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Short abstract:

The digitized stone is an interface between knowledges and communities; in its multidimensionality it offers the possibility of heterogeneous interpretations without hierarchy. With digitized stones and their movements between scientists, I focus on moments of translation, capture, and connection.

Long abstract:

The digitized stone is an interface between knowledges and communities; in its multidimensionality it offers the possibility of heterogeneous interpretations without hierarchy.

For several years I have followed archaeologists and others in their work with stones: rocks you can chip your teeth on and rocks whose resolutions demand supercomputer access, in a study grounded in research on the ways that scientific representation and visualization allow us to know what we know (Cetina 1999; Daston and Galison 2007; Latour and Woolgar 1986) and on a broadly defined, nuanced, and social world of “representational practice” (Hess 2001; Myers 2008; Vertesi 2014, 2015). With special attention to digitized stones and their affordances, I focus here on moments of translation, capture, and connection. I follow scientists as they move from multisensory experiences in muddy trenches to a brief focus on the visual in digitization processes before they begin work as embodied inquirers again in the new kinds of analyses enabled by digital worlds.

I propose to join this workshop with a short (~10 minutes) oral presentation based in an essay on stones as database architectures and as contact zones, drawing on my ethnographic work on 3D digital methods as they move between epistemic cultures. I will bring a 3D printed stone tool – an object of inquiry, a teaching tool, and a specific vision of what matters (and what doesn’t) when it comes to rocks.