Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Huvila, Isto; Huggett, Jeremy

doi:10.5334/jcaa.6

Cited by 40 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…As Galison (1997) describes a shift in the practices of physicists, we believe archaeological practice is similarly changing. Huvila & Huggett (2018) have explored the use of digital tools on archaeological practices to understand the boundaries of what counts as archaeological, what is merely related to archaeology and what should be excluded from archaeology. Reflecting on Huvila & Huggett (2018), the use of code is unquestionably archaeological, since it is one of many tools that archaeologists are using for converting raw data into summaries, visualisations, and insights.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Huvila & Huggett (2018) have explored the use of digital tools on archaeological practices to understand the boundaries of what counts as archaeological, what is merely related to archaeology and what should be excluded from archaeology. Reflecting on Huvila & Huggett (2018), the use of code is unquestionably archaeological, since it is one of many tools that archaeologists are using for converting raw data into summaries, visualisations, and insights. These concerns about how digital tools affect what we consider is and is not archaeology intersect with the work of Gieryn (1999) on boundary construction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tool-Driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Schmidt

Marwick

2020

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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IntroductionIn this paper we investigate recent developments which are facilitating computational archaeology's return to fundamental principles of the scientific method. We ask whether this might be the beginning of a broader change in the field. Revolutions or paradigm-shifts in archaeology have been proposed to occur following major theoretical statements (Clark 1993;Härke 2002), but there is an argument among philosophers of science whether revolutions in science are idea-driven or tool-driven (Dyson 2000;Galison 1997). This argument motivated us to explore how the disciplines of ecology and archaeology have started to embrace tools that improve the reproducibility of research. We focus on one set of tools for this change, based on writing data analysis scripts in free and open source programming languages, exemplified by R, and the practice of sharing of these scripts. We focus on R because our prior observations indicate it is by far the most common scripting language used by ecologists and archaeologists. Bibliometric evidence shows a strong increase in the use of R among ecologists and the beginning of a similar development in archaeology. We evaluate how approaches to improving reproducibility and transparency in archaeology are mediated and transformed by digital approaches and propose these might reflect a tool-driven change in archaeology. Acknowledging that this is not a simple process, we offer an R-based tool to ease the task of creating a compen-dium which enables other researchers to reproduce the published results.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tool-Driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Schmidt

Marwick

2020

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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show abstract

“…As Galison (1997) describes a shift in the practices of physicists, we believe archaeological practice is similarly changing. Huvila et al (2018) have explored the use of digital tools on archaeological practices to understand the boundaries of what counts as archaeological, what is merely related to archaeology and what should be excluded from archaeology. Reflecting on Huvila et al (2018), the use of code is unquestionably archaeological, since it is one of many tools that archaeologists are using for converting raw data into summaries, visualisations, and insights.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Huvila et al (2018) have explored the use of digital tools on archaeological practices to understand the boundaries of what counts as archaeological, what is merely related to archaeology and what should be excluded from archaeology. Reflecting on Huvila et al (2018), the use of code is unquestionably archaeological, since it is one of many tools that archaeologists are using for converting raw data into summaries, visualisations, and insights. These concerns about how digital tools affect what we consider is and is not archaeology intersect with the work of Gieryn (1999) on boundary construction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tool-driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Schmidt¹,

Marwick²

2019

Preprint

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There is an argument in philosophy of science that revolutions in science are either ideas-driven or tool-driven. We explore this debate in light of recent efforts by many scientific disciplines to embrace methods to improve the reproducibility of their research. One of the most profound changes driven by this concern for reproducibility and transparency is from analysing data using tools dependent on pointing-and-clicking with a mouse in commercial software, to a new set of tools based on writing scripts in free and open source programming languages. We present bibliometric evidence for this change in the sciences generally and in archaeology in particular to test if the adoption of these new tools may be considered a revolution or some other process. We identify a citation effect for papers that use code. We discuss how computational approaches to improving reproducibility and transparency in archaeology are mediated and transformed by the use of code.

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“…Hertzum, 2014;Saastamoinen, 2017). The comprehensiveness of archaeological information work and its contextual entanglement in archaeological and archaeology related practices (Huvila & Huggett, 2018) makes it a fleeting subject and as such, archaeological information interactions can be difficult to frame as distinct engagements with information in another than analytical sense with a specific purpose of focusing on and identifying instances of, for example, seeking, searching, organising or making of specific pieces of information. The urge to appreciate the complexity of archaeological evidence (Wylie & Chapman, 2015) should be extended to ar-chaeological information work as well.…”

Section: Archaeological Information Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genres and situational appropriation of information

Huvila

2019

Self Cite

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Purpose Information science research has begun to broaden its traditional focus on information seeking to cover other modes of acquiring information. The purpose of this paper is to move forward on this trajectory and to present a framework for explicating how in addition to being sought, existing information are made useful and taken into use. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual enquiry draws on an empirical vignette based on an observation study of an archaeological teaching excavation. The conceptual perspective builds on Andersen’s genre approach and Huvila’s notion of situational appropriation. Findings This paper suggests that information becomes appropriable, and appropriated (i.e. taken into use), when informational and social genres intertwine with each other. This happens in a continuous process of (re)appropriation of information where existing information scaffolds new information and the on-going process of appropriation. Originality/value The approach is proposed as a potentially powerful conceptualisation for explicating information interactions when existing information is taken into use rather than sought that have received little attention in traditional models and theories of human information behaviour.

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Archaeological Practices, Knowledge Work and Digitalisation

Cited by 40 publications

References 43 publications

Tool-Driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Tool-Driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Tool-driven Revolutions in Archaeological Science

Genres and situational appropriation of information

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