 Welcome to the session on archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment organized by Myself, I'm Easter from the University from Sweden, then we have two other organizers sitting over there. There is Costis Dallas from University of Toronto There and then we have Remidas Lautsigas sitting in there and so this is our team and You have to also listen to them and kind of do what they say not only what I'm saying And what I'm I'm telling you to do Good. We're representing the artwork a course network. That's a network for the research in archaeological practices and knowledge work in the digital environment and It's a course network European action to increase collaboration and networking between researchers and practitioners in a particular area and The area is is here the same as the topic of the workshop the Session today you can find more information about the network on the Website and then you are very much Encourage to use the course artwork tag if you do some social networking or or social posting or social media during the session Then I'll do also have these nice Flyers here. So if you want to know more so you can take one of those I can give you and you can pass them around and take one if you think you're interested the rationale of this session is that that we Claim that relatively little is known about how digital information tools and infrastructures are used by archaeologists archaeologists and and other users and producers of archaeological information and This come goes from field work to to museums to the general public everybody Who is somehow interacting with archaeologists and archaeology? Okay, some some things are known and there is knowledge about these things Coming from different Disciplines there is very much known about the practices about what's being done by individual archaeologists and individuals in other fields that are are interacting and working with archaeologists, but we don't kind of We are lacking comprehensive knowledge and there is many things that could be brought into to the foreground and To the so that everybody would would know about about what's going on and what's going on in different countries and what's going on in different sectors and different types of practices and This has been also a kind of a thing that has been discussed quite a long time Now and then people are kind of saying that we don't really know what people are doing and I'm doing when they are Are are doing archaeology or working with archaeology? I know kind of what I am doing, but I don't really know what what the other guys are doing in the next room or in the next City or in the in the neighboring country, or I might know kind of a lot about for instance about field work But I don't know a lot what's going on in the museums or what kind of public archaeology Guys are doing so the workshop is to address a tiny bit of these concerns And as it's in the call for for papers for this session So this is what we are we should be researchers and research projects studying archaeological practices knowledge production and use Social impacts and in the industrial potential of archaeological knowledge Either directly kind of that's what is the kind of the Object of our study so to say or then it's kind of that we want to reflect as a part of our work What what is being done? Why it's being done? Why it's good? Why it's bad? What we shouldn't been knowing more about What is being done? Then some practical matters after this very short introduction is it was pretty short I have done a little bit rearrangement of the schedule because the organizers want us to have a plenty of coffee during this afternoon And I think that's very good, but we need coffee So there are kind of two obligatory coffee breaks. Okay, you can have tea if you like but still After the introduction that's going to end rather soon There will be three So-called theory papers as we have put these into two categories There will be more kind of theory oriented papers and more about practice oriented papers But that's not kind of really a very Very kind of a strong distinction between the two categories Then we're going to have a short discussion and a coffee break then there will be a little bit more more theoretical things Discussion and then we start with the practice papers with coffee a little bit more practice papers And then we're going to have a final discussion so we have plenty of time to discuss and plenty of time to drink coffee and Hopefully enough time to present some interesting findings I'm going to try to keep the time Indicating kind of that there is about five minutes left or so about three minutes left And then kind of this means that you should be kind of concluding And then if I'm coming here and literally kind of taking your way from here So then then you should probably realize that it's time to stop not only to conclude but that's kind of to stop and That's about what's about it for the introduction. I can now Put a couple of You can take if you don't want one so don't take one and you can think of environment and so on and To get the session going so I'm going to introduce myself, which is a little bit kind of an awkward thing to do But that's what's going to happen anyway and Yes, the first presentation I'm going to talk about Reports and about archaeological data as as a kind of an outcome or potential outcomes of archaeological practices And at the same time as a kind of a facilitator of of archaeology to happen I'm not an archaeologist myself I've been working a lot with archaeologists and with archaeology But I've been doing this study and what I am so I'm Information scientist and I'm interested in in kind of in general how people get to know what they need to know in order to do what they want to do in their lives and in their in their work and This is also a highly relevant question for archaeologists and archaeology How do we know what we kind of really want to know and are we really? Getting to know what we really want to know or is it that we are kind of getting to know something And then we actually would like to know something completely different And this is of course partly a question that we Kind of when we're working with information So we might not have the information because the information doesn't exist because it was long time ago when things happen Then we want to know something about things that were have been long past But then on the other hand it can be that we are doing research and we are gathering information. That's kind of That's that's something but it doesn't kind of really It's not really a good match with the information that we would actually need and in this study that's part of Project I've been working within Sweden together with a bunch of colleagues about archaeological information in the digital society and This is also affiliated with the fantastic artwork network but the point is that what I've been discussing and and and kind of investigating is that how archaeological data kind of Think about archaeological data as kind of some kind of a thing or almost like a thing as we're discussing about it and reports how they function as something that's called boundary objects and Then you can of course kind of ask that okay, what is a boundary object and This is a bit kind of an imprecise concept to a certain extent Introduced by by Susan Lee star and James Griezner in an article where they were looking at the work between professionals working at the Berkeley's Museum of vertebrate zoology in the beginning of the 20th century and How they were kind of working towards the general public and how they used different kinds of things to facilitate their cooperation so it's basically a kind of a thing that can be a kind of a Tangible thing a physical object or then it can be a kind of a conceptual thing that somehow makes Cooperation between two different communities possible There are examples. They could be kind of forms. You have a kind of a formal form that you have to fill out and the both the professionals and the the general public could kind of work with the forms as it gave some sort of a structure To enter some information and to communicate some some kind of an information Another less tangible object Boundary objects. They are discussing is the state of California It it's a kind of a concept that gives boundaries to to the observations about nature in a particular area It's a state of California doesn't kind of really physically exist Okay, this was a strange way of putting it but but kind of that what belongs to the state of California It's a question of discussion and and kind of that people have at a certain point of history Decided that okay, these are the boundaries and this is kind of the state of California But as a kind of a physical entity, it's only something that People have been deciding together. It's not kind of there in in the In the landscape somehow that okay, this is completely different because it is California and this is This is something else Okay, and there's a sort of a Kind of a definition ish about boundary objects So they can be abstract or physical artifacts that reside in the interfaces between organizations or groups of people and What's kind of what's their role? What that what they are doing is that they bridge perceptual and practical differences among different communities and Then they facilitate cooperation and emerging mutual understanding or then they That might do something of these and not everything How they are doing it. There's one proposition made by my this star quite a lot of later after the first article, but the idea what she was suggesting is that You have some sort of standardization of some sort of practices Some things that people are doing forms of information. It could be forms It could be a standard vocabulary, whatever Then because the standards don't really kind of usually match very well Well, the things that are kind of out there in the reality, but you have to Figure out things to go beyond and you have to kind of negotiate with the standards in order to kind of do everything That you like to do you observe things in the stratum that don't really fit into the standards And then you begin to create so-called residual categories that are kind of something in and in between the standardized classes or categories and then you some then they kind of You make boundary objects out of it because it's it's that you kind of create things To negotiate between the the deficiencies in the standards and then you standardize and again when you kind of realize Okay, this isn't really working. Our standards are pretty poor and they are not representing what what we're working with There's another thing. Okay, this is going to be very theoretical Quite soon. I'm going to go to a little bit more practice then another concept that's kind of a nice and useful in this context is Susan Heckman's notion of disclosure and it's kind of an idea that That if we have certain concepts of we do have certain theories or we do have certain kind of things like reports or data So the thing is that they they kind of they become you useful and they make difference Only first when they are useful in In in relation to the reality they kind of provide an act provide means to access a certain part of reality In an archaeological concept context this could be that kind of there's a disclosure if something that Archaeologists are working with it makes sense within archaeology and it provides you means to to kind of Make sense of something that's out there Let's say an archaeological report or an archaeological monograph an article makes It it is kind of working towards a disclosure if it provides you information that's Relevant to the reality out there. It gives you information about how the ancient Romans Did it or how they how they did live their lives If it doesn't do that so then there is no disclosure and it's basically rather irrelevant kind of an article or a book or a report What I have been doing in practice as a kind of a researcher of archaeological activities are been Doing interviews with archaeologists and people working with archaeology and also observing archaeologists working and for this particular study archaeologists working in Sweden and The kind of the rationale of the thing was that because there is a this kind of a funny Discussion that okay reports are pretty bad They don't kind of really give us the information that we would need in order to kind of evaluate Earlier excavations or that we would kind of really know what people found there or that we could do some nice new research They are not really that useful for for other People either for kind of doing a museum exhibition It's not really that easy if you have a kind of a bunch of reports because there are no no kind of fun stories about What was kind of happening in this place earlier on but it's it's rather kind of dry observations figures and so on But then we like that idea that data is very useful kind of sort of but then there are in the end Rather few people who are really kind of using data and it can be really really difficult because there are many issues To access from accessing data to to kind of really making sense sense of it and to to kind of understand that That how because they are both difficult, but then what people are Quite often doing is that they read the report and think that it's still kind of quite useful thing So kind of why a deficient information? Object a deficient document is in the end something that Most of the people would like to work with Even if the data would be would be kind of much much better in the end Um, so Kind of things about reports What's good about reports? Everyone knows that they are there you should kind of if you do an excavation if you do a survey So you should be filing a report. Okay, especially in the olden times People didn't really do that but nowadays in many places Most of the people do file in reports because they don't necessarily get a permit to do another survey another activation If they don't do that It's a kind of a good because it's a legal requirement. So kind of I have to do a report because I kind of have to do a report it is a Rather good capability to accommodate different uses Even if it's not very precise necessary for many many purposes. It doesn't give all you all the details It gives you still kind of some kind of an idea what was happening at the excavation and what what people found there so it's a it's a kind of a Reasonably good approximation of what was happening It is considered to be a kind of the authoritative first-hand document of of the excavation of the survey In a sense that kind of the the people who were there So they were they are supposed to be writing the report So it's kind of their observations their interpretations of what was what was happening and what they found Then it's very useful because it's a material outcome if you have been doing a survey So then you can kind of when you hand in the report so you have actually done something Otherwise the administrators other people could come in and say that kind of did you really do what you were supposed to be doing? But if you hand in the report, so it's kind of this is a proof. I did it. I did it really kind of look here and Then funnily enough There is the kind of the question about their accessibility of paper reports Even if they are difficult to access in a sense that you might kind of need to go to Yeah here probably to the Hague or or in to a kind of physically take you somewhere to get a kind of a copy of the paper report So it's rather easy to kind of read you can read it from the from the beginning to the end You don't need any specific programs. You don't need any any funny technology Okay, you might need glasses, but that's that's about it You can probably read it if it's in a language you can So they are they are rather accessible in the end You don't need to do all the stuff you have to do probably with with data Then there are some negative things first the question of the timeliness of the reporting Okay, they aren't always filed Very soon after the excavation of the campaign Nowadays it has become apparently much better in many countries, but it there is still a little bit kind of black here Are they really useful? That's always a good question and many people say that no no they aren't especially useful And that's of course a problem Then there's a question that nobody really knows that to whom they are being written They're kind of sort of written to to the if there's a land developer So kind of for them and it's sort of written for the administration then it's kind of sort of written for for the Scholarly community to kind of serve as a basis for new archaeological kind of academic kind of research and then sort of kind of Written also for the general public, but it's not kind of really really written for anyone It's a kind of a very interesting kind of a genre in as a whole the report They can be difficult to understand Kind of that what was really that the person who wrote this report was meaning and and kind of did I really get the interpretation right? And then there's a good question that how should a report be written? What are the guidelines? What are what is what should be done in the Swedish guidelines? There is that it should be kind of written to to Following the the good Scientific standards to quote the definition, but what is a kind of a good scientific quality in a report? Who could say that? Okay, we can get a list of 15 or 20 or 25 different factors, but they aren't very precise But then we have the data that's another kind of a beast Good thing is Everybody is kind of very sure that it's very important to keep everything because that's kind of everything That's that's being documented about about a site So we have to keep it in order to serve the future research and future needs It's a certain extent reusable you can do kind of again some analysis and draw new conclusions There's a certain kind of a control function if you allow the at doing your interpretation So somebody else can take the data and do better into their interpretations So you should be doing good interpretations in the first place not to be blamed of being allows the archaeologist Then the fourth one is the kind of question that it's evidence It's it's something that has been documented and it's it's kind of it's the observations Negative things is it's really persistent Do we kind of can we really say that the data even there are wonderful data archives and wonderful initiatives going on on Building and maintaining infrastructures, but is it still kind of going to be there forever? That's a question It's not necessarily very accessible you have to have often special kinds of Computer programs to access it you have to have a special kind of knowledge and so on There's a lack of definition of what is data and there is a kind of a lack of general understanding What counts as a data coming from an excavation or a survey? It's very heterogeneous. It can be many things There's a real lack of stakeholders Nobody wants the data in many cases and nobody kind of really knows who should be taken care of it And who should be kind of who is really going to use the data There's a certain lack of demand for data There is still kind of this thing that I want to kind of do my own dig and kind of analyze that kind of a data And it's it's kind of a little bit kind of Yeah, there's a little bit suspect kind of a thing to go and analyze somebody else's data if he hasn't been dead for hundred years and Then the problem is that because there's a report So why should I bother about the data because kind of the report is there and then it's it's enough to show that I've done my work So kind of why it's so difficult to get rid of the reports that are bad and why they are kind of a good boundary object Why they are circulating and people are referring to them all the time? Party it's because they are kind of part of the contemporary or archaeological practices We are working with the reports and then that's kind of why they are there Data lacks materiality Kind of in in a theoretical sense and also in practical sense it doesn't kind of really exist and it's very difficult to kind of to Have you have the data in your hands and kind of show here's my data What could be done? What should be kind of really done is to make a real case Of and for the data kind of why it's important why it should be kept Why what kind of data is is is the data and to make it legitimate to make it similar kind of an Proof that okay. I did my work if I have kind of handing in the data Another thing could be that a Rethink about what archaeological documentation is all about it's not about that we want to kind of keep it everything What we found but it's more like that we should be helping others to Kind of retrieve information about an excavation about a survey in the future So it's more like kind of not keeping everything, but it would be helping others to to get to Get to know things about about what we did in the field It could be good to remember that people are really really kind of lazy and and that's a good thing We have to be lazy because we can't do everything. We have to kind of try to economize with many different things and Reports allow us to be passive to kind of just sit down and kind of okay We have the the report here and we don't have to do very much about it We don't have to manage the archival things archiving of the reports in in such a detail and we have to do with the data We don't have to if there is the bunch of paper So that's that's kind of good enough We don't have to kind of do all difficult questions and difficult stuff with the data So kind of it allows us to kind of take it easy to relax data does not do that and Yeah, if you kind of want to have a written version of this and and some other observations I didn't cover in this presentation. So you might kind of check Kind of a full article that discusses some of the points in this presentation and some kind of an early version of these these ideas and I think that was about it. Thank you