Dustings of Paradata as Pedagogical Support at Four Archaeological Field-School Sites

Abstract

Archaeological fieldwork requires systematic approaches to recording and archiving a variety of data, from information about contexts and artifacts to methodologies that can vary from season to season. Drawing together retrospective analyses of data-making efforts in four student-engaged archaeological projects—the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project, Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project, and Venus Pompeiana Project—this chapter focuses on the paradata work practiced by on-site data archivists. Paradata are the human processes that generate data. Field schools and the archaeological research they produce benefit from a “dusting,” i.e., analytical narration of the processes, proactively led by data archivists in context and collaboration with team members. Paradata make explicit the pedagogical goals at the heart of each project while simultaneously supporting the contextual integrity of future archaeological research.

1 Introduction: Archaeology as a Data Collaboration

Archaeological data archivists manage the daily recording activities of an excavation. Their work on site may encompass data entry, information creation, sense-making, legacy integration, archival research, and even ethnographic data-gathering as a participant-observer on a dig site. Such activities collectively position the data archivist as a knowledge manager—one who assembles, researches, and provides knowledge upon a collaborator’s singular request. The work of answering such reference questions continually builds up the data archivist’s future ability to support more complex and data-intensive knowledge production as a peer collaborator in scholarship.

Archaeology in general is increasingly recognized as a team effort. In considering two long-term excavations in Turkey and Jordan, Mickel (2016) “visualizes and measures teamwork” to connect a particular role with a level of information-sharing, revealing the underappreciated influence of such roles in the core work of “creating the archaeological record.” Who the members of such teams are has also been the focus of Handley’s (2015) recommendations to archaeology graduates in the years after the Great Recession of 2007–8. Handley suggests that academic programs shift focus away from the pursuit of “transferable skills” in favor of a truer kind of reflective skillset that affords one the ability to find singular meaning in the archaeological activities completed, as relevant to their identity. When read alongside the systematic review of teamwork pedagogy in higher education by Riebe et al. (2016)—which helpfully attends to the overlap of educator, student, and institutional factors—Handley’s re-commitment to the ideals of socially conscious, civic responsibility outlines a bright and inclusive future for archaeological practice writ large.

Such metacognitive emphases pervade the strong ties archaeologists bolster today with military veterans (Hill, 2021) who report revived feelings of camaraderie upon completing “meticulous field work” together. The emergence internationally of veteran-focused archaeology, especially of three such projects established in 2015, is analyzed by Everill et al. (2020). They find that participation in an archaeological project resulted in both multiple improved mental health dimensions and an increased sense of value and well-being among the participants. Metacognitive aspects of archaeological practice and the resulting practice-based scholarship fundamentally shape the duration of excavations and their scholarly legacy.

Paradata, while still an emerging concept, are firmly human-centered and thus complementary to metadata, which are data-centered. This chapter defines paradata as the human processes by which a datapoint came into being. That is slightly broader than Huggett’s (2014) definition of paradata as “data provenance,” which can imply a single time and place of origin. Paradata allow researchers to answer how scientific data came about, just as metadata let researchers know what the core data comprise. When visualized, patterns of paradata can identify implicit problems at one of many earlier stages of data creation and offer more accurate solutions or opportunities for remediation (Choumert-Nkolo et al., 2019: 602). This chapter takes a step toward that future by introducing the “dusting,” a paradata-focused narrative from the standpoint of archaeological archiving. Four such dustings from diverse settings provide readers with experiential use cases of paradata that in combined analysis establish the concept’s fitness as a pedagogical aid—paradata are uniquely useful for teaching and learning.

1.1 Paradata Provide Pedagogical Clarity

Paradata not only arose from 3D visualization research with cultural heritage artifacts (see Papadopoulos, chapter “A Leap of Faith: Revisiting Paradata in 3D Scholarship” in this volume) but are central to the visionary guidelines recently presented by the leaders of OpenContext, an online publisher for archaeological datasets since 2006 (Kansa et al., 2020). They undergird the present writing from archaeology sites. A range of disciplines are working to move from paradata’s initial recognition as just “extra documentation” output from core data-generating activities to a more useful contribution toward accountability, traceability, tracking, and logging of permutations. Such disciplines include electronics (Gebru et al., 2021), demography (Jackson, 2017), statistics (Karr, 2010), and now archiving (Bunn & Jones, chapter “Mapping Accessions to Repositories Data: A Case Study in Paradata” in this volume; Davet et al., 2023). What are the scholarly outcomes of participants recording data in diverse ways, seen at four sites of pedagogy? This chapter’s original contribution is a people-centered reconceptualization of constraining factors at field-school sites as valuable paradata.

Before examining paradata at four diverse archaeological settings, this chapter asserts that paradata do not exist in isolation. Rather, they are one of three current types of data produced and recorded in archaeological fieldwork, each with particular usefulness for scholarship: core data, metadata, and paradata. Archaeologists place their primary focus on the raison d’être for a field season: the generation of core data in the form of physical materials recovered and their contexts, including but not limited to stratigraphic-unit characteristics, and artifact types and quantities. Secondly, archaeologists prioritize the creation of metadata, or key concepts for the organization of core data (e.g., ceramic typologies, architectural techniques, and stratigraphic categories). Paradata, the focus of this chapter, are data about the processes undertaken for generating both core data and metadata and are perhaps the best reflection of the underlying scholarly research priorities and motivating questions of an excavation season. Our assertion overall is that human-centered paradata recorded by archivists make engaging archaeological research possible. Paradata are a bridge between site scholars and novices.

In general, the recording of paradata tends to be given lowest priority and often remains implicit knowledge among the specific participants of a project. While that is partly due to the time-sensitive nature and limited resources/participant bandwidth of a field season, it is also due to a common reticence to show anything but “clean,” fully processed data. Without insight into the data-gathering process, there appears to be no further room or need to query said process (Kansa & Kansa, 2013).

Scribbled notes and clarifications about archaeological processes-in-place are not generally appreciated enough for the robust supplement/complement to content that they can be. In fact, publicly sharing such paradata can enliven the corresponding data. Paradata are a gateway to the core data, making ideas accessible to novice readers, entry-level archaeologists, and seasoned scholars alike. The natural and necessary limitations of data-collecting and metadata-creating efforts make paradata a prevailing support mechanism when analyzing the results of a fieldwork season. Choosing to collect one category of data can mean not collecting another category as thoroughly, and paradata can help fill that gap. Fieldwork paradata—the documentation of processes, workflows, and methodologies—can assist in the recovery of data that are desired only in hindsight, as questions and goals for archaeological analysis shift in response to evolving perspectives.

Paradata such as knowledge of team leadership and total membership (acknowledging role levels, titles, training, and experience with technologies), hourly schedules, weather conditions, and personal recording preferences such as the use of shorthand or annotations enable a data archivist to provide informed frameworks around new research questions that involve accessing and analyzing data from a given field season. The subsequent “embedding” of such knowledge among the site archaeologists, students, and broader research networks (Khazraee & Gasson, 2015, 2017) is then its own process (about which more macroscopic studies would be valuable) but one ultimately based on the objectual practices interesting to the site team.

2 Emerging Pedagogy of Field Schools

Archaeological projects that adopt a field-school structure place explicit value both on experiential learning and on pursuing longitudinal research questions central to the goal of the project. As such, each field season must focus not only on the archaeological work at hand but also on educating a new group of individuals with varying skillsets and experiences. Work necessarily moves more slowly than it would with a team of experienced archaeologists. An ongoing gap in attending to fieldwork pedagogy (Dufton et al., 2019) can leave participants to form activity “teams” under constraints of time, roles, resources, and other aspects in situ. We suggest reconsidering and reconceptualizing such constraints as paradata categories, expressly because they can provide clues or indications of what previous activity might have happened that was not documented in the way now desired. Field-school environments are most productive for considering the place of paradata in wider scholarship because they actively support interactions between data and people, especially for pedagogical purposes. (The paradata-as-pedagogy function is also examined beyond archaeology in both Dawson & Reilly, chapter “Towards Embodied Paradata. A Diffractive Art/Archaeology Approach,” and Bunn & Jones, chapter “Mapping Accessions to Repositories Data: A Case Study in Paradata,” in this volume.) Field schools provide a unique framework for analyzing the key role of data archivists in recording contextual information that enriches and makes accessible the findings from archaeological research.

3 Four Sites of Paradata Analyses

In the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project, Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project, and Venus Pompeiana Project, the authors have led data-making activities involving diverse student teams. Over time, teams at the four sites have created data about daily trench excavations, which are captured in a variety of analog and digital ways as the following sections describe. Such a range of strategies lend the present authors insights on the wayfinding steps necessary to succeed in querying decades of legacy datasets.

Through a consideration of site-specific data-making processes, the following four subsections (dustings) surface paradata as pedagogy to support the teaching and learning of archaeological activities among project participants. Archaeological work, including data archiving, is very embodied. Replicating the able-bodied efforts of particular individual(s) who focused on such work, especially in new or challenging geographic settings, might perpetuate blind spots related to knowledge absorption and sharing. Accessibility concerns also extend to format-specific constraints and generational expectations best identified over decades. Fortunately, paradata are effective entryways for making archaeology more accessible to people of different abilities or experience levels before participating in a field season. A paradata-as-knowledge-broker approach¹ supports the inclusion of new and more contributors in a project, assisting in intellectual processes. As illustrated through the examples below, paradata can answer research questions from a trio of disciplines that intersect at field schools: archaeological curation (concerned as it is with types of artifacts and their long-term, climate-controlled preservation needs), archival science (the means of access, maintenance, and use), and archaeology (the understanding of past cultures). Each example is organized into a “dusting” or paradata-informed narrative with two parts: a description of data practices on site and an explication of the key pedagogical outcome that our archiving such paradata makes possible.

Dusting # 3a. Expert Dialogues in the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis

Data Practices: Engagement with experts and long-term team members, who are living sources of paradata, is key to successful data (re)use at both the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, in western Turkey, and the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project, near Siena, Italy (dusting #3c). An ongoing, joint expedition of Harvard University and Cornell University since 1958, Sardis has benefitted from consistent leadership and long-time participants (http://sardisexpedition.org/en/essays/about-sardis-expedition). Sardis was not set up as a field school, but it became (and continues to be) the training ground of dozens of archaeologists, Classicists, conservators, and more, from students at the undergraduate and graduate level to professional practitioners and university professors. All archaeological materials excavated at Sardis remain in Turkey, and all analog documentation (fieldbooks, paper drawings, etc.) returns to the permanent archive at the Harvard Art Museums in Somerville, Massachusetts. The analog resources are then digitized in the off-season and made available via a FileMaker database.

A variety of students and professionals participate in fieldwork at Sardis, and the data they generate requires different but interrelated parameters for recording and publication. The structure of the current FileMaker database reflects the original analog data-recording system established in 1958, as born-digital data must be integrated with a substantial amount of legacy data. Work on site today requires a combination of analog and digital recording during the field season itself and then the digitization/digital preservation of analog content throughout the rest of the year. Students are involved in all phases. All team members and researchers receive basic database training, but there are only a set number of individuals who have permission to make updates to records (e.g., core staff like the registrar, archivists, and conservators).

Outcomes from Paradata: As Publications Data Manager from 2014 to 2018, Huntsman contributed to the launch of and content development for Sardis’s first public-facing website (http://sardisexpedition.org). The site was part of a push to make data more accessible to the general public and to expand the reach of traditional print publications. That process revealed an overwhelming need to consult Sardis’s living sources of paradata. Like many twentieth-century archaeological projects, the explicit, systematic recording of paradata was not part of the data-generating process. Instead, Sardis has been able to rely on staff members deeply familiar with the history of the site to fill knowledge gaps.

Publication drives digitization priorities at Sardis, given the massive amount of information recorded, and publications often involve materials excavated anywhere from 1 to 60 years ago. The preparation of data-heavy manuscripts in which Huntsman was involved (e.g., Evans, 2018; Petzl, 2019; Ramage et al., 2021) revealed confusing and incomplete artifact records that could only be resolved with the insights of team members. Through that process of resolution, Sardis has generated and continues to create a considerable amount of paradata—often, narrative explanations as to which resources were consulted to resolve a data discrepancy, how past archaeological methods or circumstances affected it, who was involved, and when the solution was implemented.

While such paradata are important for internal purposes and critical to the accurate publication of materials, they do not necessarily belong in the published record. What does that mean for the presentation of more and more data on the Sardis website? Under the search function is an explicit acknowledgment that the artifact data presented is incomplete (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Screenshot of ``About search'' information on ``Explore'' subpage of Sardis website (sardisexpedition.org). ©Archaeological Exploration of Sardis/President and Fellows of Harvard College

The artifacts description employs transparency as a strategy to engage and involve experts in the enhancement (even co-creation) of accurate metadata that is more useful to scholars than the version without their input. Additionally, related approaches detailed above are employed both during and after the field season to further encourage data (re)use: e.g., during the season, the data archivist may translate or otherwise boost the legibility of data so members of the team—with varying levels of familiarity with the site—find it accessible/intelligible, and provide narratives to outside researchers when necessary. After each season, Huntsman and now other staff codify those narratives and present them alongside core data, regularly obtaining outside feedback on the same narratives to ensure intelligibility.

Sardis’s rich data archive is accompanied by an equally rich human archive that enhances, teases out, and sheds light on old and new information. Team members from undergraduates to seasoned professionals have the opportunity to interact with living legacies on a daily basis and now are encouraged to add paradata to records when a complex problem could lead to the loss of information in the archaeological process. Data archivists stateside work in collaboration with the field team, guiding students and researchers in the most effective ways to use the database, and how to know when they have exhausted all sources of information to resolve a problem. All team members rely on the database, and those directly involved in maintaining the archive must be able to provide the guidance and clarity those individuals need for their work. In this way, the living archive becomes accessible and intelligible to all, leading to more comprehensive data and more accurate research conclusions.

Dusting # 3b. Data Journeys Across Teams and Time in the American Excavations at Morgantina: Contrada Agnese Project

Data Practices: Morgantina is an ancient Greek site in central Sicily, Italy, which has been formally excavated since 1955, then under the direction of two Princeton University professors and with contributions by Swedish archaeologists, architects, photographers, and royalty. The site has been incredibly prominent in the training and careers of American archaeologists (including the first director at Poggio Civitate; see dusting #3c), who together comprise an “archaeological family tree with some of the most respected names in twentieth century classical studies in the United States” (Edlund-Berry & Kyllingstad, 2018: 2). Contrada Agnese, the western area of the ancient city, was partially excavated from 1971, and the Contrada Agnese Project (CAP) commenced in 2013 (Schirmer et al., 2021; Walthall, 2021). The CAP team structure is both established and flexible—two aspects which lend support to the concept and practice of “data journeys” (Bates et al., 2015a, 2015b). As of 2015, when Buchanan participated in its third field season, CAP comprises the Data, Dig, Museum (Small Finds, Ceramics, Conservation, Environmental), Geospatial, and Architecture teams whose members work together to identify the types of information gathered in their work and the optimal ways of accessing information to carry out daily activities (Smalling et al., 2017). Small Finds team members, for example, capture digital photographs of excavated objects before and after conservation treatment, and their images are then linked to new object records and trench contexts in the database. The five teams have evolved over time, reflecting wider adoptions across several American excavations of digital data-recording practices after 2010. For example, archaeologists Wallrodt et al. (2015) describe their experience of having introduced Apple iPads for recording excavation information at Pompeii during 2010–13, finding that same-day data processing enabled more sophisticated decision-making in the field.

The CAP database started with the project in 2013 as a way of recording finds and has been expanded to include records for seven types of artifact-related data: Inventoried Finds (“museum” or cataloging work), Contexts (fieldwork), Media (photographs), Science (soil and paleobotanical results), Pottery (ceramics), Storage (locations), and Conservation (treatments). Based on the individual or team, the Data Supervisor prioritizes the layout view of the database that is most useful for the team member’s particular use, aware of the problem of “data overload . . . present[ing] the right data to the right audience at the right time” (Data Supervisor, 22 June 2015 fieldnotes). The Data Team ensures that all members of the excavation are able to use the data efficiently: “That’s kind of where [Data Team members] come into play, in terms of the data curation: making sure that it’s user-friendly, and that it makes sense, and that it’s stored where it needs to be stored, and that it’s easily accessible to everyone when they need it—either during the season or during the off-season” (Data Supervisor, 13 February 2015 pre-season interview). The Data Supervisor engaged in a process throughout the season of responding to trench supervisors’ feedback and reactions from their use of the database and made enhancements to the database layout accordingly. One outcome of the database’s iterative development was the idea to present a database workshop during the first week of the 2016 season so that all team members would see the equipment and receive instruction for particular recording activities. Additionally, a CAP Field and Museum Handbook was drafted in the months before the 2015 season.

Outcomes from Paradata: Departing from early interest in a time-use study on taking notes in a notebook or on an iPad, the Data Team ultimately refined the focus of inquiry from quantification of time and work rates to a more qualitative focus on excavators’ uses of both analog and digital recording tools. To support the inquiry, five trench supervisors provided individual perspectives regarding their particular uses for paper and digital technologies. Findings showed that the paper notebook is especially useful in capturing developing narratives, sketches (of things and ideas), and chronologies and that the iPad is especially useful in capturing and sharing the final interpretation of record. Some of the enhancements suggested for the database were a place for a checklist/running tally space (for Finds and Contexts), a better linkage with iPhoto, and a functionality like Pages for journaling and sketching. The researcher asked whether using a notebook and an iPad is an either/or situation (i.e., is one nonessential?), and a supervisor replied that “it is getting close” but not there yet. Technologies range from the humble sketch in colored pencil to the high-resolution photosynth/3D model of a trench feature on a sunny day, each supporting the mission of the project and promoting archaeological research. Continued reflection by directors on the relative contributions of each technology to site knowledge will better equip all collaborators to manage archaeological data, and encourage its use.

Overall, data management on site as practiced in CAP’s field-school pedagogy can extend research goals further: the information scientist working to curate and provide access to datasets, the archaeologist working to enter enough and sufficiently granular data to detect assemblage patterns (Huvila, 2014), and the community member working to research the provenance of an artifact to interpret it in a museum exhibit. Each perspective brings something to the archaeological endeavor and reveals a multiplicity of designs on the data, during and after their initial gathering. The format-specific field documentation practices of interest here remain an active area of research and development (Huvila, 2015; Morgan et al., 2021).

Dusting # 3c. Accountability Embedded in the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project

Data Practices: Like Sardis (dusting #3a), the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project is a long-running excavation that has also benefitted from consistent leadership. It also has an astounding amount of legacy data, most of which have been digitized since the implementation of a bespoke SQL database in 2001 (though digital efforts with FileMaker began in 1997). Poggio Civitate began with much the same team structure as Sardis: graduate students and early-career scholars directing teams of local workers, recording everything in fieldbooks, cataloging objects on typed notecards, paper architectural plans, and black-and-white photography. In the late 1970s, Poggio Civitate shifted into the field-school model (which continues today), with groups of undergraduate students earning college credits for participating in the summer excavation season. Students engage in all aspects of work while also conducting research, writing papers, visiting local museums, and listening to lectures from staff members.

Huntsman joined the team as a student in the 2001 season, when all staff and students took rotations doing data entry for all paper catalog cards into the new database, as well as transcribing fieldbooks. The digitization process continued through 2005 and included changes to the database along the way as the team encountered shifts in data-recording practice over the decades of finds. Instead of selected published materials like the Sardis website, the goal of the Poggio Civitate website was to present a full, publicly accessible and annually updated version of the entire archive, with the artifact catalog and accompanying contexts via the fieldbooks at its core.² This process allowed all field-school students to be directly involved in the creation of a digital archive, helped them understand the complicated nature of legacy data, and inspired conversations as to how to represent this data clearly to future researchers and the public.

As a member of the team throughout this first push for digitization and beyond, acting registrar and cataloger Huntsman tracked and documented a considerable amount of paradata in her master’s thesis (Huntsman, 2005), including the decision-making process among project directors, database administrators, and other field-school staff members for addressing missing data and types of data not recorded in earlier years of excavation. Such work also relied upon insights from interviews with early members of the project.

Outcomes from Paradata: In the interest of presenting the complete archive online, paradata explaining missing contextual information for an artifact, for example, were added consistently during the catalog digitization process. When there are no precise coordinates for the findspot of an artifact from a particular trench, or if findspot information cannot be rectified with the current grid, a note is added with all available information that can be gleaned from the fieldbook. That helps any viewer know why an artifact cannot be plotted on the site plan, and it also helps data archivists to know which resources were consulted.

Poggio Civitate began to work with web-based research data management and publishing service OpenContext in 2011 on creating a sustainable digital archive that could handle the problems caused by ever-changing software requirements for the earlier iteration. Analog and digital legacy data and paradata were key to the conversation, as were technological, archaeological, and archival perspectives. This “second round” of dealing with paradata in the creation of a digital archive reaffirmed the importance of documenting decision-making processes not only in the database itself but also in other forms (Huntsman & Kansa, 2016). Now at Poggio Civitate, students are familiarized with not only the database but how it was created, alongside the paper archive of catalog cards and fieldbooks that remains in the lab today.

Writing a narrative of the (data archivist’s) legacy research process is an exceedingly productive activity, as it builds both transparency and accountability into the data (re)use activity and promulgates an awareness of archival labor where and to whom (in this case, the researcher) it is most valuable. This is particularly important for the Poggio Civitate data on OpenContext, a linked open data platform that encourages making new connections across sites, regions, and collections. The recording of paradata is now an integral part of pedagogy and practice at Poggio Civitate and will have an impact on research not only about the site itself but on the work of those consulting data from across the ancient world on OpenContext.

Dusting # 3d. Collective Discovery in the Venus Pompeiana Project

Data Practices: Located at the southwest corner of the ancient city of Pompeii, Italy, the sanctuary site dedicated to Venus (the Roman goddess of love) has been excavated intermittently since 1898, with recent periods of fieldwork in the 1990s and mid-2000s. The international collaboration known as the Venus Pompeiana Project (VPP) commenced in 2017 with a goal of clarifying the chronology, development, and nature of occupation of the site (Battiloro & Mogetta, 2017). Extensive data are generated through such varied methods as digital photogrammetry, artifact illustrations, special-find photographs, feature sketches, bulk-find tabulations, and digital fieldnotes on the site. Established for the 2017 season by staff leaders and maintained ever since, a FileMaker database serves to document six components (stratigraphic units, photos, finds, masonry, and revetments). From its active upkeep to its uses year-round for academic study, the VPP database exemplifies intellectual discovery made collectively rather than individually.

The 2017 and 2018 seasons saw student participants work with staff leaders to successfully enter data while on site. The data archivist’s addition to the team in 2019 allowed for a more embedded and dedicated approach to data entry. Following four excavation days of observation and computer setup that year, the project implemented a “data station” whereby one student participant would rotate daily into the data-archiving activity, working closely with the data archivist. The archivist and student together discussed and agreed upon priorities and processes to be completed for the day, in conversation with trench and pottery supervisors and project directors. Activities completed by the two data-station team members varied depending on the progress of unit documentation drafting and collaborative review, the intensity of excavation activities in the trenches, and sometimes logistical hurdles related to the availability of Internet signal and/or particular field notebooks with essential information for the database.

As part of a funded effort to present the project’s “digital dig” data and narrative accompanying its forthcoming publication phase, project leaders established a data curation collaboration with OpenContext so that component information can be shared and preserved, and designed a project website to support storytelling and an artifact-embedded virtual tour of the site (https://venuspompeiana.mused.org/; https://www.archaeological.org/interactive-dig/pompeii-italy/). The Mused website greatly expanded during 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic delayed fieldwork for two seasons; during that time, the team collaboratively posted six narrative topic pages and over two dozen artifact descriptions with photographs.

Outcomes from Paradata: In preparation for the 2022 field season, expansion of the data archivist’s role from one to two positions was generously accommodated. Such recognition by the project directors, staff leaders, and all student participants of the value of data archiving concurrent with site work strengthened the team’s collective ability to stay abreast of fast excavation progress in all open trenches and support specialized analysis of artifact subcategories. As one measure of that progress, Fig. 2 visualizes the amount of Find Numbers assigned during respective seasons of the project. The project’s nearly two hundred small finds each have catalog records and one or more photographs linked in the database. Relatedly, the VPP employs a recovery strategy in the field of total dry screening by stratigraphic unit. The total volume of deposits excavated each year (not including any backfill cleared), per the VPP topographer’s geodatabase, is approximately 33 cubic meters (m³) in 2017, 66 m³ in 2018, 20 m³ in 2019, and 33 m³ in 2022.

Fig. 2

Number of finds assigned during field seasons

The Venus Pompeiana Project is distinguishable by the immediacy and integration of archiving with the fieldwork. Its model of knowledge production is dynamic: a genuine give-and-take with a great degree of listening to the multiple perspectives gathered together on site. Like CAP (dusting #3b), VPP has a small and well-defined scope and was born a hybrid project (with paper and digital operations), allowing it to be more agile with its archive. Such agility means that a new data field can be added and researched for use with reasonable flexibility. The six components recorded in the database include initials of those who entered the data for each record, which itself exists within a defined scope such as a given trench or data category. Paradata continue to be key to the project’s successful data archive, and its mindful permeation into the work of two recent field seasons is something that was not the case at sites like Poggio Civitate or Sardis (dustings #3c and 3a) until the present time, as contributors realize that their digital data are growing. Paradata aspects should continue productively shaping the archiving and recording of archaeological data.

4 Presence and Proximity: An Integrative Discussion on Using Paradata Narratives (Dustings) to Support Instruction on Dig Sites

While a consideration of the four sites above contributes a new layer of paradata-based knowledge about the archaeological progress made across a given fieldwork season, the paradata narratives also have practical usefulness. The additive writing of and about processes behind the data studied by field archaeologists illuminates habits and patterns of work that take root during a season and can become routinized to the point of discomfort at alternate ways or alternate performers of that work. Bringing those patterns to the surface during post-season team debriefs (and even long after, which is far rarer) is an important responsibility and contribution of a data archivist.

Since the data archivist very often is on the move collecting data from trenches, labs, visitor audiences, and/or site directors in the course of both a single day and a set of dig days, they have unique knowledge of how individual team-member contributions make up the collective progress, and they could help qualitatively evaluate which efforts were successful, efficient, or effective learning experiences. Their co-presence and co-commitment to more than one expert positions them to lead the important work of integrating data from multiple contributors, sharing that knowledge with the team, and ultimately presenting a coherent narrative about the fieldwork findings.

Even so, paradata as an exploratory concept (at VPP in 2022 or the other sites discussed here) does not call for an extra, added-on task of collecting more new data. Indeed, paradata are not necessarily recorded as such in legacy materials. Paradata from work prior to VPP’s start in 2017 instead exist in the form of two individuals who were present for earlier campaigns and involved in the current project (Ivan Varriale and Marcello Mogetta). Because the Temple of Venus at Pompeii is a site that has been and could be excavated multiple times, it is prudent for archaeologists to ensure that paradata enter the archive in some form. At long-running projects like Sardis and Poggio Civitate, that pressure is somewhat lessened due to their status as continuous digs, which benefit from deep knowledge transfer happening among long-time leaders and have no set project end dates. Yet VPP, like CAP, is a discrete operation that has some born-digital components coexisting in a longer, analog, inherited history of site excavation. While mindful of that recency (being an impetus of sorts), VPP and CAP still incorporate paradata into their excavation operations and archives. Paradata are found to be ultimately well suited for both the digital aspects of modern archaeological excavation and their effective presentation to today’s audiences seeking out the historic legacies of known, storied sites.

The natural continuation of a paradata-integrative operation (as opposed to the codification of paradata well after the fact) such as at VPP can result in substantive benefits to the project. The mere presence of data archivists on site can ensure that if and when some data are found to be incomplete, the data question can be asked in the moment, and individuals can be kept informed as to the answer. Furthermore, the proximity of the archivist alleviates problems and mistakes that otherwise would be difficult to resolve when discovered later. Usually such issues stem from a minor mistake or mishearing. Rather than compounding, they can be prevented.

To be clear, such initiative exists beyond any one person or station, and it is the presence of someone who is attuned to and aware of paradata about the scope of the operation and what data work has happened in the past. Such individuals can advise decision-making in a productive way. Students witnessing that dialogue thus become encouraged to talk issues out with their teammates and problem-solve together, modeling exemplary collaborative behavior while practically keeping interested parties in the loop. Project participants create partnerships on a respectful playing field. Furthermore, such an environment reinforces the value and necessity of diverse experiences and training backgrounds which generate different questions. In turn, these insights make the processes in use better for the new purposes. Instead of locking new participants into tracks or static workflow patterns, the paradata actors help set up students as active contributors in making the work better. Across the cohorts of each project season, there are naturally some who gravitate confidently toward an evolution of work mindset and others who prefer to receive instruction and maintain a status quo—perhaps all such contributions reflect the diverse education that shape one’s very personal reasons for wanting to participate. Again, all forms and means of contributing to data-archiving efforts such as paradata-recording facilitate its permeation well beyond the archivist so that the operation is sustainable.

5 Conclusion

A paradata-aware approach to data archiving on a dig team illuminates patterns, helps separate individual habits from the role of archiving, supports attribution, fosters dialogue and teamwide problem-solving, and generates visualizations of the archiving process and products. Archaeological field seasons bring a group of people together for an intense experience where everyone develops some shared understanding of and terms for the work at hand as a matter of teamwork. Many projects operate under the general assumption that “everybody knows that X term in the data means Y modification for the duration of the present conditions.” A successful season will generate a critical mass of people “in-the-know” in ways they were not before, but the archival perspective reveals that is not always lasting, especially over the course of many years, or even between two consecutive seasons of work. The experience-sharing can feel exclusionary—to someone who did not know some background information or who missed witnessing a particular situation—and can deter a laudable attempt to solve problems that arise. (Temporary) knowledge production in such settings occurs subtly and quietly, such that only at times of need would such participants be able to acknowledge being “out of the groove” and in a position, perhaps, to seek the information. At that point, however, the information or datapoint might be lost; whether it is big or small in size, its absence may eventually affect the content, quality, or utility of data recorded.

Recording such data in ways that are intelligible to future researchers is critical. Archaeology is a destructive science by its very nature, so supporting replicability and accessibility are essential aims of data archiving. Paradata shed light on issues of temporality and ephemerality that have always been present on archaeological projects, by illuminating the sense of immediacy that such projects generate—that “it will always be this way.” Even so, paradata are not exclusive to archivists, integrated as one may be on an excavation. Instead, they touch upon all-too-human episodes, incidents, and characteristics that go unspoken for one reason or another. The capable embodiment of a role should not forever tie those particular behaviors to that (archiving) role but, rather, attentiveness to such paradata issues should encourage the tasks-of-the-role’s permeation to the other participants, since fieldwork is a collaborative endeavor. A thoughtful smattering of details and reasons why data appear the way they do enlivens an accompanying narrative and connects us all as human beings.