The transformation of an archaeological community and its resulting representations in the context of the co-development of open Archaeological Information Systems

The adoption of Archaeological Information Systems (AIS) evolves according to multiple factors, both human and technical, as well as endogenous and exogenous. In consequence the ever increasing scope of digital tools, which allow for the organization of information in order to understand the transformations of the site, at the same time transforms the organizations that generate or manage these data. The transformations induced by digital methods are carriers of an antagonism of continuity and discontinuity, which leads to permanent reorganization. At the same time online collaboration and design (centered on and with the user) lead to open access to data (open data), to code (open source) and to make the design process accessible to the greatest number (low-code, no-code). In this spirit, archaeology seeks interoperability and reusability (e.g. FAIR principles, LOUD data), which in return, leads to the emergence of new organizations of information, as for example, the definition of criteria for interoperability, data models dedicated to data exchange (CIDOC CRM, Linked Art Data Model...), dissemination platforms (Nakala on HumaNum), the scripting of treatments in order to make these reproducible, or the sharing of terminologies.

In response to these issues, the SIAMOIS project (“Mutualized and Open Archaeological Information System based on Semantic Intelligence”) aspires to master the relationship between the organization of information and the transformation of the organization as one of its main goals. The project unites actors in French archaeology who share in a common understanding of the need for evolution and interoperability of their dedicated AIS. Beyond the mere choice and sharing of the modules that constitute these systems, models used for the construction of archaeological representations are themselves based on a paradigm and an underlying logic. The representation of reality is moreover specific to the civilization studied, which makes it necessary to take different paradigms into account in order to further the interoperability of data and the sharing of tools. The objective of SIAMOIS is to study the emergence of these paradigms in a collaborative context. The starting point is the construction of a representation of the organization of an archaeological community, in order to analyze the transformation of this community and especially the impact on the information produced. The paper identifies a dual sense of interoperability in the recording and publication of research data: An “internal interoperability”, encompassing the current process of retrieving data as it is stored in the primary recording system of the excavation and their transformation for their traditional publication or storage in digital repositories, and an “external interoperability”, encompassing the effort of linking these "final" data with already existing data in order to facilitate exploitation by any kind of future research.

Methodologically we use a conceptualized analysis model, formalized in the T!O (Transformation, Information, Organization) framework, which is based on Stéphane Lupasco’s logic of energy (Lacombe, 2021). Lupasco’s approach to logic attempts to mitigate the principle of “Tertium non datur” in classical logic to extend the conventional binary logic. He identifies two contrasting movements of heterogenization and homogenization, and understands their conjunction as a source of dynamic equilibrium. In this approach the actualization of one state is simultaneous with the potentialization of the other. The conditions of these changes of state are hereby the object of particular attention.

Analyzing the production of archaeological knowledge by modeling excavation processes and the establishment of discourse based on typologies which are employed in publications, T!O allows for reflecting on institutional processes at the same time as it indicates the necessary parameters to organize and record archaeological data. Modeling these processes shows the correlation of the “included third” and the identification of “silences” in the archeological data, which are either generally relegated to the position of “implicit” knowledge or in rare cases included within systems applying a reflexive method or attempting the storage of “paradata.”