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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the emergence of a new culture of objectivity. Drawing on multi-year fieldwork with archaeologists and others developing and using 3D digital methods, with a focus on manipulation and interaction, we show how enduring epistemological problems generate novel solutions.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the emergence of a new culture of objectivity. Building on and extending Daston and Galison's framework of epistemic virtues, we show how contemporary archaeological practice is developing a form of objectivity that incorporates manipulability, navigability, and relationality without abandoning scientific representation. Drawing on multi-year fieldwork with archaeologists and others developing and using 3D digital tools, we analyze the ways that scientists use new imaging technologies to learn about the past, and to show others what they have learned. We follow archaeologists as they bring computers into the field and later reproduce that field on their computers, and argue that methodological responses to cultural shifts in the discipline have allowed archaeologists to enroll technological innovations in attempts to address persistent anxieties about subjectivity. Contrary to suggestions that manipulability might signal a move away from representation, we find that new technologies enable researchers to foreground both manipulability and representational fidelity simultaneously. By tracing this emergent culture of objectivity, we show how enduring epistemological problems generate novel solutions and illuminate the role of digital reconstructions in both scientific and public contexts.