Designing a Collaborative Peer-to-peer System for Archaeology: The DigVentures Platform

Digital technologies are ubiquitous in archaeology, and have been argued to improve workflows across the archaeological knowledge chain; but to what extent have digital tools materially changed the nature of archaeological scholarship or the role of archaeologists in knowledge production? This paper compares a traditional ‘pipeline’ with a networked ‘platform’ model of fieldwork, assessing the impact of technology-enabled participation on archaeology’s disciplinary and professional boundaries. In contrast to the collaborative potential of peer-to-peer systems, the current vogue for intra-site digital tools (such as tablet recording, GIS, and 3D technologies) can be seen to augment rather than reinvent pre-digital workflows. This point will be illustrated through an assessment of the UK based collaborative platform, DigVentures, in contrast with recent high-profile initiatives to transition to digital workflows by other established field projects. Evaluated through the lens of Nesta’s recent typology of platform organisations in the ‘collaborative economy’, it will model the underlying dynamics of peer-to-peer interaction by utilising the ‘Platform Design Toolkit’, considered alongside a worked project example and assessment of digital web analytics of the DigVentures platform. It will finally consider how a peer-to-peer system is experienced by scholars themselves, and the changing role of the archaeologist in a system that shifts the locus of work beyond the physical limits of an organisation, to open up the archaeological process to anyone who chooses to participate.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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