01238nas a2200145   4500000000100000008004100001260001200042100001600054700001600070245010600086300001400192490000700206520085400213022002501067       2026                            d  c10/20231 aIsto Huvila1 aOlle Sköld00aA Fieldwork Manual as a Regulatory Device: Instructing, Prescribing and Describing Documentation Work  a615–6300 v523 aResearch on how archaeological fieldwork manuals, a sub-category of methods handbooks, regulate research documentation is limited. Qualitative content analysis of 25 English-language archaeological field manuals from the early 1900s to 2010s showed that they instruct how to describe the documentation work, prescribe practices and workflows, and function as often pre-coordinated descriptions of work. A manual forms a  working space  that is sometimes adopted as such by following the detailed advice given in some of the texts but likely more often used as a more general point of reference. The fact that many manuals do not provide exact recipes for the fieldwork as a whole means that they function as comprehensive representations and documentation (paradata) of actual fieldwork practices only when read in parallel with field documentation.  a0165-5515, 1741-6485