In Pursuit of a Reflexive Recording. An Epistemic Analysis of Excavation Diaries from the Çatalhöyük Research Project

Abstract

This paper investigates the excavation diaries recorded under the principles of a reflexive method, as defined by Ian Hodder and his colleagues of the Çatalhöyük Research Project. The primary goal is to examine their content and assess their epistemic value for creating a more robust and better-contextualised archive. This study defines such epistemic value by considering the information types found in entries, the textual format of diaries, their relationship to the project’s research agenda and usefulness for writing up excavation reports. Ultimately, this analysis is useful for advancing an alternative approach for reflexive recording, which takes better account of previous criteria and is unrestricted to excavation diaries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This investigation was funded by CONACYT. Steve Roskams, Chris Evans, and various participants of the Çatalhöyük Research Project made valuable comments and suggestions at different stages of this research. Thank you all. Also, I am grateful to the editor and peer-reviewers for their useful observations. Finally, I wish to thank Harold Guizar for helping me to improve the readability of this text.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología.