Documenting information making in archaeological field reports

Abstract

PurposeSharing information about work processes has proven to be difficult. This applies especially to information shared from those who participate in a process to those who remain outsiders. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of how professionals document their work practices with a focus on information making by analysing how archaeologists document their information work in archaeological reports.Design/methodology/approachIn total 47 Swedish archaeological reports published in 2018 were analysed using close reading and constant comparative categorisation.FindingsEven if explicit narratives of methods and work process have particular significance as documentation of information making, the evidence of information making is spread out all over the report document in (1) procedural narratives, (2) descriptions of methods and tools, (3) actors and actants, (4) photographs, (5) information sources, (6) diagrams and drawings and (7) outcomes. The usability of reports as conveyors of information on information making depends more on how a forthcoming reader can live with it as a whole rather than how to learn of the details it recites.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is based on a limited number of documents representing one country and one scholarly and professional field.Practical implicationsIncreased focus on the internal coherence of documentation and the complementarity of different types of descriptions could improve information sharing. Further, descriptions of concepts that refer to work activities and the situation when information came into being could similarly improve their usability.Originality/valueThere is little earlier research on how professionals and academics document and describe their information activities.

Re-purposing Excavation Database Content as Paradata

“…Datasets have traditionally not been considered standalone products or genres, and consequently they have not been defined and prepared as fieldwork output (Huvila 2016). Data provenance and process information may exist in the documentation produced during, for example, an archaeological excavation, but it is likely to be scattered across fieldwork diaries, context sheets, notes on maps and drawings, site photos, and the field reports (Huvila, Sköld, and Börjesson 2021;Huvila 2006). Metadata and process information in attached readme-files, table definition files, or in the dataset itself (e.g., supplementary information in column headers) may be sparse or non-existent.…”

“…A key step towards facilitating extended and more purposeful data reuse is to better understand and assess the process of data creation. In this article, we focus on paradata, a subset of contextual information that describes data creation and manipulation processes and their underpinnings, which is often left undocumented in structured dataset descriptions but commonly is implicitly present and, at least to a competent reader, to varying degrees identifiable in the data itself (Huvila 2020a;Huvila, Sköld, and Börjesson 2021). Paradata, like descriptions of methods and tools used to produce data, is particularly interesting because it is often central to making and communicating assessments of data reliability and an important facilitator of productive and efficient data reuse (Faniel et al 2013).…”

Documenting Information Processes and Practices: Paradata, Provenance Metadata, Life‐Cycles and Pipelines

“…Couper, 2000 versus metadata that describes data; Pomerantz, 2015) has gained prominence especially in survey research (Goodwin et al, 2017) and cultural heritage visualisation communities (Bentkowska-Kafel & Denard, 2012), and more recently, for instance, in archaeology (e.g. Huvila et al, 2021). A key aspect of both provenance metadata and paradata, underlined in the recent literature (e.g.…”

“…A key aspect of both provenance metadata and paradata, underlined in the recent literature (e.g. Huvila et al, 2021;Michetti, 2017;Sköld, 2017), is that they can take many different forms and be embedded in the data itself-especially when the perspective to information-related processes and practices is extended beyond interactions pertaining to specific technical information objects to their broader stakeholder contexts.…”

“…Greenberg et al, 2021;Huvila, 2020;Sköld, 2017;Thomer et al, 2018;Trace, 2020), others in the work stemming from science and technology studies (STS) and in the growing body of information science research that combines information and STS perspectives (e.g. Borgman et al, 2015;Borgman et al, 2019;Gregory et al, 2020;Huvila, 2016;Huvila et al, 2021). As a whole, it is, however, apparent that there is room for a higher degree of cross-fertilisation.…”