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Almost
everything that is written or said about the use of information
technology within archaeology relates to hardware and applications
and there is a general poverty of (published) material which
considers the implications of the application and use of these
tools on the way that the discipline of archaeology is practised.
Although we are generally comfortable with the idea that technology
has changed the way we live our everyday lives, and the ever-increasing
pace of that change, for some reason there appears to be a
general reluctance to consider that such changes and the pace
of these changes may also impact on archaeology.
Archaeologists point with justifiable pride to the tradition
of self-critical analysis of new ideas and methodological
changes within the subject. Archaeologists question their
data, their methodologies, their theories, their conclusions,
the very basis of their subject, yet it appears that archaeology
operates within a 'bubble', somehow immune to the consequences
of the new technologies that are more and more a part of both
the world around us and of archaeology itself.
This paper will consider the consequences of these new technologies
which are themselves part of the driving force behind the
adoption of new ways of working and the introduction of still
more new technologies within archaeology.
Key words: technology, change, impact
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