Archaeological Knowledge Production and Dissemination in the Digital Age more

This paper is part of an ongoing exploration located at the intersection of a number of related areas of inquiry, including digital field archaeology, information and communication technology (ICT), knowledge management, and the sociology of knowledge. At the core of each of these areas is a concern with the processes by which knowledge is produced and represented. This chapter presents several projects that are concerned with the ways such processes operate in the context of archaeological information as a means of sharing diverse forms of knowledge across communities. We write from a perspective that is informed by conceptions of knowledge as performance, of objects as citations, and of the potential of the Web as a contact zone; we identify the critical need to construct environments that support the generation and representation of knowledge in, by, and for different communities; and we evaluate the potential for the narratives, values, and interests of multiple knowledge communities to be appropriately represented with archaeological information that is created using the technologies and practices of social computing. Much of the work currently being done in these areas necessarily remains exploratory, and this chapter is a contribution in that vein.