In a recent paper on the future of digital archaeology, Huggett, Reilly, and Lock, lament the “haphazard application adoption, fractures and silos” that characterize the field. They long for “a common strategic goal with regards to how we adopt technology and create, develop, manage and share our disciplinary knowledge, competencies, and capabilities in the age…
Preprint: Settlement choice under conditions of rapid shoreline displacement in Wemindji Cree Territory, subarctic Quebec
Note: This is a version of the text which is currently in press at the journal Quaternary International. The paper was originally presented at the Arctic Science Summit week in Prague in April 2017, in a session organized by Peter Jordan and Sean Desjardins. Colin D Wren, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Andre Costopoulos, University of…
Environmental instability and habitat choice in a simple agent-based foraging model: Agents prefer diversity in rates of environmental change
Note: This is a follow up to my SAA2018 paper Some very interesting recent work has focused on the role of environmental instability in human evolution (Potts 2013, Grove 2014) and the development of cultural complexity (Fogarty et al 2017). This work has tended to look at adapative responses of populations of learning agents in…
Digital Humanities as insurgency
In The Digital Humanities Bust, Timothy Brennan argues that despite lofty claims supported by heavy financial and academic investment, the Digital Humanities (DH) have hardly any meaningful results to show. The vociferous (and justified) reaction to his statement has obscured another important claim he makes and that needs to be discussed: DH is an insurgency.…
Can you model my valley? Particular people, places and times in archaeological simulation
Note: This is an edited version of the paper I gave at the 2016 SAA session organized by Ben Davies. Simulation can be used to do anything. That’s part of its problem. It can easily be used try to replicate a particular past context. But should it? Anyone who has tried to build general archaeological…
ArcheoThoughts 