One my responsibilities is managing the digital workflow on the project. This includes migrating information collected in the field from an analog format (mostly text written) to digital formats. With the beginning of excavation, I digitized the first trench plan yesterday. Each plan is digitized as it is prepared by the excavator so the following days trench plans can include features excavated the previous day (if these features remain in the trench -- like a wall or a particularly immobile stone). The digitized plans provide the excavator with a tidy model of their previous days sketch. The worry, however, (and there is always a catch) is that they will freeze with the sketch the interpretative process. This is not a huge worry for something like a single stone which is rather less susceptible to changes in interpretation than, say, the top of a complex wall. Once the wall appears on a trench plan as illustrated it can, of course, be changed by the excavator (and we encourage them to change their illustrations as often as needed!), but I wonder how the crossing of the digital/analog divide will influence a trench supervisors understanding of the interpretative processes.
As another example, Scott Moore and I celebrated (with a bag of chips and a fruit juice) the reading of the last unit of survey pottery from the intensive survey the we conducted from 2004-2007. Scott dutifully recorded pertinent data on over 8000 batches of artifacts (close to 20,000 artifacts total). He recorded all the information on a prepared form and these were keyed into the project database. The process of digitization transforms the objects from physical, three dimensional artifacts to bits of data organized into tables. These data can then be searched and organized according to the analytical needs of the project. Like digitized trench plans the transition from analog (or even "real") artifacts to digital artifacts ossifies or freezes certain analytical functions. Like the authority vested in the written word, digital data resists the kind of reinterpretation that more traditional analog forms of data encourages in an archaeological context. An object or a notebook entry seems inherently more susceptible to recatagorization and change.
The trick with digital data and central to the documenting the digital workflow is to annotate somehow the changes to digital datasets that occur as they move from an analog state to a digital state (and any changes that almost inevitably occur within a digital state). In a notebook or on a handwritten form it is easy to strike out an earlier interpretation or statement and replace it with a newer one. The paper copy, then, preserves a record of the changing interpretations, mistakes, and to some extent the archaeological thought process. An important secondary issue is how to preserve this process in digital form -- especially in a way that embeds the process of change in the visible representation of the data (not in hidden metadata, the name of which implies a secondary aspect to the data itself).
More scanning and digitization today... and I hope that an answer reveals itself as I continue to modify and refine the workflow from the analog to the digital.
Crossposted to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog. If you haven't already, check out the PKAP Blog Aggregator.
I would really like to see what you work out.
At present in Corinth, I'm less concerned about changes reinterpreting a single context record for a stone or a wall or deposit, but how to track multiple interpretations for sets or groups of contexts. Currently, we are synthesizing this stuff randomly (every session or three week interval) in summaries but not in more meaningful groupings.
Posted by: James Herbst | May 29, 2009 at 08:37 AM