The modern opens the past
It turns out that the past has a future. That is, archaeology has a chance to transform its print-bound publishing norms into a digital-age machine for gathering, sharing, and analyzing vast stores of field data. Such information — often paid for by public funds — is more likely now to be hoarded and parceled out to journals that would be obscure or expensive for most people. Harvard-trained anthropologist Eric Kansa, Ph.D. ’01, brought this message and more to a Harvard audience in the inaugural lecture in a series organized by the Digital Futures consortium. The group began this summer as a One Harvard gathering of experts interested in how the digital age will change scholarship. Kansa is “a true revolutionary” and “an ethnologist of academic culture,” said Digital Futures co-chair Judson Harward, director of research computing for the Arts and Humanities at Harvard University Information Technology. And his message of helping archeology...