Unravelling Archaeological Digital Infrastructures

When I was invited to offer a keynote paper, the editors provided a generously broad brief in the context of the development of a new national infrastructure for digital archaeology in Sweden (SweDigArch).This new infrastructure is described as facilitating:… the production of aggregated and harmonised datasets, previously unmatched in scope, fulfilling the demands for cutting-edge integrative, interdisciplinary research on long-term socio-environmental dynamics.Swedigarch will enable new approaches for digital methods, reinvent archaeological research agendas, and ensure that Swedish archaeology is part of the data science revolution (SweDigArch 2023).On the one hand, the expressed objectives are ambitious, highly commendable, and broadly aligned with national infrastructural developments elsewhere (see Jakobsson et al. 2021; 2023, for example).On the other hand, as those behind SweDigArch are undoubtedly aware (see Dell'Unto 2023), those same goals disguise a host of equally significant challenges.