Archaeobytology: The Discipline of the Ancient Byte

Abstract: Digital preservation faces an ontological crisis: practitioners excavate the "digital dust" of the web's history without a unified theory defining the nature of the artifacts they recover. While adjacent fields like media archaeology and forensic materialism provide critical lenses for analysis, they lack a generative methodology for applying historical lessons to contemporary technical stewardship. This paper creates the discipline of Archaeobytology to fill this intellectual void. The paper establishes the Archaeobyte as the fundamental unit of inquiry, distinguishing between tangible files and conceptual "ghosts" of past interfaces. It introduces The Triage, a state-based taxonomy classifying artifacts not by format, but by their functional relationship to the current ecosystem: the **Vivibyte** (living usage), Umbrabyte (broken context), Petribyte (fossilized function), and Nullibyte (lost). Finally, it articulates the Archive & Anvil methodology, a synthesis of scholarly excavation and critical making. This framework redefines the practitioner as an Archaeobytologist—a "scholar-smith" who studies the digital past to forge sovereign, resilient frameworks for the future. This work serves as the foundational declaration for the discipline, inviting scholars to move beyond nostalgia and engage in applied digital stewardship. Keywords: Archaeobytology, Digital Archaeology, Media Archaeology, Digital Preservation, Forensic Materialism, Critical Making, Digital Sovereignty, Archaeobyte, Vivibyte, Umbrabyte, Petribyte