Chapter 2 Big Data and Greek Archaeology: Potential, Hazards, and a Case Study from Early Greece
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Abstract
This paper considers the potential and the limitations of using approaches drawn from data science (often now associated with the term “big data”) in archaeological research. Following a brief review of data in archaeological research and the sociology of quantification, I examine whether using approaches drawn from big data might affect our understanding of the degree of change or continuity across the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age in Greece. The paper demonstrates that sorting a large amount of archaeological data does reveal apparently dramatic changes in the archaeological record across the Bronze to Iron Age transition, but many of these changes seem more attributable to the way that archaeological data are recorded and encoded than to change in past societies. I conclude that quantification and systematic analysis of archaeological evidence are most often useful because they can help researchers understand the structure and history of, and therefore some of the gaps and biases in, the archaeological record. Taken at face value, however, archaeological big data have as much potential to mislead as to enlighten if it is not wielded critically and with a strong sense of the human element involved in constructing datasets.