Authoring practices with paradata: shifting documentary functions of sociomaterial assemblages

The rapidly progressing datafication of the mediation of the social reality has raised concerns of a need for improved documentation of not only data artefacts but practices and processes relating to their making, processing and use. Such information has been termed in the interdisciplinary literature ’paradata’. A part of the research approaches paradata in objectivistic terms assuming that a it is possible to standardise and compile a comprehensive enough corpus of formal documentation that can convey a sufficiently complete understanding of a specific practice. At the same time, studies of paradata practices suggest that paradata is a more complex issue. Paradata needs are contextual, situated and can be satisfied with remarkably diverse types of documentary artefacts while seemingly comprehensive sets of documentation can fail spectacularly in providing a sufficient understanding of a practice or process, and in providing guidance to reproduce, develop and direct practices.

This presentation inquires into the nexus of documentation and paradata practices in archaeology investigating the documentary functions of different types of documentary artefacts in relation to how they convey understanding of archaeological practices and how the documents are used by archaeologists to ’author’ practices of those who access the documentation. The discussion draws from a close reading of popular types of documentation archaeologists use to document their work and to understand other archaeologists’ practices. The individual documents and the assemblages they form together in archaeological documentation work are theorised from the outset of their documentary functions, sociomaterial entanglements, and drawing on Shotter and Cunliffe’s notion of practical authorship, how the documents and paradata are used by archaeologists to exert influence, or ’author’, the practices of those who use the documentation. The findings point to the diversity of sociomaterial assemblages functioning as paradata and how their constituents and structures are related to their documentary functions, which in their part, are related to the diverging ambitions and outcomes the ’practical authors’ have on the impact of paradata on future practices. In parallel, the findings suggest that individual documents are often insufficient in fulfilling the documentary functions required by practical authors, pointing to the need of documentary assemblages rather than individual types of documents, or ’data’, to convey and understanding of and exerting influence on practices.