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Emphasizing the phenomenon not the technology, cultivating a focus on mediation across technologies, emphasizing theoretical mechanisms of technological mediation, synthesizing perspectives on digital communication.

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The Conduct and Consequence of Research on Digital Communication

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Andrew J Flanagin, The Conduct and Consequence of Research on Digital Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication , Volume 25, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 23–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmz019

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Research on digital communication is best served by concentrating not on current technological tools , but rather on the novel processes of social and communicative change to which such technologies are often closely linked. Thus, scholarship should consider contemporary technologies mainly as manifestations of underlying phenomena rather than as particular objects of study and should cultivate a focus on the capabilities that span technologies. Theories in this domain, in turn, must concentrate on what is exceptional about technologies in terms of the psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms that help to comprehend them in the long term. Seen this way, the key to understanding technological mediation is remarkably consistent even in the face of radical technological change.

Although the technologies of communication have changed radically in the last several decades, the key to understanding technological mediation has remained the same. Indeed, technological upheaval paradoxically demands that researchers focus their efforts not on novel tools of communication, but rather on the novel processes of social and communicative change to which technologies are often closely linked. Without recognition of this basic insight researchers stand to neglect the most critical elements of technological change in favor of enticing and important—but overly specific and fleeting—shifts in technological products, features, and outcomes. Thus, answers to the questions of what computer-mediated communication (CMC) research is today and should be tomorrow are one and the same: research on communication mediated by contemporary technological tools must focus squarely on what is exceptional about such tools in terms of the psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms that help to comprehend them in the long term. Only by doing so will research produce an enduring understanding of communicative phenomena in a context of swift technological change.

To do this, scholarship should: (a) consider current technological tools or products mainly as manifestations of underlying phenomena rather than as objects of study in their own right, (b) cultivate a focus on the capabilities of technologies that spans technological tools, and (c) emphasize the identification, development, and modification of theoretical mechanisms describing the core processes of human communication as fundamentally connected to technological mediation. Adhering to these ideals stands to produce explanations of human responses to mediation that reach beyond current technical manifestations and therefore endure over time. Each of these standards is next explicated in turn, followed by their synthesis and an assessment of the challenges and potential advantages that might accrue to the study of mediated communication.

Although technological changes are often prominent in perspectives on social history and societal transformation, decontextualized studies of particular technological tools or their usage often fail to provide broad or long-term insight. Such “object-centered” research tends to focus on the technology as a whole, emphasizing its uniqueness or newness in time or place “because the technology, as a material thing, has some particularly interesting feature[s]” ( Nass & Mason, 1990 , p. 46). Yet, new technologies soon become old and the very instinct that prompts consideration of these new tools also foreshadows their eventual modification or demise. A more sustainable approach is therefore to privilege strategies that emphasize the aspects of technology that are likely to endure in their importance over time and across tools.

Yet, the bias toward tools-based studies is reflected even in the longstanding label of “ computer -mediated” communication, which emphasizes the means of mediation over its processes. To partially redress this bias, researchers might alternatively consider current technological tools or products mainly as exemplars exhibiting underlying phenomena rather than as particular objects of study in their own right. In this fashion, studies should emphasize the core processes of interest (e.g., studies of mediation in its various forms) over the particular tools that exhibit the capacity for such processes (e.g., studies of Twitter, etc.). Doing so mitigates against findings becoming outdated with changes to the technological tool under study and appropriately shifts focus from a particular tool to the underlying phenomena of interest.

As a simple example, consider hypothetical studies of a particular communication tool, such as the messaging application Snapchat, for instance. A typical strategy might be to query or observe some dimension(s) of people’s Snapchat usage, such as their motivations or intentions for, or their frequency and outcomes of, use of the technology, perhaps within a particular subpopulation, geographic location, or culture of interest. Such studies might be considered research of Snapchat (i.e., as an object of study in its own right), and they would provide largely descriptive data on the state of Snapchat use today, while providing little insight into the cross-cutting or underlying capabilities of messaging tools in general. The value of research findings, however, would be dramatically different before and after Snapchat’s relaxation of several features where messages are permanently deleted shortly after receipt. Thus, research on any technology as an object of study may not necessarily endure over time as technical modifications occur, does not generalize well to other tools unless capabilities are shared among them, and may not provide deep insight into underlying communicative processes more broadly if they are not the focus of study specifically.

Yet, Snapchat could nonetheless provide a valid site (versus subject) of study for an underlying phenomenon, such as the transmission of sensitive information to others, as long as the core capability of interest (e.g., information ephemerality) is appropriately manipulated or highlighted by the method of inquiry. There is thus a critical difference between studying a specific technology (e.g., a study of Snapchat behaviors) versus studying a phenomenon that happens to take place on or is currently manifest in a technology, as a site of study (e.g., a study of a particular behavior that happens currently to be prevalent on Snapchat). In the latter case, Snapchat may serve, for example, as an instance of the underlying phenomenon of information ephemerality or persistence, which might affect the sharing of sensitive information. The implication is that other tools exhibit the same capability, potentially providing greater robustness and generalizability of findings. Focused studies of a specific capability manifest in multiple technologies thus make it easier to identify the most important aspects of influence, as discussed next.

To uncover the enduring aspects of technological mediation, research must emphasize the basic communicative and social processes that are evolving as a consequence of contemporary technologies, rather than the specific tools that currently facilitate them. This entails identifying the critical elements of mediation as they occur in various forms of digital communication and then dedicating sustained attention to them across multiple studies, preferably across multiple technologies. Looking across technologies, then, researchers should be able to identify and understand the most critical and enduring components of mediated communication.

Many perspectives advocate this type of examination. The variable-centered approach, for example, is offered as a corrective to object-centered research (where technologies are examined holistically, as a consequence of material features thought to be new) and social-actor-centered studies (where technologies are subservient to variation across individuals or groups; Nass & Mason, 1990 ). In these latter cases, “theories that are specified or operationalized in terms of one technology can never be applied to any other technology” because it is not known “what feature or characteristic of the technology has been caused or has led to the effect under study … [since] any single technology represents a particular value on a number of variables” (p. 49).

To resolve this, the variable-centered approach proposes examining features that span multiple technologies to isolate their influence. By decomposing technologies into their component pieces they can be understood in terms of their relation with other variables of interest. Advantages include that the variables examined are likely to fluctuate across technologies, will be relevant across time as technologies wax and wane, may help to demonstrate similarities and differences between technologies, and can serve as independent, dependent, or intervening variables depending on the research question at hand.

Similarly, the mix of attributes perspective ( Eveland, 2003 ) was proposed to redress media effects research that privileges the effects of different content, while treating media technologies largely as static delivery tools, thereby ignoring their actual impact. To do so, the perspective advocates considering media technologies as quantitatively different from one another, composed of a potentially wide variety of attributes, and as historically situated inasmuch as truly novel media attributes are rare. In this manner, attributes such as interactivity, control, or channel are manifest in multiple technologies and can be studied within and across them. Benefits from doing so include clarity in technology explication, a clear focus on the effects of media (versus content), identification of new variables that are shared among technologies, and the ability to focus on attributes spanning technological tools.

Finally, affordance approaches to the study of technology (e.g., Fox & McEwan, 2017 ; Gibson, 1979 ; Norman, 1988 , 2013 ; Treem & Leonardi, 2012 ) note that technological tools are each composed of a host of features that are common to those who encounter them. The potential capabilities or uses of a technology, though, are potentially unique to each individual since every person interprets a technology in terms of its distinct utility to them (i.e., the uses it “affords” them). The same tool may therefore afford different people different things and affordances are relational in that they are formed through interaction between technological features and the subjective interpretations and goals of individuals. Thus, affordances are the capabilities of technologies that can be exploited to facilitate an action or outcome and are rooted in particular technological features.

Consider an example of studying the potential relationship between the use of social media tools and opinion conformity: A simple hypothesis of digital mediation would be that Facebook use is positively related to group-level political opinion conformity (due perhaps to peer pressures to adapt to shared group norms). Facebook use (the independent variable) is measured and correlated with the amount of political opinion conformity among people’s Facebook contacts (the dependent variable). This clearly constitutes an object-centered study of a technology (Facebook), and it therefore fails to capture the nuances of the technological mediation at play, saying merely that use of Facebook is related to conformity, without specifying the particular mechanisms underlying this relationship. This shortcoming is not addressed even if the proposed relationship is extended by, for instance, noting that the relationship exists among members of some subpopulation, such as those of a common location or cultural group, or if the outcomes are extended to include other factors, such as group polarization.

Reconsidering the same phenomenon along the lines of variable-centered, mix of attributes, and affordance perspectives, however, suggests a different and more enduring strategy. In these terms a simple hypothesis might be that enhanced opinion visibility (the independent variable) in social media environments prompts more group-level political opinion conformity (the dependent variable), again perhaps due to pressures to adapt to group norms. Indicators of agreement, such as the “like” option (in Facebook or Instagram), or re-tweeting (on Twitter), or “upvoting” (in Reddit), could be invoked to operationalize opinion visibility. In this way, cross-cutting features can be identified that, while embedded in particular tools, might also span multiple technologies. Liking, retweeting, or upvoting (as well as functions not yet invented that serve similar purposes) are specific to particular technologies and yet perhaps sufficiently similar to one another to span multiple tools. Consequently, valid research sites in this context include any venue where such features are prominent, thus extending both research opportunities and the applicability of research findings.

Put another way, opinion visibility is an affordance that might be manifest in the material feature of a “like” button (for instance), which may affect group-level political opinion conformity. The affordance of opinion visibility can thus be exploited by people via particular features (e.g., “likes”) to signal outcomes, such as their dis/approval of others’ opinions (perhaps resulting in more or less conformity, etc.). In this way, affordances draw specific attention to digital mediation , as they accentuate the novel processes of social and communicative change to which technologies are often closely connected. Because the affordance links the technology to an outcome “ignoring this [mediating] aspect of affordances reflects a theoretical leap and implies a deterministic argument where an object [technology] leads to the outcome without any indication of the process or reasons for the relationship ” ( Evans, Pearce, Vitak, & Treem, 2017 , p. 39; emphasis added). Positing that Facebook use is positively related to political opinion conformity, as mentioned earlier, constitutes precisely this type of leap. By contrast, the explicit examination of affordances (e.g., opinion visibility) as manifest in features (e.g., likes) can provide a critical key to understanding the crucial processes of mediation that commonly occur through, and across, contemporary technologies.

Importantly, the key to digital mediation lies in the fact that technologies can facilitate relatively novel affordances by virtue of their features, compared to non-digital communication, such as the vastly extended reach, immediacy, or volume of opinion visibility facilitated by contemporary tools. Of course, these same features prompt studies that are both object-centered and more nuanced, which as noted are distinguished by their focus on the novel features of such tools versus the sustained affordances they enable. To understand the lasting contribution of this perspective, though, requires a clear view of why the underlying relationships might occur, as informed by relevant theory, the importance of which is considered next.

Technological mediation is fundamental to contemporary social, economic, organizational, and relational contexts. The study of each specific technology, unique population, and particular outcome serves to incrementally illuminate these complex phenomena. Perhaps naturally then, studies that seek to explain these contexts are plentiful among research on digital communication. Research in this vein typically probes these complex and pervasive phenomena by examining particular communication technologies among specific populations toward identifiable outcomes, most commonly in the general form “what is the effect of technology X among Y users on outcome Z.”

Yet, theory testing and development require sustained comparisons across substantially similar (or specifiably different) contexts ( Walther, 2013 ) with a focus on established technologies, or on the variables or affordances that comprise them. Comparisons enable replication which, in turn, enables claims to be in/validated over time and theories to be appropriately refined. When studies are largely un-tethered to past (or future) work by virtue of their unique concerns, specific populations, particular tools under study at a specific point in time, or focused societal or organizational context, it is difficult to maintain consistency across studies, and therefore to isolate and compare the key phenomena of interest. Moreover, if effects are partially reproduced between studies that vary in these ways, it is unclear why. Due to this, conclusions drawn in one context may have limited generalizability and, in spite of the considerable value of such studies, their immediate and sustained contribution to theory are undermined.

Returning to the example of opinion visibility and conformity on Facebook, if the context of Facebook is unique or nearly so, findings will lose relevance through their lack of applicability across domains. Further refinement to populations under study, affordances or features exclusive to a particular tool, or historically-specific circumstances would further constrain the results, to the detriment of theory formulation, since comparability across studies would be undercut. And, if researchers cling too strongly to perceived differences in new technological contexts, for example by generalizing findings from users of Facebook to nonusers or users of other tools without consideration of important population or contextual differences, invalid findings would accrue. Similarly, such research could suffer if not appropriately informed by decades of research on the general dynamics of conformity, largely established by studies in face-to-face contexts. Because conformity is likely to be affected by group size, status, or cohesion, foundational findings in one domain (face-to-face) should to a large degree be expected to endure in others (e.g., online), and therefore should inform both contexts.

Many theories avoid these pitfalls by invoking the basic strategies articulated here. For example, rational choice theories of media selection (social presence and media richness theories; respectively, Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976 ; Daft & Lengel, 1986 ) share a focus on the degree to which users perceive particular technologies as conveying the physical presence of communicators or their “richness,” and the degree to which they are therefore appropriate for addressing phenomena ranging in complexity. These perspectives thus focus on the affordances of presence/richness, as facilitated by various features of different technologies (e.g., the number and variety of communication channels available), to predict technology selection and/or the degree to which tools are invoked to address complex communication situations. In spite of their clear focus on communication technologies, these perspectives avoid being object-oriented since they are agnostic about the particular tools invoked, focusing instead on the degree to which tools are capable of supporting the affordance of socially present/rich communication. Indeed, these theories’ longevity is due, in part, to the fact that by focusing on the affordances supported by the features of technologies, rather than on the technologies exhibiting these features, they have remained relevant in the face of considerable technological evolution.

Accordingly, a core characteristic of the perspective proposed herein is the directive to identify and research the fundamental features of digital tools that represent enduring concerns, rather than focusing on fleeting capabilities or technological tools as a whole. Several strategies can address the related question of how to identify which among many possibilities constitute fundamental and enduring concerns and, therefore, which are most likely to offer the greatest long term value.

Relevant theoretical perspectives pertinent to the digital domain are an important source of identifying which phenomena should be the focus of research. For example, anonymity is an affordance that in social identity and deindividuation theories naturally emerges as an explanatory mechanism, since it can explain both the circumstances under which personal versus social identity is likely to be salient and the loss of self-awareness in groups, which are foundational to those theories. This was the impetus for the SIDE perspective (social identity model of deindividuation effects; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995 ), which explains online behaviors by examining the affordance of anonymity across technological tools. A key to SIDE’s relevance is that the degree of anonymity is likely to vary across digital tools according to their features and users’ perceptions of them. Nonetheless, SIDE’s applicability is somewhat undermined as the visual anonymity on which SIDE effects depend are becoming less common (as, for example, social network venues that diminish anonymity have increasingly dominated people’s online presence), suggesting that the phenomena researchers focus on are likely to evolve based on new knowledge, theoretical development, and shifts in the digital media environment.

Focusing on factors germane to digital communication that have garnered sustained concentration across studies is another useful strategy to identify which are the fundamental and enduring features of digital tools. Sundar (2008) , for instance, has advocated examining the affordances articulated in the MAIN (modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability) model since they are useful factors invoked in many studies to explain the perceived credibility of online sources and information, given their applicability and relevance. Similarly, Fox and McEwan (2017) selected an inventory of affordances examined in prior research based in part on their incorporation in theories that feature communication channel selection, use, and effects. In this way, relevant features for study emerge from sustained bodies of research addressing them.

Finally, the identification of which underlying features are worthy of study can be facilitated through the deep understanding of technological tools gained from detailed, descriptive studies. Although idiographic research favors contingent, situated descriptions of human behavior, which suggests unique rather than generalized explanations, the rich insights from such work often suggest patterned behaviors that can reach well beyond any particular study. Re-framing particular observations in terms of technological affordances, for instance, might reveal broader insights about the processes of digital communication that become visible when linked across multiple studies. In this way, descriptive—even esoteric—studies can be used in the service of theory development by focusing on the social dynamics surfaced in such work.

Descriptive research can thus draw attention to (oftentimes initially novel) behaviors that emerge from technology use and can be used to link these phenomena together, thereby helping to demonstrate patterns that no one study could establish alone. For instance, whereas the first observation of technologies being used in a nonconventional or unintended way might be viewed as interesting but atypical, patterned behaviors of the same form across contexts and over time may in fact signal a sustained tendency for people to appropriate technologies in an “ironic” fashion to achieve goals that were formerly unarticulated ( Poole & DeSanctis, 1990 ), or may highlight intriguing “second-level” technology effects ( Sproull & Kiesler, 1991 ), which may themselves signal important social behaviors, preferences, and patterns. A critical requirement in using descriptive studies to highlight generalizable social processes rooted in technological deployment, however, is to examine the insights achieved via description in a fashion that both leverages their considerable value while not merely producing object-oriented accounts of the tools involved. To achieve this requires specific effort to aptly describe the present research context while forging connections to existing findings in allied contexts, or even to extrapolate to potential future ones. Attention to such issues can be a critical complement to more nomothetic research as studies with a focus on emergent factors accrue across research over time. Building theoretical value in this way requires a specific focus on the relevant facets of mediation, an explicit statement of the behavioral and attitudinal mechanisms at play, and a clear articulation of theoretical boundary conditions.

Digital communication describes the process of information transmission in a fashion that emphasizes the relatively recent and comparatively novel interventions facilitated by contemporary communication and information technologies. These technologies intercede in important ways to influence communicative processes, and by extension outcomes. The types of intercession assume many forms, but among the most prominent are recent shifts in the scale, reach, identifiability, immediacy, and scope of human communication and information sharing.

Accordingly, digital communication includes direct, intentional communication among interactants as well as the residues of interaction resulting from tools of mediation that people subsequently invoke to make sense of their environments. Although many outcomes are posited to arise from digital communication—such as digital divides, group polarization, or political knowledge patterns, to name only a few—outcomes are best framed as the products of digital communication rather than part of the process of digital communication. The value in this distinction is in retaining a focus on the fundamental dynamics of digital communication, which are necessarily directly affected by technological mediation, over its downstream effects, which are not.

Perspectives that highlight the specific processes of mediation that occur across technological tools are useful in making this distinction clear. Although differences in terminology may at first appear to differentiate them, the variable-centered, mix of attributes, and affordance perspectives discussed earlier are united by their focus on the aspects of technologies that are potentially common across them, as opposed to the circumstances or features that distinguish them. These perspectives thus draw attention to processes of digital communication, since they accentuate the capabilities of technologies that are embedded in particular technological features across tools that can be exploited to facilitate actions or outcomes (see also Sundar, 2009 ). This attention to shared aspects across distinct technologies permits the identification of the critical dimensions of digital communication, while also enabling comparisons over time and tools that are the basis of theoretical formulation, testing, and revision. Seen this way, contemporary tools of communication are important mainly in terms of the capabilities they afford users, who exploit those affordances through a complex interaction between technological features and their subjective interpretations and goals.

This orientation to digital communication research is in many ways agnostic about the specific technologies under study. This is not to argue that technologies are not impactful in their own right. Indeed, there is a longstanding recognition that technological tools foster particular social arrangements and interactions ( Winner, 1986 ). Yet, a focus primarily on the affordances of tools, as opposed to their specific features or forms, can accommodate a wide range of concerns. Increasingly relevant questions about the interaction of human and machine agents, including developments in interface tools and artificial intelligence, can be understood in terms of the affordances of privacy, social presence, bandwidth, or anonymity, for example, in the same manner as more traditional technologies like email and social network use. When technologies are conceived in terms of user-based affordances rooted in cross-cutting technological features, distinctions among them are simultaneously foregrounded and backgrounded. Recent efforts to identify and specify common affordances across mediated and non-mediated channels (e.g., Fox & McEwan, 2017 ) thus provide important progress toward the study of contemporary technologies.

Yet, there are considerable challenges to the perspective advocated here. For instance, affordances are presumed to be shared across diverse technologies and abstract features are conceived to adhere across platforms, tools, and contexts. Can affordances, though, be separated from the specific communication environments in which they exist and are similar features thought to signal common phenomena truly comparable? To some extent the manner in which researchers address these issues depends on particular research goals. For example, the experimental induction of opinion visibility by manipulation of the volume of likes and the measurement of opinion visibility as a perceived affordance represent different research strategies under the same basic conceptual umbrella. In the former case opinion visibility is viewed as a variable signaled by environmental features with substantial shared meaning across tools or venues, and in the latter case it is seen as an affordance potentially perceived across various channels. Overall, if research is to view current technological tools mainly as manifestations of underlying phenomena and focus on the capabilities that span across them, these concerns need to be carefully considered.

More specifically, to address whether decomposition of technological usage across time is tenable as the technological context changes, researchers should periodically revisit conceptual and operational definitions, and the fidelity between them. For example, as technologies have evolved the affordance of interactivity has no doubt taken on new forms. To benefit from the research heritage on interactivity over time therefore requires both a consistent conceptualization of it, in order that its meaning endures across studies, and an appropriately flexible operationalization as well, in order that its measurement continues to capture its prominent and relevant manifestations. This level of adaptability is critical in a swiftly-changing media environment.

The main goal of this article is to articulate a set of research directives intended to facilitate a lasting and theoretically rich understanding of the processes of social and communicative change in an environment of rapid technological evolution. A general presumption has been that nomothetic research bests suits this goal. The principles advocated therefore privilege particular research heritages, strategies, and assumptions. For instance, emphasis has been placed on perspectives that help to divine variables that might apply across multiple technologies, research strategies that facilitate replication, and sampling procedures that enable generalization to populations. Although there is no necessary connection between this perspective and particular research methods, some strategies lend themselves well to such outcomes. For instance, experimental designs can isolate variables of interest and help to establish causality and survey research can be used to access representative samples of populations, to which inferences can therefore be drawn. In spite of the considerable value of other research approaches and methods, they are often less directly compatible with these particular goals.

Ultimately, research on contemporary communication and information technologies is best served by the paradoxical recognition that such tools are both the most and least interesting thing to study. Although communication technologies extend human capabilities tremendously, which makes them fascinating in their own right, they should not therefore constitute the subject of study. Rather, communication technologies must be understood to be the objects engaged by people in their pursuit of particular goals, and the processes of realizing such goals should constitute the focus of research into them. Theories in this domain, in turn, must focus on what is exceptional about technologies in terms of the psychological, social, and behavioral mechanisms that explain them in the long term. In this way, the key to understanding technological mediation has remained remarkably consistent even in the face of radical technological change, and demands that researchers focus their efforts not on novel tools of communication, but rather on the novel processes of social and communicative change with which technologies are often closely aligned.

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Bridging Digital Divides: a Literature Review and Research Agenda for Information Systems Research

• Published: 06 January 2021
• Volume 25 , pages 955–969, ( 2023 )

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• Polyxeni Vassilakopoulou   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5947-4070 1 &
• Eli Hustad   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1150-1850 1  

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Extant literature has increased our understanding of the multifaceted nature of the digital divide, showing that it entails more than access to information and communication resources. Research indicates that digital inequality mirrors to a significant extent offline inequality related to socioeconomic resources. Bridging digital divides is critical for sustainable digitalized societies. Ιn this paper, we present a literature review of Information Systems research on the digital divide within settings with advanced technological infrastructures and economies over the last decade (2010–2020). The review results are organized in a concept matrix mapping contributing factors and measures for crossing the divides. Building on the results, we elaborate a research agenda that proposes [1] extending established models of digital inequalities with new variables and use of theory, [2] critically examining the effects of digital divide interventions, and [3] better linking digital divide research with research on sustainability.

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1 Introduction

Digital inequalities have emerged as a growing concern in modern societies. These inequalities relate to disparities in access, actual use and use efficacy of digital resources. Digital resources including transformative technologies, such as business analytics, big data and artificial intelligence are key for the transition of societies towards sustainability (Pappas et al. 2018 ; United Nations 2018 ). Reducing digital inequalities is critical for sustainable digitalized societies. At a high level, all types of digital inequalities are encompassed in the term digital divide . One of the first uses of the term is traced back in a US government report published in 1999 referring to the divide between those with access to new technologies and those without (NTIA 1999 ). The term was soon broadened to signify the “gap between those who can effectively use new information and communication tools, such as the Internet, and those who cannot” (Gunkel 2003 ). Overall, the term digital divide includes digital inequalities between individuals, households, businesses or geographic areas (Pick and Sarkar 2016 ; OECD 2001 ). The conceptual broadness of the term aims to capture a multifaceted economic and civil rights issue in an era of continuous efforts to digitalize society. The ongoing digitalization poses a challenge for individuals who are not fully capable of using digital resources and may feel partially excluded or completely left out of the society.

Extant research has contributed insights on the different aspects of the digital divide phenomenon. In the past, the digital divide literature was mostly driven by policy-oriented reports that focused on access. Nevertheless, scientific research expanded to digital inequalities beyond access. Researchers foregrounded digital inequalities related to knowledge, economic and social resources, attributes of technology such as performance and reliability, and utility realization (DiMaggio et al. 2004 ; Van Dijk 2006 ; Van Deursen and Helsper 2015 ). In technologically and economically advanced settings, digital divides seem to be closing in terms of access, but inequalities that affect people’s ability to make good use of digital resources persist (Lameijer et al. 2017 ; Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Bucea et al. 2020 ). As digitalization becomes increasingly pervasive in work and everyday life, concerns are rising about continuing inequalities within societies that are at the digital forefront. At the same time, in low-resource settings there are still significant access issues. For instance, in the least developed countries (as defined by the United Nations) only 19 per cent of individuals had online access in 2019 while in developed countries, close to 87 per cent of individuals access the internet (Int.Telecom.Union 2019 ). Beyond big differences across settings in terms of access, low-resource settings are tormented by particular political, economic and social conditions inflicting digital divides (Venkatesh et al. 2014 ; Srivastava and Shainesh 2015 ; Luo and Chea 2018 ). Overall, prior research has shown that the modalities of digital inequalities are context-specific and it is important to be explicit about the context when researching the digital divide (Barzilai-Nahon 2006 ). This work is focused on digital divide research within settings with advanced technological infrastructures and economies.

The digital divide is an exemplary sociotechnical phenomenon and has attracted the interest of Information System (IS) researchers. IS research examines more than technologies or social phenomena, or even the two side by side; it investigates emergent sociotechnical phenomena (Lee 2001 ). Hence, IS researchers are well-positioned to study the digital divide phenomenon and have been producing a significant volume of related research. Nevertheless, no systematic review of the IS body of literature on the digital divide exists. Our study identifies, analyses, and integrates a critical mass of recent IS research on the digital divide focused on settings where the technological infrastructures and economies are advanced. To ensure a robust result, we performed a systematic literature review (Kitchenham 2004 ) guided by the following question: What are the key findings identified in extant IS research related to the digital divide in contemporary technologically and economically advanced settings?

Our contribution is threefold. First, we identify recurring digital divide factors for population groups threatened by digital inequalities. The factors identified indicate that digital inequalities frequently mirror offline inequalities (for instance, in terms of socioeconomic resources, knowledge and physical abilities). Second, we present measures proposed in the literature and organize them in three key intervention domains that can contribute to closing the gap (related to policies, training initiatives and tailored design). Finally, as a third contribution, we identify areas for future research providing a research agenda.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. First, we present the method used for selecting and analyzing the articles for this review. Then, we offer a synthesis of our findings related to digital divide factors and related measures and present them in a concise concept matrix. We continue by discussing the implications for further research and we end with overall concluding remarks.

The literature review is conceptual providing a synthesis of prior research and identifying areas for future research (Ortiz de Guinea and Paré 2017 ; Schryen et al. 2015 ). It includes research published during the last decade (2010–2020). The approach followed is based on the three-step structured literature review process proposed by Kitchenham ( 2004 ). Specifically, the three-step process includes: (a) planning the review, where a detailed protocol containing specific search terms and inclusion/exclusion criteria is developed, (b) conducting the review, where the identification, selection, quality appraisal, examination and synthesis of prior published research is performed and (c) reporting the review, where the write-up is prepared. We used these steps as our methodological framework. In addition, we utilized principles suggested by Webster and Watson ( 2002 ) for sorting the articles included in the review. Following these principles, we identified key concepts and created a concept-centric matrix that provides an overview of the literature reviewed.

To identify articles to be reviewed, we searched for “Digital” and “Divide” in the abstract, title or keywords within published Information Systems research. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were established to reduce selection bias, guarantee the quality of the papers selected and increase the review validity. Peer-reviewed, empirical papers, written in English were included. Conceptual papers that lack empirical evidence and papers focusing on the digital divide in developing countries were excluded. Figure 1 provides an overview of the selection process. To ensure a good coverage of Information Systems research we searched within the eight top journals in the field i.e. the basket of eight (AIS 2019 ). The journals included in the basket are: European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Information Systems Research, Journal of AIS, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of MIS, Journal of Strategic Information Systems and MIS Quarterly. Additionally, we searched within the journal Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS) which has a key role within the IS research community communicating swiftly novel, original research. We also included in our search the journal Information Technology (IT) & People because it focuses on IS research that explores the interplay between technology individuals and society and the journal Information Systems Frontiers because it covers behavioural perspectives on IS research. Both journals are high quality IS outlets especially relevant for research on the digital divide. Furthermore, we included in our search the conferences of the Association of Information Systems (ICIS, ECIS; AMCIS; PACIS) and the Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). We utilized Scopus as our search engine.

The literature selection process

In Scopus, we searched for papers from the selected journals and conferences excluding books, book chapters, commentaries, letters and short surveys. For the journal article search, the ISSNs of the selected journals were used for filtering the search results in Scopus. In total, 45 journal papers were identified. For the conference article search, the conference names were used in Scopus and 91 conference papers were identified. Overall, the search yielded 136 unique articles in total. The next step was to read the titles and abstracts of the articles identified checking their relevance to the research question. For this step, the exclusion criteria were used. Specifically, we excluded papers that only casually mentioned the digital divide but had a different focus, literature reviews and conceptual papers and papers focused on developing countries. After this step, 79 articles were shortlisted. The full text of each of the shortlisted articles was assessed for relevance applying the inclusion-exclusion criteria to the full content. Additionally, the quality of the research reported was assessed. For the quality assessment, each article´s method description was first checked. At this stage, conference papers reporting early stages of ongoing research were removed. In several cases of conference papers that were removed, we found that more mature and extensive results from the same studies were reported in journal articles that were already included in our shortlist and were published after the conference papers. After this step, a final corpus of 33 articles was defined (Table 1 ). A detailed overview of the reviewed articles is included in an electronic supplementary file that can be accessed in the journal´s web site (see Online Resource 1 ).

After selecting the papers, we analyzed their content. We started with extracting meta-data of the papers such as type of study, year of study, study context, research method and theoretical framework applied. In addition, we identified the study subjects for each paper distinguishing between papers that engage with the general population, or specific groups of people including the elderly and marginalized population groups (e.g. refugees, migrants). We continued with an intra-analysis of the content of the papers by looking for core themes in each paper. The themes that were identified for each paper were registered, and as a next step, we performed an inter-analysis and comparison across papers. Based on the comparison, recurring themes and patterns across the papers were discovered and further categorized. The outcomes of the papers´analysis are presented in the " Results " section that follows.

This section presents the key findings from the literature reviewed. First, we present the theoretical premises and the methodological approaches of extant publications on the Digital Divide within IS research and their evolution from 2010 to 2020. Table 2 provides an overview of the theories and concepts, methods and data sources in the literature reviewed. Then, recurring digital divide factors are presented for population segments that are particularly digitally challenged (the elderly and marginalized population groups) and also, for the general population. Finally, measures for addressing the digital divide are presented and organized in three key intervention domains (policy measures, education/training and design tailoring). The section also includes a concept matrix which provides an overview of digital divide factors and related measures identified in the literature reviewed (Table 3 ).

3.1 Trends, Methods and Theoretical Frames in IS Research on the Digital Divide

The work of Information Systems´ researchers on the digital divide has been influenced by policy-oriented reports that tend to be based on macro-level analyses. This influence is clear in the first half of the 2010–2020 period while in the second half, research extends towards a more complex and contextualized picture of digital divides. Newer papers tend to ask a wider range of questions related to access and use of information technologies and investigate a greater variety of factors. For instance, skill related factors are explored in about half of both earlier and later studies, but, newer studies tend to additionally explore motivation and personality aspects (about half of the newer studies include such aspects). Interestingly, several of the newer papers only focus on technology use. In these papers, researchers explore the second order digital divide and the extent of inclusion or involuntary exclusion of those that already have access to technologies. Furthermore, most earlier papers tend to investigate the general population while the majority of newer studies focus on specific population groups.

Overall, most of the studies employ quantitative research methods utilizing well-established survey instruments adapted for studying digital inequalities for certain groups (e.g. older adults) or re-using existing data sets from organizations like the International Telecommunication Union, the World Bank and the United Nations. A few studies use a mixed-method approach combining interviews with survey data, while the rest employ qualitative approaches. Well-known technology acceptance models such as TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), UTAUT (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) and MATH (Model of Adoption of Technology in Households) and theories on motivation and human behavior have been used to explore the digital divide. Typical variables included in the investigations are self-efficacy, performance and effort expectancy. Furthermore, social cognitive theories, social support theories and social capital conceptualizations have been used while some of the papers utilize selectively digital divide conceptualizations combined with constructs from social, sociotechnical or economic research.

3.2 Factors Contributing to the Digital Divide

The digital divide is often characterized as a digital divide cascade which is nuanced into different types of inequalities including unequal capabilities, engagement, and use outcomes in addition to inequalities of access and use. This points to the importance of identifying and aiming to remedy inequalities in what people are actually able to do and achieve with digital technologies (Burtch and Chan 2019 ; Díaz Andrade and Doolin 2016 ). In settings with advanced infrastructures and economy, physical access is not a key source of digital inequalities and IS studies that examine issues of unequal access show that access gaps are closing with the exception of marginalized population groups. Nevertheless, there is still a stark difference between access (first-order divide) and actual use (second-order divide) (Bucea et al. 2020 ). The latter relates to differences in digital skills, autonomy, social support and the aims of digital technology use (Rockmann et al. 2018 ). Going beyond socioeconomic demographics, additional personal contributing factors have been identified in the literature related to: (a) motivation, (b) personality traits (e.g. openness, extraversion, conscientiousness), (c) digital skills. Many of the studies reviewed focus on the elderly who are also referred to as “digital immigrants” (as opposed to digital natives that have been interacting with digital technology since childhood). Additionally, several studies focus on marginalized population groups. In the paragraphs that follow, we present research findings organizing them according to the different groups studied.

Elderly Population

Although digital technologies have been around for several decades, some of the elderly members of society have difficulties familiarizing with and adopting digital tools and services. Nevertheless, although a decade ago age-related underutilization of IT was significant (Niehaves and Plattfaut 2010 ), over the years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been gradually better integrated in the lives of elderly adults. A recent study on the digital divide related to mobile phone use among old adults in UK found that more than 70% have adopted smartphones (Choudrie et al. 2018 ). Specifically, research findings indicate that older adults frequently use internet-related smartphone features such as emailing and browsing although only very few use smartphones to access public services such as the National Health Service. One potential reason for the limited use of specialized web-based services among the elderly despite the wide adoption of smartphones, is that their former workplaces may have been characterized by low IT intensity causing a lower exploratory IT behavior when seniors are retiring (Rockmann et al. 2018 ). Niehaves and Plattfaut ( 2014 ) used the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the model of adoption of technology in households (MATH) to explain internet acceptance and usage by the elderly. Performance expectancy was found to be the main use driver among senior citizens. These models were able to predict how the elderly could be encouraged to learn to use digital technologies.

When asked, the elderly themselves identified several key impeding factors for their digital involvement: fear and anxiety of using digital technology and services, negative attitude, a sense of feeling too old for learning, lack of knowledge, difficulties understanding digital terminology (Holgersson and Söderström 2019 ). Family support is key for developing mobile internet skill literacy and mobile internet information literacy among older adults (Xiong and Zuo 2019 ). Seniors become better positioned to take advantage of digital resources when they have cognitive and emotional support. Cognitive support from family facilitates learning and digital skills´ development, and also, the development of skills for judging, analyzing and selecting information (Xiong and Zuo 2019 ). Emotional support based on patience, praise, encouragement and comfort can help the elderly avoid computer anxiety and stress (Xiong and Zuo 2019 ). Emotional support is important because unwillingness to adopt advanced digital services by the elderly was found to stem from mistrust, high-risk perceptions, and privacy concerns (Fox and Connolly 2018 ).

Overall, older people are a heterogeneous group, and it is important not to overlook their differences in digital skills and digital practice. Klier and colleagues conducted a survey on older unemployed individulas in Germany and showed that they can be grouped into four different types of digital media users ranging from very active users (digital contributors) to sceptics with limited or no use (digital sceptics) characterised by their negative attitude towards digital media (Klier et al. 2020 ). Digitalization efforts should take into account “the various shades of grey in older adults’ ability to draw on IT-based innovations” (Lameijer et al. 2017 , p. 6).

Marginalized Population Groups

Language barriers as for instance, in the case of refugees and immigrants, and practical resource limitations as in the case of distressed urban areas and remote rural areas can cause social exclusion and hinder the process of digital technologies´ assimilation throughout society. Several researchers have studied specifically issues related to the digital divide within marginalized population groups. Alam and Imram ( 2015 ) found in their research that although refugees and immigrants in the US are motivated to learn about new technology, many are not able to do so because of unaffordable cost, language barriers and lack of skills. Refugees and immigrants realize that technology is helpful for finding new jobs or facilitating social engagement. Digital technologies are of particular value to refugees for multiple reasons: to participate in an information society; to communicate effectively; to understand a new society; to be socially connected; to express their cultural identities (Díaz Andrade and Doolin 2016 ). A study on mobile communications by labor migrants (Aricat 2015 ) showed that mobile phones may also facilitate the development of ghettos and the lack of integration in the new countries by easing communications between the migrants and their home countries. The study identified a visible divide in the framing of the prospects and potentialities of mobile phones related to acculturation.

Enhancing the relationship between citizens and government through digital services requires reaching out to individuals and communities on the unfortunate side of the divide. Digital technology access and use in the context of e-government services were explored within one of the most distressed cities in the US (Sipior et al. 2011 ). This study showed that socioeconomic characteristics (educational level and household income) have significant impact on access barriers, but they also found that employment plays a critical role and is associated both with perceived access barriers and with perceived ease of use. A study conducted among governmental participants representing rural communities in Australia suggests that rural digital exclusion can result from three intertwined layers: availability (elements of infrastructure and connectivity), adoption, and digital engagement (Park et al. 2015 ). Among these layers, availability is probably not as important as one could expect. Similarly, one large household study conducted across the US found that the availability of Internet Supply Providers (ISP) had little impact on Internet adoption, and that Internet adoption can almost exclusively be attached to differences in household attributes and not to ISP availability (Ma and Huang 2015 ).

As access gaps are closing in settings with advanced infrastructures and economy, those who do not have access are easily overlooked (Davis et al. 2020 ). Nevertheless, the first-level digital divide still requires attention for marginalized population groups. Furthermore, socioeconomic factors that were found to affect uptake more than two decades ago (for instance, education level and income) are still relevant in today’s context for particular segments of our societies. Contrary to traditional views, the availability of digital solutions does not always facilitate the resolution of long-standing problems for those that are less well-off in our societies (for instance, immigrants or financially troubled individuals). What people are actually able to do and achieve with digital technologies relates to their greater positioning in society (Burtch and Chan 2019 ) and affects their potential for improvement. As digital technologies are becoming indispensable for participating in the economy and engaging in society, sustained digital divides amplify marginalization.

General Population

A study by Pick and colleagues ( 2018 ) showed the positive influence of managerial/science/arts occupations, innovation, and social capital on the use of digital technologies (Pick et al. 2018 ). Nevertheless, unreasonably high expectations are found to have a negative impact on ICT acceptance (Ebermann et al. 2016 ). Findings from a study conducted within White and Hispanic-owned SMEs in the US (Middleton and Chambers 2010 ) indicate some level of inequality related to ethnicity and age (younger white SME owners being better positioned). Davis and colleagues (Davis et al.  2020 ) analyzed the influence of income, income distribution, education levels, and ethnicity on levels of access to Internet in the US. The findings show that low levels of education and levels of income below the poverty line still tend to lead to higher proportion of people with no Internet access (Davis et al. 2020 ). Even when individuals do have equal access to digital technologies, differences in skills can lead to digital inequalities (Burtch and Chan 2019 ). Taking a differentiated view on skills is needed to understand technology use and no-use (Reinartz et al. 2018 ). Physical skills matter; users with disabilities can be digitally disadvantaged and despite the benefits promised by specialized assistive technologies their adoption rate falls short of expectations (Pethig and Kroenung 2019 ).

Some groups may be challenged because they are too far embedded in older systems, which makes it difficult for them to adopt newer ICTs (Abdelfattah 2012 ). Social capital can trigger ICT awareness changing individual dispositions, thus converting social capital into cultural capital (Reinartz et al. 2018 ). An interesting study on crowdfunding showed that the benefits of medical crowdfunding accrue systematically less to racial minorities and less educated population segments (Burtch and Chan 2019 ). One of the reasons for this is the communication-rich nature of the context: less educated persons are not always capable of producing polished, persuasive pitches to solicit funds. Furthermore, digital inequality manifests on the efficacy of using crowdfunding platforms, due to a lack of critical mass in the number of potential transaction partners (donors). The results show the importance of looking beyond access or connectivity to investigate efficacy (in this case, expressed as success in fundraising), and how it associates with different population segments (Burtch and Chan 2019 ).

At the country level, a number of studies examined socio-economic influences on access and use of particular forms of technologies as for instance, personal computers and broadband internet (Zhao et al. 2014 ; Pick and Azari 2011 ; Dewan et al. 2010 ). A world-wide study found complementarities in the diffusion of PCs and the Internet leading to narrower digital divides (Dewan et al. 2010 ). These findings challenge the dominant understanding of characteristics such as country wealth, education levels and telecommunications infrastructure leading to the widening of the digital divide. Country-level studies are based on the analysis of data from census surveys, national statistics, and datasets from organizations like UNDP and ITO. The use of such datasets is helpful for performing comparisons across countries but due to the generic nature of data the purpose of digital technology use has been scarcely examined in country-level studies. This may be attributed to the fact that comparable data on specific online activities are not easy to collect across countries (Zhao et al. 2014 ). A study conducted by Bucea and colleagues ( 2020 ), is an exception to this. The study assessed specifically the use of e-Services and Social Networks within the 28 member-states of the European Union analyzing four socio-demographic factors (age, education, gender, and income). The findings showed that for e-Services, disparities relate mostly to education while for Social Networks age is the most important factor (Bucea et al. 2020 ). Overall, country level studies are important for assessing disparities across countries and can lead to the identification of factors reinforcing inequalities. At the same time, macro studies can not bring insights about digital inequalities across different population segments within countries.

3.3 Overcoming Digital Divides

Policy-making is considered instrumental for closing the digital gap and a mix of policy measures has been suggested in prior research. In general, policy initiatives can include subsidies targeting specific digitally disadvantaged segments as for instance rural populations (Talukdar and Gauri 2011 ). For instance, governments can apply strong intervention policies to provide equitable ICT access also in rural areas (Park et al. 2015 ). Furthermore, digital divides may be addressed at scale by crafting policies to equip underprivileged groups with better communication skills (reading, writing, and software use) enabling meaningful engagement with digital platforms (Burtch and Chan 2019 ). Government policy makers can collaborate with schools to support students from low-income households through the provision of home computers aiming to reduce the effect of socio-economic inequalities among students (Wei et al. 2011 ). Policies raising the priority of IT, protecting property rights, and enhancing freedom of the press and openness, can help to stimulate educational advances, labor-force participation and income growth, all of which contribute to advancing technology use (Pick and Azari 2011 ). Policy measures should allow room for local adaptations, as contextual and local elements seem to play a role for technology users and could influence policy success (Racherla and Mandviwalla 2013 ). Effective evaluation mechanisms make it easier to develop new policies addressing digital divides (Chang et al. 2012 ) helping policy-makers to refine initiatives targeting certain segments of society, such as elderly people and socio-economically disadvantaged groups (Hsieh et al. 2011 ).

Contemporary workplaces can help by taking greater responsibility for IT education of their employees even when they are close to retirement. Developing the digital skills of seniors while they are still employed is important for preventing digital exclusion after retirement (Rockmann et al. 2018 ). Overall, employment has a pivotal role in explaining citizen usage of e-government initiatives (Sipior et al. 2011 ). As an employee, an individual may have access to the Internet at the place of employment. Furthermore, employment demands may increase the confidence of an individual in performing new tasks. Thinking beyond workplaces, policies that leverage existing communities, social structures, and local actors can also help in reducing digital inequalities (Racherla and Mandviwalla 2013 ). Such policies can stimulate public/private partnerships with grassroots organizations that already have “hooks” in local communities. Moreover, long-term government policies could set a goal of encouraging growth in social capital within communities (Pick et al. 2018 ).

Proper training and education can help mitigate digital inequalities (Van Dijk 2012 ). For instance, platform operators can provide coaching services for underprivileged populations (Burtch and Chan 2019 ). Furthermore, information campaigns also have a significant role to play, digital divides may be narrowed if vendors engage in trust-building campaigns (Fox and Connolly 2018 ). Integrating digital education into curricula can also contribute to reducing digital inequalities (Reinartz et al. 2018 ), and education campaigns can stimulate the adoption and usage of ICTs bridging rural-urban digital gaps. Rural communities typically lag in digital skills, and digital literacy training programs can improve digital engagement in rural communities. Digital literacy programs targeting senior citizens can help them develop the necessary skills and abilities to use digital mobile devices so that they could be part of the Digital Society (Carvalho et al. 2018 ; Fox and Connolly 2018 ; Klier et al. 2020 ). Educational efforts for the elderly must be practically oriented in order to show directly what is to be gained by becoming more digital (Holgersson and Söderström 2019 ). In addition, social networks, friends and family are important for supporting the training of disadvantaged people in technologies; family emotional and cognitive support can increase the elderly’s digital capabilities, reduce computer anxiety and increase trust and motivation for learning (Xiong and Zuo 2019 ).

The design and development of ICT solutions should take into account individual differences for creating proper stimuli to different user groups. For instance, the use of governmental e-services can be improved by making them more engaging, interactive, and personal to address a country’s or region’s cultural norms (Zhao et al. 2014 ). This makes the role of appropriate design for overcoming the digital divide a center of attention. Lameijer et al. ( 2017 ) propose that design-related issues should be considered and evaluated to better understand technology adoption patterns among elderly. Also, the study by Klier and colleagues showed that there is a potential to shift older individuals towards a more active engagement with digital media by ensuring ease of use in the design of digital services (Klier et al. 2020 ). Furthermore, the needs of groups with disabilities ought to be taken into account when designing information systems for the general public (Pethig and Kroenung 2019 ). It is important to integrate assistive functionalities in general IS to emphasize authentic inclusiveness. Overall, research points to the importance of functionalities that suit the needs of specific user groups to stimulate the use of digital technologies.

4 Crossing Digital Divides: a Research Agenda

The evolution of IS research on the digital divide during the last decade shows the richness of this research area. As digitalization becomes pervasive in our societies, digital inequalities emerge in different contexts and communities renewing the interest on digital divide research. In recent years, researchers have been shifting away from macro-level studies and are re-orienting towards developing nuanced and contextualized insights about digital inequalities. The analysis of published research allows the identification of gaps and opportunities for further research. Furthermore, there are specific research directions proposed in several of the reviewed papers. The synthesis of suggestions from the papers reviewed with the results of our analysis led to the identification of three research avenues that bring exciting opportunities for researchers to engage with topics that are highly relevant with our digitalization era. Specifically, we suggest a research agenda that proposes: [1] extending established digital divide models with new variables and use of theory, [2] examining the effects of interventions, and [3] addressing societal challenges and especially sustainability goals through the lens of digital divide. Social inclusion and digital equality are crucial for a sustainable digitalized society.

4.1 Avenue I: Extending Established Digital Divide Models and Use of Theory

Extant research shows that physical access divides are being reduced in technologically and economically advanced societies but, inequalities in use persist (Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Lameijer et al. 2017 ). These use inequalities are found to be related to socioeconomic characteristics and also, personality traits, motivation and digital skills. A better understanding of the complex phenomenon of digital divide is needed combining multiple aspects to form comprehensive models (Choudrie et al. 2018 ) and further explore the concept itself to get more explanatory power (Lameijer et al. 2017 ). The emphasis, to date, has been on describing the digital divide by identifying gaps between actual technology access and use against an ideal situation. Work should be undertaken to investigate different national, social and cultural settings (Niehaves and Plattfaut 2010 ) across geographical contexts (Niehaves and Plattfaut 2014 ) and the influence of institutional and environmental factors on individuals’ ability and motivation to access and use technology (Racherla and Mandviwalla 2013 ). Furthermore, researchers may explore the values and interests of those abstraining from the use of digital resources and the implications of the overemphasis to digital inclusion (Díaz Andrade and Techatassanasoontorn 2020 ).

Further research is also needed to extend established models with new variables. Future investigations may add variables related to social theories (Abdelfattah et al. 2010 ; Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Niehaves and Plattfaut 2014 ), personal traits models (Ebermann et al. 2016 ), and capital theory (Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Reinartz et al. 2018 ). Additionally, future research should consider testing psychological variables (Niehaves and Plattfaut 2010 ) and additional socio-economical aspects (Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Reisdorf and Rikard 2018 ) including support from friends and family (Xiong and Zuo 2019 ; Holgersson and Söderström 2019 ) to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the association between the digital divide phenomenon and contributing variables (Hsieh et al. 2011 ; Niehaves and Plattfaut 2014 ; Fox and Connolly 2018 ). Qualitative research is important for revealing factors that influence inequalities and can become the basis for model building and testing using quantitative data.

Interestingly, fully developed theoretical frameworks that have been extensively used in other streams of exploratory information systems research related to the introduction and use of ICTs were not present in the papers reviewed. For instance, Activity theory and Institutional theory can be used as lenses for understanding and analyzing the digital divide phenomenon. Activity theory (Allen et al. 2011 ; Engeström 1999 ) can help in developing a nuanced understanding of the relationship between ICT artifacts and purposeful individuals taking into account the environment, culture, motivations, and complexity of real-life settings. Institutional theory (Jepperson 1991 ; Scott 2005 ) can contribute to developing insights related to societal structures, norms and routines shifting attention to units of analysis that cannot be reduced to individuals’ attributes or motives. Overall, we observed that digital divide research could benefit from better leveraging theory to extend established digital divide models.

4.2 Avenue II: Examining the Effects of Interventions to Cross the Digital Divide

Measures for crossing digital divides include policy interventions, training and design. Information Systems research can be especially relevant by developing design knowledge for the development and deployment of digital technology artifacts in different settings. Although several measures are proposed in the literature, further work is required to research the effect of interventions to avoid the exclusion of citizens from the digital realm addressing inequalities (Alam and Imran 2015 ; Reisdorf and Rikard 2018 ; Reinartz et al. 2018 ). In particular, appropriate design approaches for digital technologies should be investigated and tested to avoid involuntary exclusion of marginalized groups, elderly people or any other group of individuals affected by digital inequalities (Rockmann et al. 2018 ; Lameijer et al. 2017 ; Alam and Imran 2015 ; Fox and Connolly 2018 ). Additionally, comparative research can be undertaken investigating the effects and attractiveness of different design solutions in different cultural settings (Pethig and Kroenung 2019 ). Overall, although many studies include insights related to measures for bridging digital divides, there is a clear need for studies with a longitudinal research design to investigate the impact of measures over time. Interestingly, little research has been performed up to now on the potentially negative unexpected effects of measures for bridging digital divides (Díaz Andrade and Techatassanasoontorn 2020 ). This is certainly an area that needs to be further developed. The use of technologies might lead to advantages or disadvantages, which are unevenly distributed in society. Focusing only on benefits, researchers miss the opportunity to connect to emerging literature on the dark side of Internet and unexpected outcomes of digitalization including privacy risks. Scholars of information systems can develop novel avenues of critical thinking on the effects of interventions to cross the digital divide.

4.3 Avenue III: Linking Digital Divide Research With Research on Sustainability

There were no studies in our literature review that focused specifically on sustainability topics, and future research should pay attention to this gap. The United Nations´ sustainability goals focus on reducing inequality within and among countries to avoid biased economic development, social exclusion, and environmentally untenable practices. Important dimensions of sustainable development are human rights and social inclusion, shared responsibilities and opportunities (United Nations 2020 ). An essential part of social inclusion in our societies is e-inclusion (Pentzaropoulos and Tsiougou 2014 ). At the same time, it is important to research the risks and ethical implications of depriving individuals from offline choices (Díaz Andrade and Techatassanasoontorn 2020 ). Furthermore, we need to support sustainability in rural areas reducing the urban - rural digital divide. Sustainability researchers have identified the issue pointing to the vulnerabilities of rural communities that are in particular need of bridging inequalities (Onitsuka 2019 ). Future empirical studies on the digital divide should therefore pay attention to sustainability topics in terms of social exclusion and digital inequality to better understand underlying factors and potential remedies.

The covid-19 pandemic made digital inequalities even more evident. In periods of social distancing to minimize infection risks, individuals sustain their connections with colleagues, friends, and family through online connections. Furthermore, people need digital skills to keep updated on crucial information and to continue working when possible using home offices and digital connections. In addition, recent crisis response experiences have shown that switching to digital education may lead to exclusion of the few that cannot afford physical digital tools (Desrosiers 2020 ), or do not have access to sustainable infrastructures and ICT access. This crisis has shown that digital divides can become a great challenge aggravating inequalities experienced by marginalized communities such as urban poor and under-resourced businesses. Digital inequalities are a major factor of health-related and socio-economical vulnerability (Beaunoyer et al. 2020 ).

The role of Information Systems researchers is critical for the development of digital capital contributing to sustainable development. Digital capital refers to the resources that can be utilized by communities including digital technology ecosystems and related digital literacy and skills. General policy measures related to stimulating regional economic growth, strengthening tertiary education, or discouraging early leaving from education can be developed by scientists in other domains. However, thinking about inclusive configurations of digital infrastructures and ecosystems and developing related design principles entails specialized knowledge from the Information Systems domain. Furthermore, Information Systems researchers can provide insights about the development of capabilities required for leveraging digital resources such as digital infrastructures (Hustad and Olsen 2020 ; Grisot and Vassilakopoulou 2017 ), big data and business analytics (Mikalef et al. 2020 ). Innovative approaches for leveraging digital resources will be pivotal for addressing grand challenges related to poverty, healthcare and climate change. Information Systems researchers can contribute insights for bridging digital divides to promote an agenda towards a sustainable future.

5 Conclusions

The present work takes stock of Information Systems research on the digital divide by synthesizing insights from publications in the 2010–2020 period. The review process was performed with rigor while selecting and critically assessing earlier research. Nevertheless, this work is not without limitations. We have confined the literature search within one specific discipline (Information Systems research). This limits the breadth of the review but facilitates comprehensiveness and depth in the development of insights about the body of literature analyzed. Furthermore, focusing on Information Systems research facilitates the development of a research agenda that is relevant to the target discipline through the identification of gaps and extrapolations from previous work.

The review showed that within digital divide research, the attention of Information Systems research has gradually shifted from access to use and now needs to shift further towards better understanding use outcomes. Digital inequalities are a serious threat to civil society in an era where societies are rapidly going digital. For instance, daily activities such as paying bills, filling in application forms, filing tax returns, are all expected to be carried out electronically. There are high expectations for active citizens´ role based on online services (Axelsson et al. 2013 ; Vassilakopoulou et al. 2016 ); hence, we need to be concerned of digital inequalities ensuring fairness and inclusiveness. Furthermore, digital resources such as big data and business analytics are key enablers of sustainable value creation within societies (Pappas et al. 2018 ; Mikalef et al. 2020 ). Bridging digital divides is critical for sustainable digitalized societies. The findings of this literature review can provide a foundation for further research and a basis for researchers to orient themselves and position their own work.

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Acknowledgements

We want to acknowledge June Lithell Hansen and Andreas Skaiaa for their contribution in an early stage of this study during fall 2018. The contribution was part of their master course work performed at the University of Agder.

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Vassilakopoulou, P., Hustad, E. Bridging Digital Divides: a Literature Review and Research Agenda for Information Systems Research. Inf Syst Front 25 , 955–969 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-020-10096-3

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• Published: 16 May 2024

The Egyptian pyramid chain was built along the now abandoned Ahramat Nile Branch

• Eman Ghoneim   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3988-0335 1 ,
• Timothy J. Ralph   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4956-606X 2 ,
• Suzanne Onstine 3 ,
• Raghda El-Behaedi 4 ,
• Gad El-Qady 5 ,
• Amr S. Fahil 6 ,
• Mahfooz Hafez 5 ,
• Magdy Atya 5 ,
• Mohamed Ebrahim   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4068-5628 5 ,
• Ashraf Khozym 5 &
• Mohamed S. Fathy 6  

Communications Earth & Environment volume  5 , Article number:  233 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Archaeology
• Geomorphology
• Hydrogeology
• Sedimentology

The largest pyramid field in Egypt is clustered along a narrow desert strip, yet no convincing explanation as to why these pyramids are concentrated in this specific locality has been given so far. Here we use radar satellite imagery, in conjunction with geophysical data and deep soil coring, to investigate the subsurface structure and sedimentology in the Nile Valley next to these pyramids. We identify segments of a major extinct Nile branch, which we name The Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, where the majority of the pyramids lie. Many of the pyramids, dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms, have causeways that lead to the branch and terminate with Valley Temples which may have acted as river harbors along it in the past. We suggest that The Ahramat Branch played a role in the monuments’ construction and that it was simultaneously active and used as a transportation waterway for workmen and building materials to the pyramids’ sites.

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Introduction.

The landscape of the northern Nile Valley in Egypt, between Lisht in the south and the Giza Plateau in the north, was subject to a number of environmental and hydrological changes during the past few millennia 1 , 2 . In the Early Holocene (~12,000 years before present), the Sahara of North Africa transformed from a hyper-arid desert to a savannah-like environment, with large river systems and lake basins 3 , 4 due to an increase in global sea level at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The wet conditions of the Sahara provided a suitable habitat for people and wildlife, unlike in the Nile Valley, which was virtually inhospitable to humans because of the constantly higher river levels and swampy environment 5 . At this time, Nile River discharge was high, which is evident from the extensive deposition of organic-rich fluvial sediment in the Eastern Mediterranean basin 6 . Based on the interpretation of archeological material and pollen records, this period, known as the African Humid Period (AHP) (ca. 14,500–5000 years ago), was the most significant and persistent wet period from the early to mid-Holocene in the eastern Sahara region 7 , with an annual rainfall rate of 300–920 mm yr −1   8 . During this time the Nile would have had several secondary channels branching across the floodplain, similar to those described by early historians (e.g., Herodotus).

During the mid-Holocene (~10,000–6000 years ago), freshwater marshes were common within the Nile floodplain causing habitation to be more nucleated along the desert margins of the Nile Valley 9 . The desert margins provided a haven from the high Nile water. With the ending of the AHP and the beginning of the Late Holocene (~5500 years ago to present), rainfall greatly declined, and the region’s humid phase gradually came to an end with punctuated short wet episodes 10 . Due to increased aridity in the Sahara, more people moved out of the desert towards the Nile Valley and settled along the edge of the Nile floodplain. With the reduced precipitation, sedimentation increased in and around the Nile River channels causing the proximal floodplain to rise in height and adjacent marshland to decrease in the area 11 , 12 estimated the Nile flood levels to have ranged from 1 to 4 m above the baseline (~5000 BP). Inhabitants moved downhill to the Nile Valley and settled in the elevated areas on the floodplain, including the raised natural levees of the river and jeziras (islands). This was the beginning of the Old Kingdom Period (ca. 2686 BCE) and the time when early pyramid complexes, including the Step Pyramid of Djoser, were constructed at the margins of the floodplain. During this time the Nile discharge was still considerably higher than its present level. The high flow of the river, particularly during the short-wet intervals, enabled the Nile to maintain multiple branches, which meandered through its floodplain. Although the landscape of the Nile floodplain has greatly transformed due to river regulation associated with the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, this region still retains some clear hydro-geomorphological traces of the abandoned river channels.

Since the beginning of the Pharaonic era, the Nile River has played a fundamental role in the rapid growth and expansion of the Egyptian civilization. Serving as their lifeline in a largely arid landscape, the Nile provided sustenance and functioned as the main water corridor that allowed for the transportation of goods and building materials. For this reason, most of the key cities and monuments were in close proximity to the banks of the Nile and its peripheral branches. Over time, however, the main course of the Nile River laterally migrated, and its peripheral branches silted up, leaving behind many ancient Egyptian sites distant from the present-day river course 9 , 13 , 14 , 15 . Yet, it is still unclear as to where exactly the ancient Nile courses were situated 16 , and whether different reaches of the Nile had single or multiple branches that were simultaneously active in the past. Given the lack of consensus amongst scholars regarding this subject, it is imperative to develop a comprehensive understanding of the Nile during the time of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Such a poor understanding of Nile River morphodynamics, particularly in the region that hosts the largest pyramid fields of Egypt, from Lisht to Giza, limits our understanding of how changes in the landscape influenced human activities and settlement patterns in this region, and significantly restricts our ability to understand the daily lives and stories of the ancient Egyptians.

Currently, much of the original surface of the ancient Nile floodplain is masked by either anthropogenic activity or broad silt and sand sheets. For this reason, singular approaches such as on-ground searches for the remains of hidden former Nile branches are both increasingly difficult and inauspicious. A number of studies have already been carried out in Egypt to locate segments of the ancient Nile course. For instance 9 , proposed that the axis of the Nile River ran far west of its modern course past ancient cities such as el-Ashmunein (Hermopolis) 13 . mapped the ancient hydrological landscape in the Luxor area and estimated both an eastward and westward Nile migration rate of 2–3 km per 1000 years. In the Nile Delta region 17 , detected several segments of buried Nile distributaries and elevated mounds using geoelectrical resistivity surveys. Similarly, a study by Bunbury and Lutley 14 identified a segment of an ancient Nile channel, about 5000 years old, near the ancient town of Memphis ( men-nefer ). More recently 15 , used cores taken around Memphis to reveal a section of a lateral ancient Nile branch that was dated to the Neolithic and Predynastic times (ca. 7000–5000 BCE). On the bank of this branch, Memphis, the first capital of unified Egypt, was founded in early Pharaonic times. Over the Dynastic period, this lateral branch then significantly migrated eastwards 15 . A study by Toonen et al. 18 , using borehole data and electrical resistivity tomography, further revealed a segment of an ancient Nile branch, dating to the New Kingdom Period, situated near the desert edge west of Luxor. This river branch would have connected important localities and thus played a significant role in the cultural landscape of this area. More recent research conducted further north by Sheisha et al. 2 , near the Giza Plateau, indicated the presence of a former river and marsh-like environment in the floodplain east of the three great Pyramids of Giza.

Even though the largest concentration of pyramids in Egypt are located along a narrow desert strip from south Lisht to Giza, no explanation has been offered as to why these pyramid fields were condensed in this particular area. Monumental structures, such as pyramids and temples, would logically be built near major waterways to facilitate the transportation of their construction materials and workers. Yet, no waterway has been found near the largest pyramid field in Egypt, with the Nile River lying several kilometers away. Even though many efforts to reconstruct the ancient Nile waterways have been conducted, they have largely been confined to small sites, which has led to the mapping of only fragmented sections of the ancient Nile channel systems.

In this work, we present remote sensing, geomorphological, soil coring and geophysical evidence to support the existence of a long-lost ancient river branch, the Ahramat Branch, and provide the first map of the paleohydrological setting in the Lisht-Giza area. The finding of the Ahramat Branch is not only crucial to our understanding of why the pyramids were built in these specific geographical areas, but also for understanding how the pyramids were accessed and constructed by the ancient population. It has been speculated by many scholars that the ancient Egyptians used the Nile River for help transporting construction materials to pyramid building sites, but until now, this ancient Nile branch was not fully uncovered or mapped. This work can help us better understand the former hydrological setting of this region, which would in turn help us learn more about the environmental parameters that may have influenced the decision to build these pyramids in their current locations during the time of Pharaonic Egypt.

Position and morphology of the Ahramat Branch

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery and radar high-resolution elevation data for the Nile floodplain and its desert margins, between south Lisht and the Giza Plateau area, provide evidence for the existence of segments of a major ancient river branch bordering 31 pyramids dating from the Old Kingdom to Second Intermediate Period (2686−1649 BCE) and spanning between Dynasties 3–13 (Fig.  1a ). This extinct branch is referred to hereafter as the Ahramat Branch, meaning the “Pyramids Branch” in Arabic. Although masked by the cultivated fields of the Nile floodplain, subtle topographic expressions of this former branch, now invisible in optical satellite data, can be traced on the ground surface by TanDEM-X (TDX) radar data and the Topographic Position Index (TPI). Data analysis indicates that this lateral distributary channel lies between 2.5 and 10.25 km west from the modern Nile River. The branch appears to have a surface channel depth between 2 and 8 m, a channel length of about 64 km and a channel width of 200–700 m, which is similar to the width of the contemporary neighboring Nile course. The size and longitudinal continuity of the Ahramat Branch and its proximity to all the pyramids in the study area implies a functional waterway of great significance.

a Shows the Ahramat Branch borders a large number of pyramids dating from the Old Kingdom to the 2 nd Intermediate Period and spanning between Dynasties 3 and 13. b Shows Bahr el-Libeini canal and remnant of abandoned channel visible in the 1911 historical map (Egyptian Survey Department scale 1:50,000). c Bahr el-Libeini canal and the abandoned channel are overlain on satellite basemap. Bahr el-Libeini is possibly the last remnant of the Ahramat Branch before it migrated eastward. d A visible segment of the Ahramat Branch in TDX is now partially occupied by the modern Bahr el-Libeini canal. e A major segment of the Ahramat Branch, approximately 20 km long and 0.5 km wide, can be traced in the floodplain along the Western Desert Plateau south of the town of Jirza. Location of e is marked in white a box in a . (ESRI World Image Basemap, source: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics).

A trace of a 3 km river segment of the Ahramat Branch, with a width of about 260 m, is observable in the floodplain west of the Abu Sir pyramids field (Fig.  1b–d ). Another major segment of the Ahramat Branch, approximately 20 km long and 0.5 km wide can be traced in the floodplain along the Western Desert Plateau south of the town of Jirza (Fig.  1e ). The visible segments of the Ahramat Branch in TDX are now partially occupied by the modern Bahr el-Libeini canal. Such partial overlap between the courses of this canal, traced in the1911 historical maps (Egyptian Survey Department scale 1:50,000), and the Ahramat Branch is clear in areas where the Nile floodplain is narrower (Fig.  1b–d ), while in areas where the floodplain gets wider, the two water courses are about 2 km apart. In light of that, Bahr el-Libeini canal is possibly the last remnant of the Ahramat Branch before it migrated eastward, silted up, and vanished. In the course of the eastward migration over the Nile floodplain, the meandering Ahramat Branch would have left behind traces of abandoned channels (narrow oxbow lakes) which formed as a result of the river erosion through the neck of its meanders. A number of these abandoned channels can be traced in the 1911 historical maps near the foothill of the Western Desert plateau proving the eastward shifting of the branch at this locality (Fig.  1b–d ). The Dahshur Lake, southwest of the city of Dahshur, is most likely the last existing trace of the course of the Ahramat Branch.

Subsurface structure and sedimentology of the Ahramat Branch

Geophysical surveys using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic Tomography (EMT) along a 1.2 km long profile revealed a hidden river channel lying 1–1.5 m below the cultivated Nile floodplain (Fig.  2 ). The position and shape of this river channel is in an excellent match with those derived from radar satellite imagery for the Ahramat Branch. The EMT profile shows a distinct unconformity in the middle, which in this case indicates sediments that have a different texture than the overlying recent floodplain silt deposits and the sandy sediments that are adjacent to this former branch (Fig.  2 ). GPR overlapping the EMT profile from 600–1100 m on the transect confirms this. Here, we see evidence of an abandoned riverbed approximately 400 m wide and at least 25 m deep (width:depth ratio ~16) at this location. This branch has a symmetrical channel shape and has been infilled with sandy Neonile sediment different to other surrounding Neonile deposits and the underlying Eocene bedrock. The geophysical profile interpretation for the Ahramat Branch at this locality was validated using two sediment cores of depths 20 m (Core A) and 13 m (Core B) (Fig.  3 ). In Core A between the center and left bank of the former branch we found brown sandy mud at the floodplain surface and down to ~2.7 m with some limestone and chert fragments, a reddish sandy mud layer with gravel and handmade material inclusions at ~2.8 m, a gray sandy mud layer from ~3–5.8 m, another reddish sandy mud layer with gravel and freshwater mussel shells at ~6 m, black sandy mud from ~6–8 m, and sandy silt grading into clean, well-sorted medium sand dominated the profile from ~8 to >13 m. In Core B on the right bank of the former branch we found recently deposited brown sandy mud at the floodplain surface and down to ~1.5 m, alternating brown and gray layers of silty and sandy mud down to ~4 m (some reddish layers with gravel and handmade material inclusions), a black sandy mud layer from ~4–4.9 m, and another reddish sandy mud layer with gravel and freshwater mussel shells at ~5 m, before clean, well-sorted medium sand dominated the profile from 5 to >20 m. Shallow groundwater was encountered in both cores concurrently with the sand layers, indicating that the buried sedimentary structure of the abandoned Ahramat Branch acts as a conduit for subsurface water flow beneath the distal floodplain of the modern Nile River.

a Locations of geophysical profile and soil drilling (ESRI World Image Basemap, source: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics). Photos taken from the field while using the b Electromagnetic Tomography (EMT) and c Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). d Showing the apparent conductivity profile, e showing EMT profile, and f showing GPR profiles with overlain sketch of the channel boundary on the GPR graph. g Simplified interpretation of the buried channel with the location of the two-soil coring of A and B.

It shows two-soil cores, A and core B, with soil profile descriptions, graphic core logs, sediment grain size charts, and example photographs.

Alignment of old and middle kingdom pyramids to the Ahramat Branch

The royal pyramids in ancient Egypt are not isolated monuments, but rather joined with several other structures to form complexes. Besides the pyramid itself, the pyramid complex includes the mortuary temple next to the pyramid, a valley temple farther away from the pyramid on the edge of a waterbody, and a long sloping causeway that connects the two temples. A causeway is a ceremonial raised walkway, which provides access to the pyramid site and was part of the religious aspects of the pyramid itself 19 . In the study area, it was found that many of the causeways of the pyramids run perpendicular to the course of the Ahramat Branch and terminate directly on its riverbank.

In Egyptian pyramid complexes, the valley temples at the end of causeways acted as river harbors. These harbors served as an entry point for the river borne visitors and ceremonial roads to the pyramid. Countless valley temples in Egypt have not yet been found and, therefore, might still be buried beneath the agricultural fields and desert sands along the riverbank of the Ahramat Branch. Five of these valley temples, however, partially survived and still exist in the study area. These temples include the valley temples of the Bent Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure from Dynasty 4; the valley temple of the Pyramid of Sahure from Dynasty 5, and the valley temple of the Pyramid of Pepi II from Dynasty 6. All the aforementioned temples are dated to the Old Kingdom. These five surviving temples were found to be positioned adjacent to the riverbank of the Ahramat Branch, which strongly implies that this river branch was contemporaneously functioning during the Old Kingdom, at the time of pyramid construction.

Analysis of the ground elevation of the 31 pyramids and their proximity to the floodplain, within the study area, helped explain the position and relative water level of the Ahramat Branch during the time between the Old Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period (ca. 2649–1540 BCE). Based on Fig. ( 4) , the Ahramat Branch had a high-water level during the first part of the Old Kingdom, especially during Dynasty 4. This is evident from the high ground elevation and long distance from the floodplain of the pyramids dated to that period. For instance, the remote position of the Bent and Red Pyramids in the desert, very far from the Nile floodplain, is a testament to the branch’s high-water level. On the contrary, during the Old Kingdom, our data demonstrated that the Ahramat Branch would have reached its lowest level during Dynasty 5. This is evident from the low altitudes and close proximity to the floodplain of most Dynasty 5 pyramids. The orientation of the Sahure Pyramid’s causeway (Dynasty 5) and the location of its valley temple in the low-lying floodplain provide compelling evidence for the relatively low water level proposition of the Ahramat Branch during this stage. The water level of the Ahramat Branch would have been slightly raised by the end of Dynasty 5 (the last 15–30 years), during the reign of King Unas and continued to rise during Dynasty 6. The position of Pepi II and Merenre Pyramids (Dynasty 6) deep in the desert, west of the Djedkare Isesi Pyramid (Dynasty 5), supports this notion.

It explains the position and relative water level of the Ahramat Branch during the time between the Old Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period. a Shows positive correlation between the ground elevation of the pyramids and their proximity to the floodplain. b Shows positive correlation between the average ground elevation of the pyramids and their average proximity to the floodplain in each Dynasty. c Illustrates the water level interpretation by Hassan (1986) in Faiyum Lake in correlation to the average pyramids ground elevation and average distances to the floodplain in each Dynasty. d The data indicates that the Ahramat Branch had a high-water level during the first period of the Old Kingdom, especially during Dynasty 4. The water level reduced afterwards but was raised slightly in Dynasty 6. The position of the Middle Kingdom’s pyramids, which was at lower altitudes and in close proximity to the floodplain as compared to those of the Old Kingdom might be explained by the slight eastward migration of the Ahramat Branch.

In addition, our analysis in Fig. ( 4) , shows that the Qakare Ibi Pyramid of Dynasty 8 was constructed very close to the floodplain on very low elevation, which implies that the Nile water levels were very low at this time of the First Intermediate Period (2181–2055 BCE). This finding is in agreement with previous work conducted by Kitchen 20 which implies that the sudden collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt (after 4160 BCE) was largely caused by catastrophic failure of the annual flood of the Nile River for a period of 30–40 years. Data from soil cores near Memphis indicated that the Old Kingdom settlement is covered by about 3 m of sand 11 . Accordingly, the Ahramat Branch was initially positioned further west during the Old Kingdom and then shifted east during the Middle Kingdom due to the drought-induced sand encroachments of the First Intermediate Period, “a period of decentralization and weak pharaonic rule” in ancient Egypt, spanning about 125 years (2181–2055 BCE) post Old Kingdom era. Soil cores from the drilling program at Memphis show dominant dry conditions during the First Intermediate Period with massive eolian sand sheets extended over a distance of at least 0.5 km from the edge of the western desert escarpment 21 . The Ahramat Branch continued to move east during the Second Intermediate Period until it had gradually lost most of its water supply by the New Kingdom.

The western tributaries of the Ahramat Branch

Sentinal-1 radar data unveiled several wide channels (inlets) in the Western Desert Plateau connected to the Ahramat Branch. These inlets are currently covered by a layer of sand, thus partially invisible in multispectral satellite imagery. In Sentinal-1 radar imagery, the valley floors of these inlets appear darker than the surrounding surfaces, indicating subsurface fluvial deposits. These smooth deposits appear dark owing to the specular reflection of the radar signals away from the receiving antenna (Fig.  5a, b ) 22 . Considering that Sentinel-1’s C-Band has a penetration capability of approximately 50 cm in dry sand surface 23 , this would suggest that the riverbed of these channels is covered by at least half a meter of desert sand. Unlike these former inlets, the course of the Ahramat Branch is invisible in SAR data due in large part to the presence of dense farmlands in the floodplain, which limits radar penetration and the detection of underlying fluvial deposition. Moreover, the radar topographic data from TDX revealed the areal extent of these inlets. Their river courses were extracted from TDX data using the Topographic Position Index (TPI), an algorithm which is used to compute the topographic slope positions and to automate landform classifications (Fig.  5c, d ). Negative TPI values show the former riverbeds of the inlets, while positive TPI signify the riverbanks bordering them.

a Conceptual sketch of the dependence of surface roughness on the sensor wavelength λ (modified after 48 ). b Expected backscatter characteristics in sandy desert areas with buried dry riverbeds. c Dry channels/inlets masked by desert sand in the Dahshur area. d The channels’ courses were extracted using TPI. Negative TPI values highlight the courses of the channels while positive TPI signify their banks.

Analysis indicated that several of the pyramid’s causeways, from Dynasties 4 and 6, lead to the inlet’s riverbanks (Fig.  6 ). Among these pyramids, are the Bent Pyramid, the first pyramid built by King Snefru in Dynasty 4 and among the oldest, largest, and best preserved ancient Egyptian pyramids that predates the Giza Pyramids. This pyramid is situated at the royal necropolis of Dahshur. The position of the Bent Pyramid, deep in the desert, far from the modern Nile floodplain, remained unexplained by researchers. This pyramid has a long causeway (~700 m) that is paved in the desert with limestone blocks and is attached to a large valley temple. Although all the pyramids’ valley temples in Egypt are connected to a water body and served as the landing point of all the river-borne visitors, the valley temple of the Bent Pyramid is oddly located deep in the desert, very distant from any waterways and more than 1 km away from the western edge of the modern Nile floodplain. Radar data revealed that this temple overlooked the bank of one of these extinct channels (called Wadi al-Taflah in historical maps). This extinct channel (referred to hereafter as the Dahshur Inlet due to its geographical location) is more than 200 m wide on average (Fig.  6 ). In light of this finding, the Dahshur Inlet, and the Ahramat Branch, are thus strongly argued to have been active during Dynasty 4 and must have played an important role in transporting building materials to the Bent Pyramid site. The Dahshur Inlet could have also served the adjacent Red Pyramid, the second pyramid built by the same king (King Snefru) in the Dahshur area. Yet, no traces of a causeway nor of a valley temple has been found thus far for the Red Pyramid. Interestingly, pyramids in this site dated to the Middle Kingdom, including the Amenemhat III pyramid, also known as the Black Pyramid, White Pyramid, and Pyramid of Senusret III, are all located at least 1 km far to the east of the Dynasty 4 pyramids (Bent and Red) near the floodplain (Fig.  6 ), which once again supports the notion of the eastward shift of the Ahramat Branch after the Old Kingdom.

a The two inlets are presently covered by sand, thus invisible in optical satellite imagery. b Radar data, and c TDX topographic data reveal the riverbed of the Sakkara Inlet due to radar signals penetration capability in dry sand. b and c show the causeways of Pepi II and Merenre Pyramids, from Dynasty 6, leading to the Saqqara Inlet. The Valley Temple of Pepi II Pyramid overlooks the inlet riverbank, which indicates that the inlet, and thus Ahramat Branch, were active during Dynasty 6. d Radar data, and e TDX topographic data, reveal the riverbed of the Dahshur Inlet with the Bent Pyramid’s causeway of Dynasty 4 leading to the Inlet. The Valley Temple of the Bent Pyramid overlooks the riverbank of the Dahshur Inlet, which indicates that the inlet and the Ahramat Branch were active during Dynasty 4 of the Old Kingdom.

Radar satellite data revealed yet another sandy buried channel (tributary), about 6 km north of the Dahshur Inlet, to the west of the ancient city of Memphis. This former fluvial channel (referred to hereafter as the Saqqara Inlet due to its geographical location) connects to the Ahramat Branch with a broad river course of more than 600 m wide. Data shows that the causeways of the two pyramids of Pepi II and Merenre, situated at the royal necropolis of Saqqara and dated to Dynasty 6, lead directly to the banks of the Saqqara Inlet (see Fig.  6 ). The 400 m long causeway of Pepi II pyramid runs northeast over the southern Saqqara plateau and connects to the riverbank of the Saqqara Inlet from the south. The causeway terminates with a valley temple that lies on the inlet’s riverbank. The 250 long causeway of the Pyramid of Merenre runs southeast over the northern Saqqara plateau and connects to the riverbank of the Saqqara Inlet from the north. Since both pyramids dated to Dynasty 6, it can be argued that the water level of the Ahramat Branch was higher during this period, which would have flooded at least the entrance of its western inlets. This indicates that the downstream segment of the Saqqara Inlet was active during Dynasty 6 and played a vital role in transporting construction materials and workers to the two pyramids sites. The fact that none of the Dynasty 5 pyramids in this area (e.g., the Djedkare Isesi Pyramid) were positioned on the Saqqara Inlet suggests that the water level in the Ahramat Branch was not high enough to enter and submerge its inlets during this period.

In addition, our data analysis clearly shows that the causeways of the Khafre, Menkaure, and Khentkaus pyramids, in the Giza Plateau, lead to a smaller but equally important river bay associated with the Ahramat Branch. This lagoon-like river arm is referred to here as the Giza Inlet (Fig.  7 ). The Khufu Pyramid, the largest pyramid in Egypt, seems to be connected directly to the river course of the Ahramat Branch (Fig.  7 ). This finding proves once again that the Ahramat Branch and its western inlets were hydrologically active during Dynasty 4 of the Old Kingdom. Our ancient river inlet hypothesis is also in accordance with earlier research, conducted on the Giza Plateau, which indicates the presence of a river and marsh-like environment in the floodplain east of the Giza pyramids 2 .

The causeways of the four Pyramids lead to an inlet, which we named the Giza Inlet, that connects from the west with the Ahramat Branch. These causeways connect the pyramids with valley temples which acted as river harbors in antiquity. These river segments are invisible in optical satellite imagery since they are masked by the cultivated lands of the Nile floodplain. The photo shows the valley temple of Khafre Pyramid (Photo source: Author Eman Ghoneim).

During the Old Kingdom Period, our analysis suggests that the Ahramat Branch had a high-water level during the first part, especially during Dynasty 4 whereas this water level was significantly decreased during Dynasty 5. This finding is in agreement with previous studies which indicate a high Nile discharge during Dynasty 4 (e.g., ref. 24 ). Sediment isotopic analysis of the Nile Delta indicated that Nile flows decrease more rapidly by the end of Dynasty 4 25 , in addition 26 reported that during Dynasties 5 and 6 the Nile flows were the lowest of the entire Dynastic period. This long-lost Ahramat Branch (possibly a former Yazoo tributary to the Nile) was large enough to carry a large volume of the Nile discharge in the past. The ancient channel segment uncovered by 1 , 15 west of the city of Memphis through borehole logs is most likely a small section of the large Ahramat Branch detected in this study. In the Middle Kingdom, although previous studies implied that the Nile witnessed abundant flood with occasional failures (e.g., ref. 27 ), our analysis shows that all the pyramids from the Middle Kingdom were built far east of their Old Kingdom counterparts, on lower altitudes and in close proximity to the floodplain as compared to those of the Old Kingdom. This paradox might be explained by the fact that the Ahramat Branch migrated eastward, slightly away from the Western Desert escarpment, prior to the construction of the Middle Kingdom pyramids, resulting in the pyramids being built eastward so that they could be near the waterway.

The eastward migration and abandonment of the Ahramat Branch could be attributed to gradual tilting of the Nile delta and floodplain in lower Egypt towards the northeast due to tectonic activity 28 . A topographic tilt such as this would have accelerated river movement eastward due to the river being located in the west at a relatively higher elevation of the floodplain. While near-channel floodplain deposition would naturally lead to alluvial ridge development around the active Ahramat Branch, and therefore to lower-lying tracts of adjacent floodplain to the east, regional tilting may explain the wholesale lateral migration of the river in that direction. The eastward migration and abandonment of the branch could also be ascribed to sand incursion due to the branch’s proximity to the Western Desert Plateau, where windblown sand is abundant. This would have increased sand deposition along the riverbanks and caused the river to silt up, particularly during periods of low flow. The region experienced drought during the First Intermediate Period, prior to the Middle Kingdom. In the area of Abu Rawash north 29 and Dahshur site 11 , settlements from the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom were found to be covered by more than 3 m of desert sands. During this time, windblown sand engulfed the Old Kingdom settlements and desert sands extended eastward downhill over a distance of at least 0.5 km 21 . The abandonment of sites at Abusir (5 th Dynasty), where the early pottery-rich deposits are covered by wind-blown sand and then mud without sherds, can be used as evidence that the Ahramat Branch migrated eastward after the Old Kingdom. The increased sand deposition activity, during the end of the Old Kingdom, and throughout the First Intermediate Period, was most likely linked to the period of drought and desertification of the Sahara 30 . In addition, the reduced river discharge caused by decreased rainfall and increased aridity in the region would have gradually reduced the river course’s capacity, leading to silting and abandonment of the Ahramat Branch as the river migrated to the east.

The Dahshur, Saqqara, and Giza inlets, which were connected to the Ahramat Branch from the west, were remnants of past active drainage systems dated to the late Tertiary or the Pleistocene when rainwater was plentiful 31 . It is proposed that the downstream reaches of these former channels (wadis) were submerged during times of high-water levels of the Ahramat Branch, forming long narrow water arms (inlets) that gave a wedge-like shape to the western flank of the Ahramat Branch. During the Old Kingdom, the waters of these inlets would have flowed westward from the Ahramat Branch rather than from their headwaters. As the drought intensified during the First Intermediate Period, the water level of the Ahramat Branch was lowered and withdrew from its western inlets, causing them to silt up and eventually dry out. The Dahshur, Saqqara, and Giza inlets would have provided a bay environment where the water would have been calm enough for vessels and boats to dock far from the busy, open water of the Ahramat Branch.

Sediments from the Ahramat Branch riverbed, which were collected from the two deep soil cores (cores A and B), show an abrupt shift from well-sorted medium sands at depth to overlying finer materials with layers including gravel, shell, and handmade materials. This indicates a step-change from a relatively consistent higher-energy depositional regime to a generally lower-energy depositional regime with periodic flash floods at these sites. So, the Ahramat Branch in this region carried and deposited well-sorted medium sand during its last active phase, and over time became inactive, infilling with sand and mud until an abrupt change led the (by then) shallow depression fill with finer distal floodplain sediment (possibly in a wetland) that was utilized by people and experienced periodic flash flooding. Validation of the paleo-channel position and sediment type using these cores shows that the Ahramat Branch has similar morphological features and an upward-fining depositional sequence as that reported near Giza, where two cores were previously used to reconstruct late Holocene Nile floodplain paleo-environments 2 . Further deep soil coring could determine how consistent the geomorphological features are along the length of the Ahramat branch, and to help explain anomalies in areas where the branch has less surface expression and where remote sensing and geophysical techniques have limitations. Considering more core logs can give a better understanding of the floodplain and the buried paleo-channels.

The position of the Ahramat Branch along the western edge of the Nile floodplain suggests it to be the downstream extension of Bahr Yusef. In fact, Bahr Yusef’s course may have initially flowed north following the natural surface gradient of the floodplain before being forced to turn west to flow into the Fayum Depression. This assumption could be supported by the sharp westward bend of Bahr Yusef’s course at the entrance to the Fayum Depression, which could be a man-made attempt to change the waterflow direction of this branch. According to Römer 32 , during the Middle Kingdom, the Gadallah Dam located at the entrance of the Fayum, and a possible continuation running eastwards, blocked the flow of Bahr Yusef towards the north. However, a sluice, probably located near the village of el-Lahun, was created in order to better control the flow of water into the Fayum. When the sluice was locked, the water from Bahr Yusef was directed to the west and into the depression, and when the sluice was open, the water would flow towards the north via the course of the Ahramat Branch. Today, the abandoned Ahramat Branch north of Fayum appears to support subsurface water flow in the buried coarse sand bed layers, however these shallow groundwater levels are likely to be quite variable due to proximity of the bed layers to canals and other waterways that artificially maintain shallow groundwater. Groundwater levels in the region are known to be variable 33 , but data on shallow groundwater could be used to further validate the delineated paleo-channel of the Ahramat Branch.

The present work enabled the detection of segments of a major former Nile branch running at the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, where the vast majority of the Ancient Egyptian pyramids lie. The enormity of this branch and its proximity to the pyramid complexes, in addition to the fact that the pyramids’ causeways terminate at its riverbank, all imply that this branch was active and operational during the construction phase of these pyramids. This waterway would have connected important locations in ancient Egypt, including cities and towns, and therefore, played an important role in the cultural landscape of the region. The eastward migration and abandonment of the Ahramat Branch could be attributed to gradual movement of the river to the lower-lying adjacent floodplain or tilting of the Nile floodplain toward the northeast as a result of tectonic activity, as well as windblown sand incursion due to the branch’s proximity to the Western Desert Plateau. The increased sand deposition was most likely related to periods of desertification of the Great Sahara in North Africa. In addition, the branch eastward movement and diminishing could be explained by the reduction of the river discharge and channel capacity caused by the decreased precipitation and increased aridity in the region, particularly during the end of the Old Kingdom.

The integration of radar satellite data with geophysical surveying and soil coring, which we utilized in this study, is a highly adaptable approach in locating similar former buried river systems in arid regions worldwide. Mapping the hidden course of the Ahramat Branch, allowed us to piece together a more complete picture of ancient Egypt’s former landscape and a possible water transportation route in Lower Egypt, in the area between Lisht and the Giza Plateau.

Revealing this extinct Nile branch can provide a more refined idea of where ancient settlements were possibly located in relation to it and prevent them from being lost to rapid urbanization. This could improve the protection measures of Egyptian cultural heritage. It is the hope that our findings can improve conservation measures and raise awareness of these sites for modern development planning. By understanding the landscape of the Nile floodplain and its environmental history, archeologists will be better equipped to prioritize locations for fieldwork investigation and, consequently, raise awareness of these sites for conservation purposes and modern development planning. Our finding has filled a much-needed knowledge gap related to the dominant waterscape in ancient Egypt, which could help inform and educate a wide array of global audiences about how earlier inhabitants were living and in what ways shifts in their landscape drove human activity in such an iconic region.

Materials and methods

The work comprised of two main elements: satellite remote sensing and historical maps and geophysical survey and sediment coring, complemented by archeological resources. Using this suite of investigative techniques provided insights into the nature and relationship of the former Ahramat Branch with the geographical location of the pyramid complexes in Egypt.

Satellite remote sensing and historical maps

Unlike optical sensors that image the land surface, radar sensors image the subsurface due to their unique ability to penetrate the ground and produce images of hidden paleo-rivers and structures. In this context, radar waves strip away the surface sand layer and expose previously unidentified buried channels. The penetration capability of radar waves in the hyper-arid regions of North Africa is well documented 4 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 . The penetration depth varies according to the radar wavelength used at the time of imaging. Radar signal penetration becomes possible without significant attenuation if the surface cover material is extremely dry (<1% moisture content), fine grained (<1/5 of the imaging wavelength) and physically homogeneous 23 . When penetrating desert sand, radar signals have the ability to detect subsurface soil roughness, texture, compactness, and dielectric properties 38 . We used the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel-1 data, a radar satellite constellation consisting of a C-Band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensor, operating at 5.405 GHz. The Sentinel-1 SAR image used here was acquired in a descending orbit with an interferometric wide swath mode (IW) at ground resolutions of 5 m × 20 m, and dual polarizations of VV + VH. Since Sentinal-1 is operated in the C-Band, it has an estimated penetration depth of 50 cm in very dry, sandy, loose soils 39 . We used ENVI v. 5.7 SARscape software for processing radar imagery. The used SAR processing sequences have generated geo-coded, orthorectified, terrain-corrected, noise free, radiometrically calibrated, and normalized Sentinel-1 images with a pixel size of 12.5 m. In SAR imagery subsurface fluvial deposits appear dark owing to specular reflection of the radar signals away from the receiving antenna, whereas buried coarse and compacted material, such as archeological remains appear bright due to diffuse reflection of radar signals 40 .

Other previous studies have shown that combining radar topographic imagery (e.g., Shuttle Radar Topography Mission-SRTM) with SAR images improves the extraction and delineation of mega paleo-drainage systems and lake basins concealed under present-day topographic signatures 3 , 4 , 22 , 41 . Topographic data represents a primary tool in investigating surface landforms and geomorphological change both spatially and temporally. This data is vital in mapping past river systems due to its ability to show subtle variations in landform morphology 37 . In low lying areas, such as the Nile floodplain, detailed elevation data can detect abandoned channels, fossilized natural levees, river meander scars and former islands, which are all crucial elements for reconstructing the ancient Nile hydrological network. In fact, the modern topography in many parts of the study area is still a good analog of the past landscape. In the present study, TanDEM-X (TDX) topographic data, from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), has been utilized in ArcGIS Pro v. 3.1 software due to its fine spatial resolution of 0.4 arc-second ( ∼ 12 m). TDX is based on high frequency X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) (9.65 GHz) and has a relative vertical accuracy of 2 m for areas with a slope of ≤20% 42 . This data was found to be superior to other topographic DEMs (e.g., Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and ASTER Global Digital Elevation Map) in displaying fine topographic features even in the cultivated Nile floodplain, thus making it particularly well suited for this study. Similar archeological investigations using TDX elevation data in the flat terrains of the Seyhan River in Turkey and the Nile Delta 43 , 44 allowed for the detection of levees and other geomorphologic features in unprecedented spatial resolution. We used the Topographic Position Index (TPI) module of 45 with the TDX data by applying varying neighboring radiuses (20–100 m) to compute the difference between a cell elevation value and the average elevation of the neighborhood around that cell. TPI values of zero are either flat surfaces with minimal slope, or surfaces with a constant gradient. The TPI can be computed using the following expression 46 .

Where the scaleFactor is the outer radius in map units and Irad and Orad are the inner and outer radius of annulus in cells. Negative TPI values highlight abandoned riverbeds and meander scars, while positive TPI signify the riverbanks and natural levees bordering them.

The course of the Ahramat Branch was mapped from multiple data sources and used different approaches. For instance, some segments of the river course were derived automatically using the TPI approach, particularly in the cultivated floodplain, whereas others were mapped using radar roughness signatures specially in sandy desert areas. Moreover, a number of abandoned channel segments were digitized on screen from rectified historical maps (Egyptian Survey Department scale 1:50,000 collected on years 1910–1911) near the foothill of the Western Desert Plateau. These channel segments together with the former river course segments delineated from radar and topographic data were aggregated to generate the former Ahramat Branch. In addition to this and to ensure that none of the channel segments of the Ahramat Branch were left unmapped during the automated process, a systematic grid-based survey (through expert’s visual observation) was performed on the satellite data. Here, Landsat 8 and Sentinal-2 multispectral images, Sentinal-1 radar images and TDX topographic data were used as base layers, which were thoroughly examined, grid-square by grid-square (2*2 km per a square) at a full resolution, in order to identify small-scale fluvial landforms, anomalous agricultural field patterns and irregular ditches, and determine their spatial distributions. Here, ancient fluvial channels were identified using two key aspects: First, the sinuous geometry of natural and manmade features and, second the color tone variations in the satellite imagery. For example, clusters of contiguous pixels with darker tones and sinuous shapes may signify areas of a higher moisture content in optical imagery, and hence the possible existence of a buried riverbed. Stretching and edge detection were applied to enhance contrasts in satellite images brightness to enable the visualization of traces of buried river segments that would otherwise go unobserved. Lastly, all the pyramids and causeways in the study site, along with ancient harbors and valley temples, as indicators of preexisting river channels, were digitized from satellite data and available archeological resources and overlaid onto the delineated Ahramat Branch for geospatial analysis.

Geophysical survey and sediment coring

Geophysical measurements using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electromagnetic Tomography (EMT) were utilized to map subsurface fluvial features and validate the satellite remote sensing findings. GPR is effective in detecting changes of dielectric constant properties of sediment layers, and its signal responses can be directly related to changes in relative porosity, material composition, and moisture content. Therefore, GPR can help in identifying transitional boundaries in subsurface layers. EMT, on the other hand, shows the variations and thickness of large-scale sedimentary deposits and is more useful in clay-rich soil than GPR. In summer 2022, a geophysical profile was measured using GPR and EMT units with a total length of approximately 1.2 km. The GPR survey was conducted with a central frequency antenna of 35 MHz and a trigger interval of 5 cm. The EMT survey was performed using the multi-frequency terrain conductivity (EM–34–3) measuring system with a spacing of 10–11 meters between stations. To validate the remote sensing and geophysical data, two sediment cores with depths of 20 m (Core A) and 13 m (Core B) were collected using a deep soil driller. These cores were collected from along the geophysical profile in the floodplain. Sieving and organic analysis were performed on the sediment samples at Tanta University sediment lab to extract information about grain size for soil texture and total organic carbon. In soil texture analysis medium to coarse sediment, such as sands, are typical for river channel sediments, loamy sand and sandy loam deposits can be interpreted as levees and crevasse splays, whereas fine texture deposits, such as silt loam, silty clay loam, and clay deposits, are representative of the more distal parts of the river floodplain 47 .

Data availability

Data for replicating the results of this study are available as supplementary files at: https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Pyramids_Elevations_and_Distances_xlsx/25216259 .

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by NSF grant # 2114295 awarded to E.G., S.O. and T.R. and partially supported by Research Momentum Fund, UNCW, to E.G. TanDEM-X data was awarded to E.G. and R.E by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) (contract # DEM_OTHER2886). Permissions for collecting soil coring and sampling were obtained from the Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Egypt by coauthors Dr. Amr Fhail and Dr. Mohamed Fathy. Bradley Graves at Macquarie University assisted with preparation of the sedimentological figures. Hamada Salama at NRIAG assisted with the GPR field data collection.

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Eman Ghoneim

School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Macquarie, NSW, 2109, Australia

Timothy J. Ralph

Department of History, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, 38152-3450, USA

Suzanne Onstine

Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

Raghda El-Behaedi

National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG), Helwan, Cairo, 11421, Egypt

Gad El-Qady, Mahfooz Hafez, Magdy Atya, Mohamed Ebrahim & Ashraf Khozym

Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Tanta, 31527, Egypt

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Eman Ghoneim conceived the ideas, lead the research project, and conducted the data processing and interpretations. The manuscript was written and prepared by Eman Ghoneim. Timothy J. Ralph co-supervised the project, contributed to the geomorphological and sedimentological interpretations, edited the manuscript and the figures. Suzanne Onstine co-supervised the project, contributed to the archeological and historical interpretations, and edited the manuscript. Raghda El-Behaedi contributed to the remote sensing data processing and methodology and edited the manuscript. Gad El-Qady supervised the geophysical survey. Mahfooz Hafez, Magdy Atya, Mohamed Ebrahim, Ashraf Khozym designed, collected, and interpreted the GPR and EMT data. Amr S. Fahil and Mohamed S. Fathy supervised the soil coring, sediment analysis, drafted sedimentological figures and contributed to the interpretations. All authors reviewed the manuscript and participated in the fieldwork.

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Ghoneim, E., Ralph, T.J., Onstine, S. et al. The Egyptian pyramid chain was built along the now abandoned Ahramat Nile Branch. Commun Earth Environ 5 , 233 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01379-7

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01379-7

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