerassisted lemmatization of the complete Thomistic corpus (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/). Although Busa first conceived of this project in 1946, it took him nearly four decades to realize it; leveraging the power of the digital computer as an ordering machine capable of processing and listing potentially infinite amounts of textual data. The development of the first computational analysis of archaeological materials, a numerical classification of Eurasian Bronze axes conducted by Jean-Claude Gardin and Peter Ihm in the late 1950s (Cowgill 1967; Huggett 2013) introduced a different aspect of computer-based research: one that brought to the fore the possibilities afforded by digital methods for dimension reduction, discovery and visualization of latent structures of complex data. Fast-forwarding to the present day, two surprisingly distinct communities have already emerged in digital arts and humanities research. On the one hand, Digital Humanities, at least until very recently, appeared preoccupied with transforming the traditions of textbased humanities computing, drawn directly from library collections and scholarly practice. Digital Heritage, on the other hand, has drawn more from theories and practices in digital archaeology and the digital representation of material culture but has often gained attention for its adoption of cutting-edge visualization and virtual reality technology. While driven by the traditions of custodian institutions such as museums, galleries, libraries, and archives and special collections, Digital Heritage leverages the capabilities of contemporary technologies in visualizing and representing cultural objects beyond text, and occasionally borrows ideas from the entertainment industry. Digital Heritage might influence Digital Humanities in terms of lessons learnt from visualization, scanning / recording, 3D photorealistic modelling, GPS and mapping technologies, and possibly even instructional design and serious game development. But Digital 1 This is the author-formatted, pre-publication draft of Benardou, Agiatis, Erik Champion, Costis Dallas, and Lorna M. Hughes (2018) Introduction: a critique of digital practices and research infrastructures. In

Reflections on Collaborative Archaeology and Large-Scale Online Research Infrastructures

“…Persistent, large-scale, online research infrastructures have a role to play in creating Champion's scholarly eco-system and advocating for a more collaborative archaeology; driven by a "community of research institutions and individual researchers" working together to support stronger stewardship and greater equity (Benardou et al 2017b). Working as a community will allow us to speak with a more unified voice to address barriers and create change.…”

“…There has been significant recent discussion focused on infrastructures within the digital humanities and particularly within digital heritage, including critical histories and exemplars across edited volumes (Benardou et al 2017a;De Santo et al 2017). Most useful for this discussion is the expansion on an idea set out by Eric Champion in 2014 (as discussed in Benardou et al 2017b) around understanding digital infrastructures as scholarly eco-systems. Such eco-systems are "not merely collections of research resources or tools to conduct research: they are energized by a community of research institutions and individual researchers, and become living environments of evolving, synergistic but also often competing research, education and communication practices" (Benardou et al 2017b: 3).…”

Digital topics on cultural heritage investigated: how can data-driven and data-guided methods support to identify current topics and trends in digital heritage?

“…According to his investigation, the most prominent scenarios are virtual museums and on-site presentations of cultural heritage. In addition to these quantitative studies, there have been various qualitative discussions (Ciolfi et al 2017 ; Benardou et al 2018 ). Regarding adjacent disciplines, a fundamental analysis of topics in the humanities was conducted by Leydesdorff et al ( 2011 ) and most recently by Spinaci et al ( 2021 ).…”

Digitally-Mediated Practices of Geospatial Archaeological Data: Transformation, Integration, & Interpretation

“…While new conversations are evolving that address impacts in both the digital humanities and digital archaeology (e.g. Benardou et al 2018;Dallas 2007;Holdaway, Emmitt, Phillipps & Masoud-Ansari 2019; MacFarland and Vokes 2016; Wright and Richards 2018), effects of the digital on archaeological practice and scholarship remain understudied. For example, initial conversations on preservation of cultural heritage materials have shifted to include access and reuse-focusing not simply on making data available for future inspection, but also preparing them for contemporary reuse (Clarke 2015;Esteva et al 2010;Lukas, Engel & Mazzucato 2018;MacFarland and Vokes 2016;Ullah 2015;Witcher 2008;Wylie 2017).…”