Monika Stobiecka
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)
Abstract:
The shift from “spade-work” do “screen-work” (Edgeworth 2015) in archaeology was a radical revolution that has influenced the ways of practicing the study of the past. However, it did not provide the discipline with new, appropriate to digital work-flows, theoretical frameworks. Even though many of the researchers in the digital and cyber field announced the birth of a “digital culture” or “digital ecosystems” (Forte 2007, Jones and Levy 2018), this significant shift in data gathering, data representation and the afterlife of digital, virtual and cyber imagery did not contribute to formulation of a new, vital theory that could respond to the digital and cyber advances in the study of the past. The paper seeks to propose a theoretical approach to supplementary technologies in archaeology — a project of prosthetic archaeology, that is about the processes of “prostheticizing” (Wills 1995) archaeology with the presence of digital turn in the discipline of things. It will examine the processual potential of a technological prosthesis as an active addition that does, makes, transforms, refers, evokes, (re)constructs, and generates meanings. By focusing on the disruptive ontology of the “digital-material”, the presentation will investigate its temporal character. Moving from the nominal to the verbal understanding of the ontology of the so-called “digital-material” the considerations will be placed in the broad horizon of material and entanglement studies, new materialism, and relational ontologies.
Monika Stobiecka is a PhD student at the Faculty of „Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw. She received MA in History of Art (specialization: modern art) and MA in Archaeology (specialization: museum studies and popularization of archaeology) from the University of Warsaw. She is currently completing her thesis on the status of archaeological artifacts in museums. In 2014 she was granted with an award for students given by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education — „Diamond Grant”. She collaborated with National Museum in Warsaw, Museum of Architecture in Wrocław, Foksal Gallery and Zachęta Polish National Gallery. She was granted scholarships by Lanckoroński Foundation in 2016 (research at British Museum and John Soane’s Museum) and Kościuszko Foundation in 2018 (research stay at Stanford Archaeology Center).