Provenance Illusions and Elusive Paradata: When Archaeology and Art/Archaeological Practice Meets the Phygital

Abstract

In this art/archaeological study, we question the utility of the interrelated concepts of provenance, provenience, and paradata as applied to assemblages in art, archaeology, and cultural heritage contexts. We discuss how these overlapping concepts are used to establish values of authenticity and authoritative attributions. However, as cultural assemblages are increasingly being extended through virtualisation, they may exist digitally as well as physically, or as combinations of both, that is phygitally. We show how provenances and paradata can now become unstable and even detached from the assemblage. Through a sequence of collaborative projects, we expose two provenance illusions at the centre of archaeological recording and presentation practices. In these illusions, the archaeologists and much of the archaeology they record actually disappear from the authoritative reports that are published. Using a transdisciplinary, diffractive art/archaeology approach, these illusions are unpacked to reveal how superficially slight changes to traditional archaeological “drawings” and “photographs” have wrought fundamental ontological shifts in their modern phygital incarnations which undermines their provenances and associated paradata. We conclude that archaeology like fine art does not require conscious paradata in order to support statements of authority and interpretation. Instead, we argue that archaeologists should adopt an art/archaeology approach and subvert and dismantle established practices, methods, tools, techniques, and outputs. By highlighting and challenging inconsistencies in what we say we do with what we actually do, we expose gaps in our knowledge and data and shortcomings in our practices. These deficiencies can then be tackled by developing more robust (trans)disciplinary approaches.

Digital Zooarchaeology: State of the art, challenges, prospects and synergies

“…Most importantly, zooarchaeologists should not view digital technologies only as tools to help them deal with data collection and analysis, but also as a powerful means of addressing important archaeological problems and/or generating new zooarchaeological questions, methodologies, and consequently new data. If we take a transformative approach such as the one applied to the generation of Digital Twins, then the 3D object itself could be the focus of investigation and viewed as having its own agency that is open to study, similar to Reilly et al's (2021) approach to the Phygital. While the concept of a Digital Twin originates from manufacturing for understanding the present, and through Machine Learning to predict the future (Kritzinger et al 2018), there is no reason why such a concept could not be used to better understand the past.…”

Documenting Functional Use-Wear on Bone Tools: An RTI Approach

“…This is particularly useful in field settings where artefacts and features do not always occur at level planes. Particular research questions can certainly be investigated by incorporating other techniques and dome prints, such as the use of higher magnifications with Micro RTI (Reilly et al 2021).…”

Current Digital Archaeology

“…Indeed, the range available for deploying digital tools contributes to ongoing boundary reclassification and neologisms to describe the field. Digital archaeology has at times been termed "cyber-archaeology" (Forte 2011) or "virtual archaeology" (Reilly 1990) with an emphasis on virtual reality and "phygital archaeology" (Reilly et al 2021) or "cyborg archaeology" (Morgan 2019) to highlight mixed digital/physical experiences and interventions in archaeology. There is some discussion and unpacking of these terms by Tanasi (2020) and of the relationship of archaeology within the larger digital humanities (see also Watrall 2016).…”

“…29-30). While this method has been the largely unstated approach of some practitioners (e.g., Ferraby 2017, Graham 2020b, Hacıgüzeller 2017, Morgan & Eve 2012, Reilly et al 2021, Watterson et al 2020, engagement with the robust literature supporting practice-based research would alleviate some of the conceptual crises as previously delineated within digital archaeology (Huggett et al 2018). Finally, a focus on these themes describes a digital archaeology that explores ways to prefigure a better future through our investigation of the past.…”