Shawn Graham, Practical Necromancy for Beginners: A Short Incomplete Opinionated Introduction to Artificial Intelligence for Archaeology and History Students. Grand Forks, ND: The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, 2025.
Many feel bewildered and quietly embarrassed that they don’t know more about how AI technology works, where it came from, or even how to get started. Start here.
Practical Necromancy represents Shawn Graham’s vision for how we should treat large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence applications. Graham advocates approaching these technologies as a necromancer. In antiquity, the figure of the necromancer lay outside the boundaries of official religion, talking not with gods but with the mournful echoes of ghosts. Practical Necromancy explores ways of surfacing the ghosts that lurk in AI technology. Graham suggests that the most useful thing we and our students can do with LLMs is to break them, push them, prod them, make them give up the ghosts in their data. We think through making and putting things together. It’s always the process that matters, not the final product. Through short essays, hands-on exercises, and suggestions for how one might build one’s own course, Practical Necromancy is meant to give us a starting point, a way in, a place to push from.
Practical Necromancy is especially timely as the language and hype around AI is deliberately meant to make you feel as if the computers from Star Trek are just around the corner. The message is quasi-religious: the future will be glorious. This book will help you step outside the official religion and start conversations with the ghosts lurking in these new machines.
Shawn M. Graham is Full Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of History at Carleton University, Ottawa Canada.
Shawn Graham’s magic is in how he makes complex, complicated topics such as AI approachable to non-technical people. Using Graham’s Practical Necromancy as your grimoire, you will gain intimate knowledge about how artificial intelligence really works through ample spells and incantations to communicate with the ghost in the machine.
—Dr. Andrew Reinhard, RPA (founder and author of Archaeogaming)
Practical Necromancy offers a hands-on approach for developing the mindset that today’s college students need for approaching, interacting, and experimenting with AI. And, perhaps most importantly, for instructors, the framework needed to help them and their students take the first steps on this journey.
—R.Scott Moore, Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
If you like this book, check out Shawn Graham’s Failing Gloriously and Other Essays (2019).
Failing Gloriously and Other Essays documents Shawn Graham’s odyssey through the digital humanities and digital archaeology against the backdrop of the 21st-century university. At turns hilarious, depressing, and inspiring, Graham’s book presents a contemporary take on the academic memoir, but rather than celebrating the victories, he reflects on the failures and considers their impact on his intellectual and professional development. These aren’t heroic tales of overcoming odds or paeans to failure as evidence for a macho willingness to take risks. They’re honest lessons laced with a genuine humility that encourages us to think about making it safer for ourselves and others to fail.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota 