5.1. Response: Living a Semi-digital Kinda Life

Abstract

The following observations draw on my personal experience as an archaeologist working in the Eastern Mediterranean who has dabbled in the digital world. In considering the papers in this volume, I reflect on what it means to “live a digital life” in field archaeology. I argue we are living a “semi-digital kinda life” (à la Third Eye Blind, the US rock band formed in the early 1990s) where many of us are part paper and part digital, which I contend is not a bad state of affairs. In assessing our half in/half out digital archaeology, I speculate that new technologies have the tendency to create, or reinforce, divisions between genders, developed and less-developed nations, and practice and theory. These thought-provoking chapters illustrate the very bright future for digital archaeological fieldwork and data collection, but there is still work to be done – to improve, expand, and include missing elements into digital archaeology.