Spatial History, deep mapping and digital storytelling: archaeology's future imagined through an engagement with the Digital Humanities

Geospatial technologies are transforming the practice of the Digital Humanities, and these developments have direct relevance to the practice of scientifically oriented archaeology. The most recent “spatial turn” among digital humanists can be attributed to both the prevalence of tools like ArcGIS that facilitate such investigations as well as an interdisciplinary convergence upon theoretical models that conceive of socially constructed space. This article will briefly review the current state-of-the-art in the field of Spatial History as well as discuss a number of emerging trends such as deep mapping, digital storytelling and data visualization, utilizing examples from a variety of applications. Moreover, archaeologists can benefit from the substantial investments by the academy in the Digital Humanities, particularly in the United States and Canada. In sum, the article proposes that the scope of archaeological applications of geospatial technologies would be productively broadened through an increased engagement with the Digital Humanities.