Week 12: What we couldn't recover, and why

Closing the semester on the recoveries that didn't fully succeed — and why that's still a valid outcome

24 May 2027

Not every artifact gives up its secrets in a semester, and this course has never asked that of you — only that a failure be documented well enough that someone else could pick it up. The closing lecture looks back across past attempts (including gaps still open in Meridian Drift’s own record) to draw out what a well-documented failure actually looks like versus one that just gives up early.

This is also the semester’s last word on the ethics thread from week 6: what digital archaeology can responsibly claim to have “recovered,” and what it should describe more carefully as “reconstructed,” “partially restored,” or “still lost.”

Outline#

• what’s still missing from Meridian Drift, five years of community effort later
• the difference between a well-documented failure and an abandoned one
• recovered, reconstructed, or still lost: being precise about the claim
• Recovery Exhibit due this week — 60%