Practice as (not) a sum of actions: Meeting two chaînes opératoires half-way

Presentation at the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) 2024 Annual Meeting in Rome at the session 901 Understanding the Research Process as a Chaîne Opératoire (organised by Jessica Kaiser, Isto Huvila, Zanna Friberg & Sabina Battle Baro)

Session abstract

As archaeologists, we are very familiar with gaps in the record. The data we collect for our research are often fragmented and incomplete. Imperfect data notwithstanding, we use the methods available to transform ambiguities to unambiguities in order to construct narratives about past societies. In the last few decades, this process has increasingly involved an array of digital methods and tools. Gone are the days when a site archive consisted of a large stack of papers languishing in the office of the site director. Not only are the final datasets digitized for preservation, but in many cases the data are born-digital without ever being put on paper. However, this new way of collecting and storing data raises new challenges in data curation and reuse. The focus of this concern has generally been the final dataset, with repositories specifying which types of metadata need to be included for its archiving. More recently, researchers have pointed out that data descriptions, conceptualized as paradata, need to accompany all stages of the research process, since choices made along the way can greatly affect outcome and results. We suggest envisioning the research process as a conceptual chaîne opératoire, where not every link is preserved. To understand archaeological knowledge production, it is crucial to pay attention not just to the rationale behind using a particular methodology, but also to the specific ways in which it is implemented during the research process. By applying the chaîne opératoire approach to trace the knowledge production process, we can make visible the practices that shape archaeological knowledge production today. We invite papers on any aspect of the research chain. We are particularly interested in papers that discuss methods for preserving and/or retrieving process- or paradata in order to facilitate the curation and reuse potential of archaeological data.

Presentation abstract

The notion of chaîne opératoire stands out as an interesting concept for thinking about archaeological work, knowledge production and its underpinnings in the archaeological stratum and its coming into being. Tim Ingold (2022, p. 262) asked a seemingly innocent question of whether it would be possible to conflate two chaînes opératoires: the one of the archaeological stratum and the one of its making, or in his example, a wall and the process of building it. The question was rhetorical in the sense that he dismissed the possibility straight out by noting that neither of them are series of discrete steps but rather “converging and diverging strands of a continuous braid”, complicate rather than additive.

If we accept Ingold's view of the knotting of the multiple chaînes opératoires conceptualisable in archaeological knowledge work, there are several follow-up questions to ask. One is how the multiple chaînes opératoires come together. Another is what implications the coming togethers have on using the concept of chaîne opératoire to understand archaeological knowledge production, and third, if and how archaeological knowledge production is documentable and approachable through the different ways intermingling chains of actions.

The presentation inquires into the nexus of multiple chaînes opératoires present in the archaeiological knowledge production. Based on observations in several studies of the documentation of archaeological data creation conducted in the course of the ERC-funded research project CApturing Paradata for documenTing data creation and Use for the REsearch of the future (CAPTURE) (Huvila, 2021), it aims at detangling the relation of archaeological practices, knowledge production, the processes archaeology investigates, and how they are documentable and knowable. Discussing process documentation in terms of paradata, the presentation contributes to the on-going discussion on the documentation and communication of the practices and processes of data creation, processing and use that have been identified in the literature (Cameron et al., 2023; Huvila, 2022) as crucial for future reuse of data.

References

• Cameron, S., Franks, P., & Hamidzadeh, B. (2023). Positioning Paradata: A Conceptual Frame for AI Processual Documentation in Archives and Recordkeeping Contexts. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 3594728. https://doi.org/10.1145/3594728
• Huvila, I. (2021). Documenting archaeological work processes for enabling future reuse of data: The CAPTURE project. The European Archaeologist, 69.
• Huvila, I. (2022). Improving the usefulness of research data with better paradata. Open Information Science, 6(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/10.1515/opis-2022-0129
• Ingold, T. (2022). Imagining for real: Essays on creation, attention and correspondence. Routledge.