Why a New Word
The existing vocabulary for describing the relationship between technology and culture is built on separation. Terms like "sociotechnical" and "technocultural" imply two domains that have been brought into relation. The hyphen or the prefix signals a bridge between two things that remain, at some level, distinct. Culturotechnical refuses the bridge metaphor. It names a condition in which the two domains were never separate — in which technical operation and cultural meaning are produced in the same gesture, observable in the same artifact, analyzable in the same examination. The word does not join two things. It names one thing that was mistakenly divided.
Relation to Kulturtechnik
The term inherits from, but departs from, the German concept of Kulturtechnik (cultural techniques) developed in post-Kittlerian media theory by Bernhard Siegert and others. Kulturtechnik names the operations — counting, writing, drawing, farming — that historically and logically precede the conceptual categories generated by them. Numbers come after counting. Scales come after singing. The concept dissolves the boundary between culture and technology at the level of fundamental practice. Culturotechnical extends this dissolution into the digital domain, where it functions not as a historical observation about precedence but as a present-tense diagnostic adjective. Every digital artifact is culturotechnical now, in its current operation, not merely in its historical origin.
Usage
In Archaeobytological practice, culturotechnical is the default adjective for any digital artifact under examination. It replaces constructions like "the technical and cultural dimensions of the artifact" with a single modifier that presumes unity rather than asserting it. A Forensic Workstation examination does not study the culturotechnical dimensions of an artifact, as though those dimensions were a subset. It studies a culturotechnical object — an artifact that has no non-culturotechnical dimensions, because there is no part of a digital artifact where technical operation and cultural meaning are not co-constitutive.