Revisiting reflexive archaeology at Çatalhöyük: integrating digital and 3D technologies at the trowel's edge

Abstract

Abstract

Terrestrial Laser Scanning in the Age of Sensing

“…(Andrews et al 2009). This statement is especially true in regard to archaeological workflows that integrate reflexive methods, and employs 3D technologies in combination with GIS and tablet-based digital drawings (Berggren et al 2015). 14 TLS data processing used to be a bottleneck in 3D survey workflows because it implied lengthy and costly manual procedures for point cloud filtering, registration, editing, segmentation, and surface reconstruction.…”

Curating Archaeological Knowledge in the Digital Continuum: from Practice to Infrastructure

“…The methodological approach introduced by post-processualist excavation leader Ian Hodder, was explicitly meant to embrace the principles of reflexivity, contextuality, interactivity, and multivocality [97]. The imperative of reflexivity was to be served by the wholesale adoption of a twelvepoint plan: on site interaction through tours on site; negotiations of priorities between excavators and laboratory staff; breaking down barriers between different kinds of materials and analyses; fast feedback from laboratory analyses to the field; an integrated database; a diary supporting and documenting the process of interpretation; anthropologists looking at archaeological process, visual conventions, and local community impact; a web-based database to enable multivocality; hypertext and hypermedia to break down linear narrative; virtual reality connected to the database and supporting visualisation; and teams of diverse nationalities supporting different versions, or "windows", of Çatalhöyük [98].…”

“…The tablets bring many aspects of data manipulation, validation, and interpretations, which are ordinarily reserved for certain 'privileged' individuals during the post-excavation process, into the field at the trowel's edge. [98] Personal and reflexive video recording has also been practised in Çatalhöyük for many years [114], but it is only in 2013 that a portable digital recording device was provided as a tool of personal recording to excavation team members, supplemented by video annotation and bookmarking software. Participants in this pilot project were encouraged to record video segments to capture interesting scenes and activities during the excavation, and, after the end of the day, to "re-visit" the captured scenes, bookmark, annotate particular points of interest, and respond to a semi-open video interview on the day's proceedings.…”

“…A study of the integration of digital and 3D technologies in the project, co-authored by a team of Çatalhöyük investigators led by Åsa Berggren, acknowledges that Hodder's twelve-point plan towards reflexive practice was achieved only partially, suggesting that the reason for these "inconsistent results may be that reflexivity at the beginning of the project was regarded as a methodological matter, with reflexive methods added as an envelope surrounding excavation and recording" [98]. Authors note, in particular, that different perspectives introduced by teams of different nationalities and approaches "also resulted in a fragmentation of the project", while the on-site interactions during the so-called priority tours of laboratory staff in the excavation illuminated a "structural imbalance" between "excavators coming mainly from the developer-funded world and academic researchers based in the laboratories" [98]. On the other hand, Shahina Farid's insider review of the Çatalhöyük experience from 1993 to 2011 [128] reiterates even more candidly the inconsistencies in the application of plans towards reflexive practice and the mounting tensions between different teams, which in 2011 led to the introduction of major changes to the project including a "wholesale change of its longstanding personnel [and] mixing excavation teams" [128].…”

“…Both studies confirm that the adoption of digitally-enabled methods such as digital tablet-based diaries, on-site virtual reality reconstruction, and just-in-time database access of lab-based interpretation to the excavation process does introduce new opportunities but also sociotechnical and epistemological challenges. As Berggren and co-authors admit, "[t]he 'reflexive loop' might be seen as an ideal, although historically it has been difficult to implement fully" [98].…”