The history of computers in archaeology is a love-hate saga. As a sometime
participant and fulltime observer over many years, I have become somewhat
jaded, I suppose.
Sometimes, like the MHT/Annapolis/Naval Academy GIS experiment, failed
first efforts are good for a chuckle. Nothing was hurt, and we got a good
laugh at government expense.
Too frequently, on the other hand, premature application of new technology
results in tragic data loss. I'd hate to store irreplaceable data in a
field computer without a paper backup, for example.
Interest in computer applications in archaeology is cyclical. There was a
time when historical archaeologists were so indifferent to computers that
you couldn't have attracted them with free beer.
Back fifteen years ago, we published an article in BYTE magazine about
archaeological computerization, which included a listing in BASIC. We had a
nifty program to calculate mean ceramic dates on the PET (remember them?).
At the SHA in Philadelphia about that time, we tried to organize a session
on microcomputers in archaeology, and maybe five people showed up. This was
just after the earliest computer archaeology newsletter folded, apparently
for lack of interest.
For more than twenty years, to my certain knowledge (Dan may remember
farther back.), there have been regular waves of new technology tested,
debated, and then discarded in favor of good old rag-content paper. Along
the way, we have discovered valuable tools, like VisiCalc, dBase II, and
Microsoft File. Remember them? Have you tried to read your old Apple ][
VisiCalc files with your current machine? Aren't you glad you printed them
out on paper?
Computer applications do a fine job after they are tested, backed up, and
de-bugged, but experiments should be clearly labelled as experimental, and
new technology should be run in tandem with the proven, older, systems
before it is adopted whole-hog, and entrusted with our irreplaceable data.
I am a Mac devotee, but I can't visualize committing my field notes to a
Newton without putting them on paper.
. _______
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. | _ | | --] Ned Heite, ><DARWIN> Tedium
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