What Digital Archaeology Is (And Has Always Been): The Archaeobytological Foundation

Abstract The four essays of this series have traced an arc from diagnosis to theory and from method to politics. The present synthesis draws the threads together and makes the definitive claim: digital archaeology, properly understood, is archaeobytology. Not a subset of the field nor a competing school of thought, archaeobytology serves as the field's necessary theoretical foundation, the ground on which all digital archaeological practice implicitly stands. Every practitioner who recovers data from obsolete media and every archivist who preserves endangered websites as well as every scholar who interprets digital artifacts from the past engage in archaeobytology, whether the name is recognized or not. The synthesis demonstrates this identity through three movements: first, showing that archaeobytological concepts are already implicit in existing practice; second, demonstrating that explicit adoption of the archaeobytological framework improves that practice; third, articulating the programmatic implications for the field's future. Digital archaeology has always been archaeobytology. The time to know itself has arrived. Keywords: Archaeobytology, Digital Archaeology, Disciplinary Unification, Theoretical Frameworks, Archive and Anvil, Implicit Theory, Methodological Improvement, Professional Practice, Steward's Mandate, Field Development