A Neo-Documentalist Lens for Exploring the Premises of Disciplinary Knowledge Making

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how documentation analysis with a neo-documentalist lens can help us explore variations (and stabilities) in conceptions and materialities of documents, as intertwined with disciplinary and sub-disciplinary practices of informing and knowing. Drawing on documentation theory, and with previous research on archaeological documentation as a background, by means of autoethnographic vignettes we explore contemporary conceptions of documentation in five areas in or related to archaeology (Intra-site 3D documentation, Development-led archaeology, Aggregating documentation for use outside the organization, Mediating documentation – or documentation mediation, and Documenting and displaying archaeology in a changing environment). Digitization, and how digitization has spurred renegotiations of what counts as documentation, functions as a common denominator discussed in all of the vignettes. The analysis highlights simultaneously ongoing renegotiations of documentation serving each area’s unique epistemic purposes, and pushing document materialities in different directions. This operationalization of documentation analysis creates an understanding for intra-disciplinary variations in documentation but is importantly also a practical tool to uncover documentation-related premises of disciplinary knowledge-making. This tool can be applied for example in processes of information policy development (regulating what purposes documentation should serve, and what it should be like), information systems design (e.g. for creation and communication of documentation), and infrastructure development (e.g. for preservation and accessibility of documentation).ARKDIS Arkeologisk information i det digitala samhälle