Approaching prefigurative heritage data practices

The idea of archaeological (and) heritage data is deeply embedded in the contemporary imaginary of data as a natural and neutral raw resource of economic and intellectual production. Talking about heritage data, practicing with and towards it is difficult to disconnect from this predominant framing. We argue that it is possible but that it requires a taking a careful look at the nexus of heritage data and the contemporary data practices forming an assemblage of datawork as they are, and prefigurative heritage data and data practices at the present as they might be in the future. The deep temporality of heritage and heritage practices means that the past, contemporary and future of heritage and heritage data cannot be decoupled from each other but a prerequisite of any prefigurative heritage data practices is a comprehensive understanding of heritage data practices in the past and at the present.

This lightning talk asks what prefiguration of future heritage data practices requires from knowing past and contemporary practices and heritage data, what figurations of the present and prefigurations of future heritage data might be necessary, and how not only data but also practicing with data could be thought anew to produce a new imaginary of data in heritage. The observations and proposals in the talk are based on on-going research on how the modes and genres of describing and framing heritage data and data practices have a profound impact on how they become figured. The foundation of prefiguration of (prefigurative) heritage data practices is in the inscriptions—visual, textual and multimodal documentation, descriptions, and narratives—of datawork at the present as it is observed and imagined, and as it is prefigured to be. In this respect, it can be argued that alternative futures for heritage data and how it is practiced upon depend on how they are inscribed and reinscribed at the present and in the future.