The Information Society, 31:139–159, 2015
Published with license by Taylor & Francis
ISSN: 0197-2243 print / 1087-6537 online
DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2015.998104
Epistemic Objects and Embeddedness: Knowledge
Construction and Narratives in Research Networks
of Practice
Emad Khazraee
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
Susan Gasson
College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
In this article, we explore the meanings of objectual practice
that are revealed by examining embedded information structures
and performativity. We conceptualize a network of practice as a
nexus of interconnected practice, formed around materially
mediated interdependencies across communities of practice.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork of archaeology research,
conducted across multiple research disciplines and communities
of practice, we identify the material components of embedded
information and explicate the processes by which objectual and
social practices shape the adoption of theories across the network,
creating knowledge-in-practice. We conceptualize knowledge
construction as a product of the constant tension between
contextualization and decontextualization (embeddedness and
disembeddedness). Our findings demonstrate the mechanisms by
which exploratory interactions with the information embedded in
things (research objects) produce breakdowns that reveal
inconsistencies within current theories.
Keywords archaeology, embeddedness, epistemic object, narrative,
network of practice
It is often said that history reflects accounts written by
the winners of conflicts, of disputes, and of power strug-
gles. The history of academic endeavors also produces
winners and losers. Both history and the related field of
Ó Emad Khazraee and Susan Gasson
Received 15 June 2013; accepted 15 July 2014.
Address correspondence to Emad Khazraee, Annenberg School
for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 202 S. 36th Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. E-mail: emad@asc.upenn.edu
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be
found online at www.tandfonline.com/utis.
139
archaeology are concerned with narratives of cultural
interpretation, exploring interaction effects between dif-
ferent levels of analysis. In the field of history, there is a
constant struggle between those scholars employing sci-
entific, deductive methods to provide “putative causal
explanations” and those attempting a systemic analysis
to explore generic explanations (White 1973). Research-
ers in the field of archaeology unearth material artifacts
and remains, relating these to the theories that explain
social relations and cultures—often from a time too dis-
tant for oral traditions to have survived. Those research-
ers inhabit diverse networks of social interaction, within
which information, knowledge, and theory may all be
seen as socially constructed. Discovery becomes a matter
of interpretation, negotiating the significance of material
finds in the context of a plethora of socially constructed
theoretical narratives that result from interactions with
other researchers and the products of their research: data,
papers, theories, and representations of “evidence” (that
which is seen). The values, categorization schemes, and
data structures that make research knowledge meaningful
are embedded within the frameworks for action that gov-
ern specific communities of practice. For research find-
ings to be generally accepted, they must be
decontextualized, standardized, and formalized, and then
be embedded in frameworks for action that transcend
local practices and ideological values (Engestr€ om,
Engestr€om, and Karkkainen 1995; Star 1995).
In this article, we conceptualize a network of practice
(NoP) as a nexus of interconnected practice, formed
around materially mediated interdependencies across
communities of practice (CoP). We explore information
embeddedness in archaeological research collaborations
140 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
around epistemic objects that present unfolding material
instantiations of emergent knowledge (Knorr Cetina
1999). We argue that Bruner’s (1986; 1990) two modes
of knowing—the alternating processes of narrative con-
struction and logico-scientific reasoning—can be viewed
as the product of an ongoing tension between informa-
tion embeddedness and disembeddedness in the hetero-
geneous assemblages that surround epistemic objects.
We argue that the process of knowledge construction
results from this tension—transforming information that
is embedded within the local web of social, cultural, and
technical associations into externalized narratives and
accepted frameworks for action that span a wider
research network of practice. Presenting findings from a
longitudinal, ethnographic study of multidomain and
multidisciplinary research practice, we explore the con-
ditions under which embedded information provides the
conditions for stabilized forms of knowledge to become
embedded in practice, and thus enacted across the wider
research NoP. Finally, we propose a multilevel concep-
tual framework that explains the mechanisms by which
information about research knowledge is embedded in
research objects, performatively enrolls network support
across boundaries, and is translated by means of objec-
tual practice over time to create new theories and techni-
cal objects across a research NoP.
WAYS OF KNOWING IN NETWORKS
OF PRACTICE
Knowledge cannot be separated from the social con-
text of practice, as various genres of information meet
or shape the norms of behavior in organizational
groups, communities, or institutions or organizations
(Orlikowski and Yates 1994). But “knowledge” is sit-
uated in our simultaneous membership of multiple
communities of practice (Wenger 1998). What we
know from becoming a member of a CoP precedes
what we know as individuals working in a scientific
laboratory or institution (Latour and Woolgar 1986;
Lave 1991). While recent developments in social epis-
temology emphasize that only groups or communities
qualify for construction and production of knowledge,
this does not mean that individuals do not have any
logical or empirical understanding per se, but rather
that consensus is achieved and recorded by communi-
ties. We can therefore view knowledge-generating
agents as communities and subcommunities, rather
than individuals (Goldman 2010). When Carlile
describes knowledge as “localized, embedded and
invested in practice” (Carlile 2002, 442), he is refer-
ring to the practice of the community, not its individ-
ual members.
This leads to a tension between local and global
knowledge. Wenger argues that “a community of prac-
tice acts as a locally negotiated regime of competence”
(Wenger 1998, 137). But knowing, in the form of compe-
tent professional participation, is not limited to a single
local community. It involves interactions between local
and global communities that interact across broader net-
works of practice (Brown and Duguid 2001). These
extended practice networks are described in terms of
loosely affiliated webs of epistemic inquiry:
We include under the rubric academic disciplines, which . . .
join departments from universities around the world to make up
groups whose members, to the extent that they have common prac-
tices, are able to read and understand one another’s work. Disci-
plinary networks of practice cut across heterogeneous
organizations, including, for example, universities, think tanks, or
research labs. . . . similar practitioners, by virtue of their practice,
are able to share professional knowledge through conferences,
workshops, newsletters, listserves, Web pages and the like. . . . dif-
ferent networks of practice cut horizontally across vertically inte-
grated organizations and extend far beyond the boundaries of the
latter. (Brown and Duguid 2001, 206)
We argue that the conceptual underpinnings of a net-
work of practice have not been sufficiently developed
to explain situated practice boundaries in large research
networks. While practice provides a common substrate,
relationships between members of an NoP are signifi-
cantly looser than relationships within a CoP
(Brown and Duguid 2001). A community of practice is
organized around a local framework for action, while a
network of practice reflects the diversity of interdisci-
plinary boundaries between communities. For example,
while interpretivist and positivist researchers acknowl-
edge and draw on each other’s work, notions of validity
and definitions of rigor in practice are very different
across members of the two paradigmatic communities.
Global research evaluation criteria emerge as a negoti-
ated consensus that reflects notions of validity across
communities. We therefore argue that a network of
practice provides the nexus of interconnected practice
formed around linked interdependencies across
communities of practice.
Modernity entails an ongoing tension between con-
textualization and formalization. Heller (1988) empha-
sizes, “The simultaneous process of universalization,
particularization, and individualization is equivalent
to the appearance of contingency as the condition of
the modern world” (546). Bruner distinguishes
between two modes of knowing that relate to contex-
tualization and formalization: the narrative mode and
the logico-scientific mode (Bruner 1986; 1990). Nar-
ratives have an epistemic quality that tends to be
overlooked because of the focus on objectivity in
research, which privileges logico-scientific forms of
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
knowledge (Bruner 1991). But narrative modes of
knowing provide a situational awareness—an under-
standing of context—that adds meaning to logico-sci-
entific accounts (Bruner 1986; 1990). Narratives
enable researchers to make sense of their work,
exploring frameworks for action within an imagined
context that interprets their implications for practice
(Waugh 2004). Narratives thus provide both a mode
of inquiry—a way to explore the meaning of events
through rhetoric—and a partisan mechanism for com-
municating a particular interpretation of the world
(Bruner 1991). The co-production of theoretical narra-
tives provides the primary means by which research-
ers enact a collective ideology of research practice,
creating generic structures of interpretation that span
community boundaries to mobilize the wider network.
These are subjected to wider analysis as they are
debated across networks of practice, within a research
field. As narratives are explored across distributed
laboratories and groups, they are refined to acquire an
independent existence that reifies accepted knowledge
across a research project, discipline, or field.
To understand how scientific knowledge comes into
being in a research NoP, we need to study the heteroge-
neous network of actors, practices, norms, techniques and
tools that is responsible for the production of knowledge
(Latour 2005; Law 2004). Individuals cannot be seen sim-
ply as rational actors, with their actions and decisions dic-
tated only by local circumstances. The actions and
decisions of individuals are filtered through, and situated
within, a wider system of social relationships that spans
organizational and disciplinary networks (Granovetter
1985). In the next section, we explore how multiple com-
munities of practice combine into a research network of
practice in the field of archaeology. We follow that with
an exploration of how the notion of “embeddedness”
helps us to understand the processes through which infor-
mation is acquired and processed within networks of prac-
tice, to result in accepted forms of knowledge.
ARCHAEOLOGY NETWORKS OF PRACTICE
This section explores our vision of a network of prac-
tice within the field of archaeology. Individual
researchers work within project-based or organiza-
tional groups that span different disciplines. These
groups constitute a community of practice, a collec-
tivity collaborating around common practices, shared
cultural norms, and values (Wenger 1998). A typical
research group may combine generalist archaeologists
and specialists in disciplines such as the analysis of
plant remains (archaeobotanists), the analysis of
human or animal remains (osteologists and
141
zooarchaeologists), or the analysis of various materi-
als such as ceramics or stone (lithics), and so on. Spe-
cialists collaborate with other members of their
discipline in local and virtual laboratories that span
research groups to form a disciplinary community of
practice focused on analyzing found objects.
Archaeological networks of practice have both geo-
graphical and chronological dimensions. Any archaeo-
logical fieldwork project is carried out within a
bounded geographical location (typically a site or
region) and spans one or more chronological phases
(e.g., Neolithic cultures). Archaeological excavations
are constrained by these two dimensions. Typically,
archaeological research is organized across multiple
teams drawn from different specialist disciplines
(archaeobotanists, zooarchaeologists, etc.), situated at
one dig site. Therefore, in addition to geography and
chronology, domain specialisms add another dimen-
sion to the situated practice of archaeology (Figure 1).
The interdisciplinary project group collaborates with
members of other projects that focus on similar peri-
ods or sites (e.g., Neolithic cultures). Domain special-
ists such as archaeobotanists frequently move between
projects and interact with members of similar projects
within the same geographical region or chronological
period at conferences and workshops.
This form of matrix organization is typical in many
research fields. It is configured along dimensions that
span different projects, organizations, and disciplines.
This setting can be viewed as a three-dimensional struc-
ture that spans the three dimensions of geography, chro-
nology, and discipline—each of which represents
variations in practice domains. These dimensions define
the situated practice of archaeology. The identity of an
archaeology practitioner is defined at the intersection of
these dimensions (e.g., an archaeobotanist working on
Neolithic cultures in central Turkey). This matrix organi-
zation provides three configurations of practice, shown
in Figure 1.
Individuals from each dimension come together in
academic collaborations, to work around a set of com-
mon information resources and artifacts, across the
matrix organization. We therefore conceptualize a net-
work of practice as the nexus of materially mediated
practice formed around linked interdependencies
across communities of practice. We discovered three
distinct NoP configurations in our study. The first con-
figuration is presented by the multiple organizational
CoPs that form around a specific research project, for
example, the analysis of remains from a specific
archaeological site (research projects and excavation
campaigns, which last for a few seasons) or research
projects based in a museum or university, which con-
sist of a few labs or specialist teams. Usually
142 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON

FIG. 1. Archaeology networks of practice span research projects, organizations, and disciplines. Three defining dimensions
(geography, chronology, and discipline) are presented as three axes.

membership in these communities is formed based on
mutual engagement over a long period of time (co-par-
ticipation for a few years). This co-participation is usu-
ally context specific and case based.
The second configuration spans multiple organiza-
tional CoPs, as disciplinary specialists who focus on find-
ings from the same region or historical period collaborate
to achieve a broader picture of the region or historical
period; for example, a specialist group of archaeobotan-
ists might collaborate for interpretation of botanical find-
ings from settlements in the Near East, or a specialist
group of zooarchaeologists might collaborate for inter-
pretation of deviant categories of animal bones from the
Neolithic period. At this level, practitioners share some
level of contextual knowledge. For example, they share
knowledge about the native species of a region or the
major developments in the historical timeline of the
region. We call this second configuration the disciplinary
community of practice (Figure 2 illustrates the
relationship between the first and second configurations
of practice).
While relationships among subcommunities in proj-
ect-based CoPs are complementary around a specific site
(the vertical dimension of Figure 2), subcommunities
form within disciplinary CoPs around shared analytical
practice and disciplinary knowledge (this is the horizon-
tal dimension shown in Figure 2). As Wenger observes,
“Practice remains local in terms of engagement”
(Wenger 1998, 234). What is global is the network of
relationships among localities, which may be conceptual-
ized as a web or a constellation of CoPs. This web forms
a third configuration—people who may share little in the
way of context collaborate indirectly across the network
to define generic theories or to develop generic analysis
methods across geographical regions and historical peri-
ods. The products of their collaborations are propagated
through conferences and publications, resulting in
accepted theories, methods, and paradigms that have
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
FIG. 2. First and second configurations of practice: organizational community of practice and disciplinary community of
practice.
been tested across multiple projects, domains, and disci-
plines. Each of the three configurations constitutes a
placeless organization (Nardi 2007), whose members
collaborate around (i) distributed data sets, (ii) analytical
methods and instruments, and (iii) emergent sociocul-
tural narratives.
EMBEDDEDNESS IN OBJECTUAL PRACTICE
Archaeology researchers spend their time exploring
materially focused narratives. They debate post hoc
interpretations of “heterogeneous assemblages of
things—objects such as tools, but also institutions
(the guild of metalworkers), places, humans, social
groups, rules, metaphors, rituals, and abstractions”
(Hodder 2012, 44). Excavation destroys the spatial
and inferred temporal context on which understanding
of the past depends. The archaeological context of
material remains is recorded in a variety of material
forms (field books, drawings, spreadsheets, databases,
etc.). Then these records are used to reconstruct the
material context in a narrative form. The archaeolog-
ical process can therefore be viewed as a series of
translations—acts aimed at transforming surviving
traces, both material and relational, into “knowledge”
about the past.
143
The findings of archaeologists are embedded in multi-
ple communities of practice and associations across com-
munities: a research project at a dig, interactions with
colleagues in a university department, a community of
specialists in an area such as zooarchaeology, a commu-
nity of archaeologists working on a specific region or a
specific historical period. Their work needs to transcend
these local communities, to form theories and models
explaining the development of human societies that can
be adopted across the wider network of research practice
to which these communities belong. Narrative construc-
tion provides the medium for collective sensemaking
around epistemic objects—unfolding material instantia-
tions of emergent knowledge, such as categorization
schemes or visual representations of relations between
components of a theory (Knorr Cetina 1999; Miettinen
and Virkkunen 2005).
The paradox of embeddedness, the way in which spe-
cific outcomes result from the tension between local
arrangements and wider societal or network structures, is
central to the discussion of modernity. In contrast to utili-
tarianism, which considers actors as atomized rational
decision makers maximizing their own utilities, the
notion of embeddedness in sociology suggests that actors
are located within a complex web of relational, institu-
tional, and cultural contexts. Thus, embeddedness
explains social action: The forms of economy found in
144 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
premodern societies reflect the kinship and other social
ties underpinning those societies. Modernity is defined
by increased individualism and release from traditional
ties and bonds. The construction of modern institutions
and increased individualism disembeds interpersonal
relations and so results in the unstable equilibrium of
modern society (Polanyi 1971). Weber identifies two
major types of social interaction as source of the varia-
tions in political and social economies: a common sense
of membership (community), and a shared interest
among actors (association) (Weber 1968). More recently,
the concept of embeddedness has been used to explain
the dichotomy between rational and postmodern
approaches to the interpretation of economic action, as
situated within social relations that span firms to unite
communities of shared interest (Granovetter 1985). In
this article, we develop the concept of embeddedness, to
deal with the situatedness of information and knowledge
within a web of sociomaterial practice that spans both
local and global interpretation structures.
Increasingly, we see a move towards the
“objectualization” of social relations, as objects progres-
sively displace persons as relationship partners in distrib-
uted organizations (Knorr Cetina 2001). The term
materiality may be used to define properties of objects
that transcend any specific social context, while socioma-
teriality defines the “collective spaces” in which people
come into contact with material objects—the combina-
tion of practice and its material objects (Leonardi 2012).
Thus, while a piece of “technology” may be viewed in
terms of its constituent components or material form,
that form cannot be appreciated without understanding
its sociomaterial role—its function within the heteroge-
neous assembly of people, practices, embedded norms
and conventions, and genres of information that give it
meaning (Kallinikos 2012). Material objects can be
viewed as embedding structures of interpretation, which
allow their users to order and understand the external
world (Knorr Cetina 1999), and performative scripts,
which structure and direct practice around specific socio-
cultural and contextually situated narratives (Akrich
1992; Barad 2003). We deal with each of these forms of
embeddedness in turn.
Research communities are enacted around structures
of interpretation (Latour and Woolgar 1986). The joint
construction of epistemic objects—partly formed and ill-
defined material representations that evolve with
researchers’ understanding—allows the exploration of
theories and ideas across a scientific network of practice
(Knorr Cetina 1999). Rheinberger distinguishes between
“epistemic things”—material objects, structures, pro-
cesses or representations that constitute an object of
inquiry—and “technical objects”—the arrangement of
experimental conditions, institutionalized practices, and
accumulated skills through which the objects of investi-
gation “articulate themselves in a wider field of episte-
mic practices and material cultures, including
instruments, inscription devices, and the floating theo-
rems or boundary concepts attached to them” (Rhein-
berger 1997, 29). The difference between epistemic
things and technical objects or arrangements is functional
rather than structural. Both are part of a larger system of
interpretation—and both tend to be fluid in nature while
the system is in flux (Rheinberger 1997). These objects
of inquiry are embedded in “the local, material, and prac-
tical networks that accompany [them] through the whole
duration of their lives” (Latour 2000, 250).
The role of epistemic objects in constructing and prop-
agating narratives that enact an alternative worldview is
critical to scientific progress (Knorr Cetina 2001; Mietti-
nen and Virkkunen 2005). As research investigations
proceed, they are underpinned by the emergence of epi-
stemic objects—objects of inquiry that externalize what
is known, for example, in the form of a categorization
schema, a measurement device, or a theoretical narrative.
Because these externalizations are characterized by a
lack in completeness of being, they expose gaps in the
researcher’s knowledge that generate questions and lead
to the evolution of both the epistemic object and the
researcher’s knowledge (Knorr Cetina 1999; 2001). Nar-
ratives provide a deep form of epistemic object. Research
knowledge is presented in a variety of forms as in talks,
as representations of reality (models) in conference pre-
sentations or in academic papers, or manifested as skills
that are enacted through the practices of researchers and
scientists (Law 1992). Narratives surface implicit scripts
for action and use that make theories and technical
objects powerful (Bruner 1991). An epistemic object
embeds a story that enlists the support of other research-
ers, engages them in building upon the narrative or dis-
puting it, and results in some form of collaborative
understanding. The meaning of epistemic objects is
therefore clarified through successive interactions
between research domains, and in localized use.
Technical objects, on the other hand, result from pro-
cesses of translation as epistemic objects are standard-
ized into forms and procedures that can span community
boundaries (Fujimura 1992). Complex, localized frame-
works for action must be simplified and routinized in
order to support shared interpretations of work at the
boundary between CoPs (Engestr€om et al. 1995). Their
use becomes routinized and their form becomes stabi-
lized—at which point, no one questions the interpreta-
tions of the world that these objects embed (Callon
1991). Thus technical objects embed performative
scripts, in which the users of the technology perform
their work according to narrative patterns of use that are
based on its original context. These patterns enact a
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
specific framework for action, which constrains the use
of these technologies in contexts employing alternative
frameworks. Thus, for example, sealed lighting kits are
difficult to use in Africa, where they need to be reconfig-
ured for local conditions and where end users lack the
accessible network of suppliers and spare parts that was
assumed in their design (Akrich 1992).
Over time, the information structures embedded
within technical objects acquire a paradigmatic status,
incorporating exemplars that define not only how work is
done, but narrative patterns that guide how the goals of
work should be understood (MacKenzie and Wajcman
1999; Manovich 1999). For example, a database embeds
the narrative patterns of work and the categorization
scheme in use in its originating community of practice.
Collaborating researchers coming from a different con-
text will filter their view of that research data—its mean-
ing for their work—through the lens of the patterns of
use and categorization schema of the original research-
ers. As more researchers, from different organizational
groups, employ the research database, its structures are
integrated into global interpretations of the data. Episte-
mic objects thus evolve into “black-boxed” technical
objects, as their embedded structures of interpretation
and the patterns of use enacted through their performa-
tive scripts become hidden from view through successive
processes of abstraction and generalization (Callon
1991; Latour 2005). Their performativity is made invisi-
ble through routinization, and their meanings are made
generic through translation into normative research
frameworks (Fujimura 1992).
The processes of knowledge construction within mod-
ern research enterprises embed epistemic and technical
objects into a broader field of material culture and prac-
tice (Rheinberger 1997; 2000). In such embeddedness,
“Each element is to be defined by its associations and is
an event created at the occasion of each of those
associations” (Latour 2000, 260). Therefore, those
objects are only defined in the context of their embedded-
ness within the “webs of cultural significance, material
practices, and theoretical derivations” (Daston 2000, 13).
The conceptual lens of embeddedness provides a
framework with which we may understand the epistemic
practices of research—and how these transcend institu-
tional and contextual associations. We noted that interac-
tions between human agents are increasingly mediated
by objectual practice. This affects the trajectories and
products of social interactions, to the extent that knowl-
edge creation mechanism is based on the interplay
between localized structures of interpretation (informa-
tion) embedded in epistemic objects and the global per-
formative scripts that endow technical objects with their
paradigmatic status. We see this interplay as central to
explaining the paradox of embeddedness, as individual
145
researchers navigate the generic forms of knowledge that
are embedded within the sociomaterial web of local
interpretation structures and generic, routinized frame-
works for action that constitute a research network of
practice. Tracing the history of epistemic and technical
objects through the whole duration of their lives reveals
the processes of embeddedness in the context of knowl-
edge practices.
RESEARCH SITES AND METHOD
The purpose of our exploratory study was to develop a
systematic understanding of how knowledge is created
and becomes embedded in objectual practice. We
employed three levels of analysis, as summarized in
Table 1. We followed a theoretical sampling strategy
that was informed by the tenets of Grounded Theory
(Glaser 1978; Glaser and Strauss 1967). Our study was
performed in three stages, with fresh data collection and
analysis guided by the emergence of key theoretical
insights. Stage 1 analyzed observations of practices and
interviews with archaeologists in a research university,
to understand how individuals, project group CoPs, ana-
lytical disciplinary “laboratories,” and networks of prac-
tice operate in archaeological research. Stage 2
employed participant observation of archaeologists
working on a global archaeology project, starting with
the summer dig, followed up with periodic interviews
with members of the project who work on various narra-
tive themes. Stage 3 combined longitudinal ethnographic
interviews and observations of archaeologists with a co-
citation analysis of thematic narratives, to further explore
aspects of embeddedness from Stage 2.
We employed a processual ethnography approach to
data collection and analysis, analyzing social processes
both synchronically and diachronically, to explore nar-
rative traces over time (Rapport 2000). Traditional eth-
nographies account for the “foreground preoccupation”
of actors involved in a local context without regard for
the “background conditions” informing their situation
(Moore 1987). But ethnographic accounts provided by
individuals can be viewed at one and the same time as
local phenomena and also as the consequences of a
larger, external context of action. Processual ethnogra-
phies focus on distinct social units or isolatable human
groups within their wider cultural context, instead of
generalizing small-scale findings to the entire culture
(Werner and Schoepfle 1987). We extended the regular
form of processual ethnography by including nonhuman
actants as participants in the social processes that we
traced. We analyzed trajectories of knowledge evolu-
tion across actor-networks that spanned the three
“configurations” shown in Figure 1, to follow the
146
Level of analysis
1: Individual, objectual
practice
2: Collaborative sensemaking
practice
3: Processes of network
knowledge emergence
Multilevel framework for data analysis
Sample populations
Individual specialist
archaeologists working in
archaeology and
anthropology departments
at U.S. universities and
engaged in major global
(cross-institutional)
projects.
Interactions between
individuals working in
project groups
or collaborating in virtual,
disciplinary laboratories.
Longitudinal processes of
thematic adoption
across research
communities and
networks.
Table 1
Data collection locales
Repeated interviews with
individuals across groups
and projects to explore
emergent themes;
interactive hermeneutic
exploration of analytic
objects-in-practice: texts,
representations, and
categorization scheme.
Observations of situated
practice at dig site;
interactive hermeneutic
exploration of objects-in-
practice; ethnographic
interviews to explore
collaborative practices and
networks.
Publications and texts
relating to key themes in
the archaeology research
projects studied.
Analytical lens
Hermeneutic analysis to
identify common elements
of practice and to explore
the role of various types of
material object in
individual, analytical
practice.
Actor-network analysis to
identify interactions
between individuals in
various network roles and
objects relevant to shared
or collaborative practice.
Co-citation analysis, to
explore emergent
processes of theoretical
narratives across networks
of practice.
Processual ethnography
interest
Local context of situated
practice in developing
theoretical narratives and
epistemic objects that
embed specific scheme for
their interpretation.
Generic context of
community of practice and
boundary-spanning groups
in developing theoretical
narratives around a shared
social world.
Role of competing social
worlds and their embedded
technical objects in
theoretical narrative
emergence and acceptance.
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
sociotechnical processes of knowledge diffusion across
archaeology networks of practice. We validated emerg-
ing concepts through successive interviews with our
subjects, and exploring both our findings and our inter-
pretations of objectual performativity to ensure that
they were credible in the context of the practice that we
studied (Lincoln and Guba 2000).
RESEARCH FINDINGS
We scrutinize how sociotechnical processes constantly
shape knowledge practices in archaeology (synchro-
nously—at a given time) and we trace the vapor trails
of sociotechnical processes that form widely accepted
narratives in archaeology (diachronically—over time).
The latter are indicated by common/shared trajectories
of epistemic object development across the three NoP
dimensions shown in Figure 1. We have chosen to
employ the narrative power of a case study based on the
work of one research specialist, which provides an illus-
tration of how embedded knowledge and social practi-
ces result in various outcomes in different research
network contexts. This case study was selected from an
ethnographic analysis much wider than can be pre-
sented in a single academic paper. It is representative of
our findings with respect to knowledge and practice
embeddedness across the archaeology networks of prac-
tice that we encountered.
Background to Case Study: Exploring the Emergence
of Dung Use as Fuel in Archaeobotany
Archaeobotany is one of the specialties in an archaeolog-
ical practice that focuses on the understanding the rela-
tionship between people and plants and the context of
their interrelationship in the past through the study of
botanical remains retrieved in the course of archaeolog-
ical projects. Archaeobotany helps us to understand cer-
tain aspects of society and environment in the past such
as vegetation, land use practices, human impact on the
landscape, food and diet, trade patterns and even symbol-
ism (Miller 1997). Retrieved materials over a wide range
are considered as potential evidence, such as microbotan-
ical remains (pollen and phytolith), macrobotanical
remains (seeds/grains, leaves, and charcoal), text, and
images and objects shaped after plants. In this section,
we analyze the development of the field of archaeobo-
tany and the emergence of macrobotanical remains as
epistemic objects of practice.
One of the main ways that seeds are preserved and
incorporated in the archaeological record is through char-
ring. There are different processes of charring and each
of them entails different interpretations. We trace the
147
process by which a theory, the inclusion of charred seeds
in the archaeological assemblage through the intentional
burning of dung as fuel, is introduced to a research net-
work of practice and developed through network interac-
tions. We then explore the consequences of this
discovery in the construction of archaeological narra-
tives. Our analysis indicated five episodes of the devel-
opment of relevant theory over time:
The first episode presents the historical context of our sub-
ject researcher’s work, to place it in the larger network of
research practice into which it was introduced. This epi-
sode deals with the introduction of botanical remains as
an epistemic object in the field of archaeology, as a way
to answer the questions raised by an important cultural
narrative of the time.
The second episode explores the process of complexifica-
tion of botanical analysis resulting in the development of
systematic sampling methods to address the concerns of
the new wave of processual archaeology.
The third episode follows the emergence of theories about
the formation processes of botanical remains and their
consequences for the interpretation of remains.
The fourth and fifth episodes cover a period of 30 years
after introduction of the new theory (that the composi-
tion of archaeological charred seed assemblages
could be explained by the intentional burning of dung
as fuel) and its diffusion under different regimes of
embeddedness.
We discuss how, during each episode, the interpreta-
tions of information retrieved from botanical remains
were embedded within a web of sociocultural associa-
tions that related to the contemporary network of prac-
tice. Moreover, we discuss how the information
affordances of botanical remains as an epistemic object
have been transformed over time.
Episode 1: Establishing Archaeobotany—Emergence
of Botanical Remains as Epistemic Object
The systematic sampling of botanical remains can be
associated with developments in the field of archaeology
that started in the 1930s. Gordon Childe, a Marxist
archaeologist, was interested in societal revolutions in
human communities. Childe’s exploration of the Neo-
lithic Revolution, when hunter-gatherers started settling
in farming communities, established the origin of agri-
culture as a key research area of interest. His key thesis
was that desiccation of the environment at the end of the
Pleistocene period led to a clustering of people and ani-
mals around desert oases, leading to the development of
agriculture and the domestication of animals (Childe
148 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
1936). Childe’s theories inspired a young archaeologist,
Robert Braidwood, who noticed a gap between the last
mobile Paleolithic hunter-gatherers and the first appear-
ance of the earliest agropastoral villages in the chrono-
logical chart he created from the evidence he found in
the course of his work on Neolithic sites. Braidwood’s
exploration of the shift from hunter-gatherers to an agri-
cultural society in Near Eastern civilizations found little
evidence for desiccation. Instead, Braidwood suggested
that the variety of plants and animals found in the “hilly
flanks” of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, coupled
with ideal growing conditions, led to the development of
agriculture and the domestication of animals. Braidwood,
at the Oriental Institute of University of Chicago, started
to collaborate with a group of natural scientists in search
of evidence for the “speculative writings” of Childe
(Watson 2006). Braidwood recognized that he needed
direct botanical evidence to support his theory about ori-
gin of agriculture. To this end, he collaborated with Hans
Helbaek, a Danish botanist, who developed methods to
study ancient agriculture in early period Iraqi villages
(Braidwood et al. 1960). At around the same time,
archaeologists studying the origin of agriculture in the
Americas also pursued approaches that emphasized
botanical remains (Pearsall 1989).
The early stages of archaeobotanical research resulted
in some fascinating debates around cereal grain produc-
tion—for example, that so little grain was recovered
from excavations that it must have been turned into beer,
rather than solid food (Braidwood et al. 1953). Braid-
wood wrote the first proposal ever received and awarded
by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for archaeo-
logical fieldwork in the Near East. The proposal included
a group of natural scientists (botanist, zoologist, geolo-
gist, and radiocarbon expert). Braidwood’s reliance on
interdisciplinary research for archaeological inquiry
prompted the development of a series of specialisms in
archaeology, including archaeobotany. Since the 1960s,
the practice of archaeobotany has become a standard part
of archaeological projects around the world (Watson
2006).
This episode shows how botanical plant remains
provided a new epistemic object in archaeological
research. Narratives concerned with the emergent
epistemology of archaeobotany generated new
research questions that guided future directions in the
field of archaeology: agricultural practices, sources of
food, human diet, and paleoeconomy. The material
aspects of botanical remains suggested research ques-
tions that reflected the larger cultural narrative of the
era—an interest in human social development that
was salient to the cultural revolutions taking place in
the 1960s. However, ontologically, aspects of the new
epistemic object were still unfolding.
Episode 2: Development of Systematic Flotation
Processes and the Flotation Machine
In the 1960s, most of the parts of the procedures for
retrieving plant remains were carried out manually in
the lab on soil samples sent from the field (Pearsall
1989). These could deal with only a small amount of
botanical evidence at one time, which restricted the
ability of archaeobotanists to analyze remains from
large excavations. In America, the validity of archaeo-
botany as a subdiscipline was established across the
field of archaeology with the development of a system-
atic flotation field procedure by Stuart Struever, during
his work in the Illinois Valley in the 1960s. Struever, a
student of Lewis Binford (the pioneer of processual1
archaeology at the University of Chicago), was seeking
to develop objective, scientific methods for archaeol-
ogy. This led him to take advantage of his social net-
work for suggestions on how to isolate seed remains in
the field. Following the advice of the botanist Hugh Cut-
ler, he devised a simple manual technique to float seeds
and carbonized material away from stones and bone in
soil samples, producing consistent results in the field
(Struever 1968). This new development resulted from
information that was embedded both in Streuver’s
research community and in his social network of associ-
ation (Weber 1968). Struever, who worked in the U.S.
Midwest, was a member of a community (University of
Chicago) that recognized the value of botanical
remains, thanks to the influence of Braidwood, whose
research was in western Asia. He also shared the interest
of processualist archaeologists for achieving systemic
objectivity. Thus, the development of the flotation tech-
nique resulted from a confluence of interconnected
practice and interests across disciplines, communities,
geographical regions, and research projects.
The flotation process provided an important technical
instrument that allowed archaeobotanists to establish the
reliability of their findings. It became apparent that the
standard method of seed analysis used by Braidwood and
others (sieving soil through a mesh screen and processing
part of excavated soil samples in the lab) had failed to
discover the majority of botanical remains. The develop-
ment of on-site flotation procedures created a new episte-
mic basis for the field, as large quantities of botanical
remains were now discovered in the archaeological
record:
Our preliminary report on the 1961 season states confidently
that “plant remains were scarce at Ali Kosh.” Nothing could be fur-
ther from the truth. The mound is filled with seeds from top to bot-
tom. All that was “scarce” in 1961 was our ability to find them and
when we added the ’’flotation’’ technique (Struever 1965) in 1963
we recovered a stratified series of samples totaling 40,000 seeds.
(Hole, Flannery, and Neely 1969, 24)
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
The new development unfolded another dimension of
the botanical remains as epistemic objects. Recovered
seeds turned into a very important source of information,
which enabled archaeologists to answer new questions
and construct richer narratives about social practices of
ancient societies. Publication of Struever’s work in 1968
turned flotation into an important part of archaeological
recording process. This stimulated a demand for methods
for processing larger soil samples, in order to retrieve the
information embedded within botanical remains that
archaeobotanists now recognized was there. However,
the cumbersome manual flotation process still restricted
the amount of material that could be processed at the
site. Struever had access to flowing water in a river near
the archaeological site, but using manual flotation meth-
ods was challenging in the absence of flowing water. The
development of a flotation machine provided a techno-
logical response to that problem.
Different groups developed flotation machines in
order to process larger samples of soil, providing an envi-
ronment containing swirling water to separate relatively
light seed materials from the heavier soil that hid these
from view. The first flotation machine was used in 1969
at Can Hasan, in Turkey, by an Englishman, David
French (1971).2 This standardized flotation techniques
provided a systematic process of retrieval that produced
reliable botanical evidence from archaeological dig sites.
By the late 1970s, the flotation chamber had become a
technical object in practice, shaping the production of
future evidence around a framework for action that did
not differentiate between various origins of botanical evi-
dence. The flotation chamber thus standardized archaeo-
botanical practice around an undifferentiated analysis of
seed remains, while it was itself refined during use to
reinforce that standardization.
Episode 3: Emergence of Taphonomy as Societal
Interests Shift
In the late 1960s America started focusing on how to
feed the world’s growing population. American society’s
receptiveness to cultural narratives around population
growth was demonstrated by the popularity of Ehrlich’s
(1968) bestselling book The Population Bomb (Desroch-
ers and Hoffbauer 2009). Archaeologists turned to the
past to understand how ancient civilizations had dealt
with population growth and food supply. The research
foci of the archaeology NoP expanded beyond the role of
agriculture in the origins of human social development
to a broader concern with food production.
This development coincided with the emergence of
the scientific field of taphonomy, which studies how the
parts or products of organisms are transformed from their
149
living state to assemblages of archaeological remains
(Behrensmeyer, Kidwell, and Gastaldo 2000). Accep-
tance of taphonomy by archaeology can be associated
with the rise of processual archaeology in the late
1960s–1970s. This rise was marshaled by Binford, who
was looking for scientific methods to employ in the inter-
pretation of archaeological evidence (Watson 2009).
Taphonomy became significant across the wider NoP, as
archaeobotanists explored what evidence the condition
and composition of plant and seed remains provided for
competing narratives that explained how people must
have lived at a settlement site (Pearsall 1989).
Plant remains can represent a variety of cultural and
natural processes, as they are incorporated into the
archaeological assemblage of evidence. Plant remains
found in the walls of ancient buildings might indicate
that their builders incorporated straw into mud bricks, to
stabilize construction. Plant remains found in human
waste pits might indicate that specific plants provided a
primary source of food, implying local agriculture. Most
archaeological plant remains are wood preserved through
charring. Wood remains found in fire pits were consid-
ered evidence of fuel use, but the charring of seeds was
left unexplained. In the late 1970s archaeobotany shifted
focus to understanding the ancient processes by which
plant remains arrived and the later processes by which
they were preserved at a settlement site. The unfolding
ontological dimensions of the epistemic objects, the
taphonomic aspects of plant remains, revealed broader
systemic relationships between humans, plants, and the
environment. It was generally accepted that seeds could
be brought to site through three mechanisms: natural pro-
cesses (prehistoric seed rain), cultural processes (crop
processing), or incidental inclusion (Minnis 1981). Crop-
processing models dominated the field, as archaeobotan-
ists inferred specific processes associated with food pro-
duction from the relative quantities and state of grains,
chaff, and weeds within the archaeobotanical assemblage
(Hillman 1973). By comparing the archaeobotanical
record across sites, they could associate similar practices
with multiple sites.
Episode 4: Failure to Align Emerging Theoretical
Narrative With Network Interests
The establishment of a reliable archaeobotanical record
resulted in the creation of a variety of epistemic objects
and theoretical narratives for studying plant remains.
Chance and accidental burning of food or other plant
parts were seen as the primary mechanisms that delivered
charred seeds across time for the archaeological record
(Minnis 1981). In Britain, archaeologists working in
other regions, such as Eurasia or Africa, focused on what
150 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
one of our informants called their “crop processing lens,”
which restricted their interpretations to established
narratives.
But these explanations did not fit well with the distri-
bution and composition of seeds in the emerging evi-
dence from Malyan, a Bronze Age settlement in Iran.
Malyan was not an early agriculture site; the low propor-
tion of domesticated plants compared to wild plants was
therefore surprising. Disproportionate ratios of charred
seeds to wood charcoal, and disproportionate ratios of
wheat to barley, were uncovered across the site in two
time periods (represented in separate, stratified levels of
soil). At the time, three competing theoretical narratives
existed around the mechanisms that might have resulted
in the charring of seeds at a settlement:
(i) a catastrophic burning of the site (for example, during a
war);
(ii) the accidental burning of plant material, in which extra-
neous seeds fell into an otherwise controlled fire;
(iii) the intentional burning of plant materials for fuel, to
dispose of crop-processing waste, or in rituals (Miller and
Smart 1984).
In search of a compelling narrative, Naomi F. Miller,
an archaeobotanist working at the Malyan site, began to
search for evidence to support one of these theories. Her
eventual narrative resulted from exposure to an ethno-
graphic study at the modern Malyan village, where dung
was burned as fuel. This sensitized her to salient evi-
dence from the ancient site. Miller reflected on this
process:
Because I am so inductive, [and] I had so few seeds from
Malyan and I had a huge amount of wood charcoal, de facto I
became interested in fuel just because that was my dissertation
[material]. That was the material I had to work on and had to figure
out. So, I became interested in vegetation change and human
impact on the landscape, just because of the data. I could not do a
dissertation on seeds because there were too few of them really. . . .
If I had not been to Iran, if somebody had just sent me the seeds,
there is no way that I would have come up with that [idea (dung
use as fuel)], because I am from New York City. What do I know
about dung fuel [laughing]?
As more evidence was uncovered, she began to
develop an archaeological narrative, based on the thesis
that most of the charred seeds come from animal dung
burned as fuel, and the ratio between seeds and wood
charcoal in excavated remains indicated the ratio of dung
fuel use to wood fuel use. She theorized that the changes
in this ratio (seed:wood charcoal) reflected correspond-
ing changes in land use over time, as wood became
scarcer. The distinction between charred seeds resulting
from dung fuel and charred seeds from crop-processing
debris that was burned intentionally or accidentally cre-
ated a new epistemic object:
To give just one example of the importance of context and pres-
ervation for accurate interpretation, we can consider a seeming
inconsistency in the composition of the archaeobotanical assem-
blage at the third millennium B.C. city of Malyan, Iran. In the pres-
ent day, where both wheat and barley can be grown, wheat tends to
be preferred for food because the grain is easier to process. At
ancient Malyan, however, most of the charred grain is barley; the
ratio of charred barley to charred wheat is about thirteen to one. In
contrast, mineralized grains from a human waste deposit had a bar-
ley to wheat ratio of about one to two. This discrepancy was
explained by applying an ethnographic model of plant use, which
suggests that many seeds from ancient sites in the Near East were
inclusions in dung that was burned as fuel. That is, the charred
grains from trash had passed through animals, and those in the
human waste deposit had passed through people! (Miller 1997, 10)
The emerging theory could explain the presence of
seeds at Malyan. It could also be generalized to analo-
gous archaeological situations, which she initially
applied to early civilizations (Bronze and Iron Age) and
then applied to even earlier periods. After defending her
doctoral thesis in the early 1980s, Miller published two
papers that introduced a conceptual narrative that was
built around intentional burning of dung as fuel as a
mechanism for the incorporation of charred seeds into
the archaeological record. One paper (Miller and Smart
1984) focused on the methodological basis for her thesis,
to show how this narrative can change our interpretation
of retrieved plant remains comparing two sites, Malyan
in Iran and a site in North America. The second paper
(Miller 1984) provided a case study to demonstrate how
this method provided evidence for ancient environmental
change and deforestation. But the archaeobotanical
research network was still focused on the dominant
research interest of the day—crop processing models,
influenced by the dominant societal interest in cultural
narratives around themes of overpopulation and food
production. Interdisciplinary research networks were not
yet ready to accept the value of a cultural narrative that
was focused on environmental change and deforestation,
even though Miller had developed a method to produce
convincing evidence for her thesis. The new epistemic
object introduced by her method, to distinguish seeds in
dung fuel from seeds from crop-processing debris burned
intentionally or accidentally, was largely ignored.
Miller’s ability to enroll a critical mass of support
across the archaeology NoP was hindered by her holding
a research position in an academic museum. This meant
that she had no teaching or advising responsibilities by
which she might influence a generation of archaeology
students to explore and diffuse her theory across the net-
work. Leaders in the discipline later commented that
their ideas were limited by the “crop processing lens,”
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
which was focused on the origins of agriculture and food
production:
At lunch [in 1983] . . . [one archaeobotanist] told me that he had
been working with an archaeologist, . . . who has done a Neolithic
site [. . .] but it was a burnt village. They had so much material
because the whole village happened to burn. So, they, like me, had
done a flow chart to try to figure out how do the plants get on to the
site and how do they work their way through the system? Again, it
is in the air, I mean everybody was thinking about this stuff. . . .
They had dung fuel as one of the ways that plants can get on the
site, but they had a burnt village, so they were not trying to explain
fuel. They were thinking, “great–they have this whole agricultural
system!” The model was so complicated—the flow chart—that
they removed it [dung burning as source of seeds]. Well, if I had a
burnt village I might have removed it too, but I did not have a burnt
village. So he even thought of it, but he did not think it was impor-
tant. Again, it was an idea that was in the air. Someone would have
thought of it sooner or later. . . . He has this crop-processing model
that was [influential] for a long time, that was important.
Episode 5: Alignment Between Cultural Narrative
and Network of Practice Interests
While the salient cultural narrative of the time acted
against immediate acceptance, an emergent one on
global warming in the mid-1990s produced an
“environmental turn” in archaeology. As the focus of
wider cultural narratives of the archaeology NoP moved
from overpopulation and food sourcing to human impact
on the environment, members of the wider NoP became
interested in the work of our archaeobotanist. Interest in
deforestation picked up in 1983 (see Figure 5), just after
Miller graduated, but it took 15 years for it to become
salient to society and archaeology:
When I started everybody was interested in food and nobody
cared about the environment very much. They were interested in
food, they were interested in agriculture. I think one of the reasons
it [Miller’s idea] took so long [to be accepted], finally with global
warming, everybody now is interested in environment. . . . I think
what is happening is that the world has caught up with me, you
know, people are still interested in food and agriculture but the
whole question of the environment has become much more of an
issue in the world.
Miller’s work is now considered seminal. The first
issue of Environmental Archaeology in 1996 was a spe-
cial issue on “Fodder: Archaeological, Historical and
Ethnographic Studies.” The focus of this issue was fod-
der, crop processing, and animal husbandry. In 2013 the
same journal published a special issue on
“Bioarchaeological Research on Animal Dung.” The
introduction to 2013 special issue refers to Miller’s 1984
work as a seminal work about the taphonomy of animal
dung and emphasizes, “From the archaeobotanical point
of view, one of the key issues that has been addressed is
151
the taphonomy of animal dung and the extent of its con-
tribution to archaeobotanical assemblages” (Marinova,
Linseele, and K€uhn 2013, 1). Miller’s research is cited
11 times in this issue, demonstrating how innovative
ideas that emerge from the works of individuals and col-
lectives become accepted only when these align with
larger, cultural narratives of interest across the network
of practice.
Retrospective: Tracing the Diffusion and Alignment
of Archaeobotany Cultural Narratives Over Time
We traced the longitudinal pattern of diffusion for this
theoretical narrative using a co-citation analysis. Co-cita-
tion provides a measure of similarity between two docu-
ments, defined as “the frequency with which two
documents are cited together” (Small 1973, 265). Co-
citation patterns are found to agree generally with pat-
terns of direct citation, providing a way to explore the
structure of theory emergence in a field. For example,
network analyses of co-cited papers have been used to
identify scientific specialties. It has been observed that
an innovative idea first appears in a few publications,
which are considered to be the points of departure, and
then diffuse across a domain-specific research network
or networks. We therefore used a co-citation analysis
approach to understand how the methodological contri-
bution of Miller (intentional burning of dung as fuel as a
mechanism for the incorporation of charred seeds into
the archeological record) transcended her local commu-
nities of practice and become accepted across the NoP.
We analyzed the citation data sets provided by Web of
Science (WoS), employing the CiteSpace application for
the analysis of the data and progressive knowledge
domain visualization over time (Chen 2006). This
allowed us to identify temporal patterns associated with
significant contributions to the field, as co-cited docu-
ment clusters represent stages in the reception and diffu-
sion of an idea across the network (Chen 2011).
Figure 3 presents the co-citation clusters and the tem-
poral pattern of reception of the idea of dung use as fuel
based on the two seminal works published by Miller in
1984. We identified the top 50 papers that cited her origi-
nal two papers from 1984. We then analyzed the clusters
to find publications that cited these 50 papers (253
papers). Then we ran our co-citation analysis on the new
data set of 253 papers. The clusters shown are based on a
measure of similarity that allows the analyst to identify
thematic areas. The analysis shows that the works of
Miller started to get acceptance and was co-cited with
works having a similar theme about 12 years after their
introduction to the field. Most of the papers in this cluster
are published after 1996, as indicated by the green to red
152 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON

FIG. 3. Temporal network cluster analysis of research publications related to theory of dung use as fuel by CiteSpace software.
If you are reading a black-and-white version, please access the colored version at: www.tandfonline.com/utis.

date spectrum (indicating co-citation links from 1997 to
2012) of the outlined cluster in Figure 3.
In Figure 3 we have labeled only those clusters of
articles that are associated directly with the work of
Miller. The other clusters are associated with themes
relevant to her work but not directly linked to her
papers. Her work added a new perspective to the field
of taphonomy for plant remains, by suggesting a key
process by which charred seeds might become incor-
porated into the archaeological assemblages found at
dig sites. It is notable that the automatic labeling of
the cluster resulted in the term taphonomy, indicating
that her work was one of the most meaningful contri-
butions of archaeobotany to the field of taphonomy.
(Cluster labeling is based on term frequency/inverse
document frequency analysis of paper titles and
abstracts, which reflects how important a word is to a
document in a collection or corpus.)
We also performed an analysis of citation bursts in
Miller’s co-citation network (Figure 4). A citation burst
is a sudden burst in popularity as a paper becomes fre-
quently cited in a field. The analysis shows that the most
prominent citation burst for her co-citation network
occurred after 2007 in papers mostly discussing environ-
mental issues (with the exception of the three works
shown at the top of Figure 4, two of which are technolog-
ical papers from a colleague in the same institution and
belong to an earlier period). This corroborates the earlier
argument that the general environmental turn of the
larger cultural narrative across the network affected the
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
FIG. 4. Analysis of citation bursts by CiteSpace Software on the Miller’s co-citation network reveals a turn toward environ-
mental issues.
acceptance of epistemic objects in the network of
practice.
Finally, in order to understand the how public interest
shifted from overpopulation to deforestation (as a proxy
for environmental change), we conducted a unigram
analysis of two terms using Google Ngram Viewer on
the Google Books corpus. This indicates the popularity
of search terms over time, within the content archived in
Google Books. Our analysis demonstrates how the occur-
rence of the two terms “overpopulation” and
“deforestation” changed over the last 50 years of the
twentieth century (Figure 5).
After the Second World War, there was a burst in
societal focus on how to feed the growing world pop-
ulation. Overpopulation was seen to be a serious
problem (Desrochers and Hoffbauer 2009). The
response of archaeologists was to look at the question
of how ancient societies dealt with increasing their
food supply in the face of population growth, focus-
ing on food production and diet. Miller examined the
extent of deforestation as a proxy to understand
humans’ impact on the environment and a driver for
their moving to animal dung as a fuel. Misalignment
between the two cultural narratives led to a time lag,
or latency, in her theory being adopted across wider
networks of practice. An interest in deforestation
(human impact on environment) became prominent
starting in 1983 (see Figure 5), just after she gradu-
ated, but it took 15 years to become salient in society
and operationalized in archaeological research. At this
153
point, the focus of our informant’s work garnered
interest, as it was perceived as relevant to a wider set
of contexts.
Analytical Summary of the Case
The case study demonstrated how the development of
new epistemic objects and the acceptance of new theoret-
ical narratives are filtered through a network of social
associations within the larger cultural context and the
associated network of symbolic meaning. Initially, the
research NoP was concerned with epistemic narratives
concerning the origins of agriculture. Before the field of
archaeobotany was established, much of the archaeolog-
ical record supporting theories of food production suf-
fered from a lack of direct evidence. With the
introduction of soil flotation procedures, recognition of
the discipline stabilized around logico-scientific instru-
ments that enabled the systematic analysis of seed and
other plant remains. Over time, the flotation technique
and apparatus were adapted across project networks to
become a technical-object-in-use, then formalized as
defining standards in the field.
The emergence of the scientific field of taphonomy
allowed archaeobotanists to explore the evidence for
competing theoretical narratives. Several competing nar-
ratives emerged from breakdowns that occurred in efforts
to fit evidence within the dominant paradigm, which was
organized around the crop-processing model. These
154 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
FIG. 5. Ngram analysis of popularity of overpopulation theme vs. deforestation theme over time between 1950–2000 (created
by Google Ngram Viewer).
models allowed cultivation processes to be inferred from
relatively sparse ratios of grain type, chaff, and weeds,
but were relatively reductionist and based on assump-
tions about food preparation practices that are not univer-
sal. The archaeobotanist whom we studied for our case,
Naomi F. Miller, was sensitized to the use of alternate
fuel sources by her work on a specific site. She developed
an emerging narrative that the charred seeds showed an
increase in dung fuel use, complementing the indepen-
dent wood charcoal evidence for deforestation. This pro-
vided support for a cultural narrative about
environmental change rather than the food scarcity
caused by overpopulation. But the archaeobotanist had
difficulty aligning the interests of the network, which
were focused on the wider societal preoccupation with
overpopulation and food scarcity. Our co-citation analy-
sis demonstrated that the crop-processing model was
dominant in the literature during the period in which it
was aligned with the salient interests of society. It was
not until societal interests focused on environmental nar-
ratives related to global warming that she could align
network interest around her environmental narrative con-
cerning an increasing use of dung as fuel, as wood
resources were depleted in ancient societies. There was
thus a latency period before network adoption of her the-
ory, caused by misalignment of her cultural narrative
with cultural narratives of interest to her field (and con-
temporary society). Narrative alignment led to wide-
spread recognition and adoption of her epistemic
scheme—a methodology for analyzing the different char-
acteristics of charred seeds that remained from animal
dung, as distinct from seeds that had been used for food
collection.
Miller’s theory—with the methodological approach
that accompanies it—is now considered a fundamental
theory in the discipline of archaeobotany. The diffusion
of her theory across the NoP is summarized in Figure 6.
The pattern of diffusion demonstrates how a breakdown
with the existing theories and network enrollment are
insufficient for network adoption. Instead, new theories
may suffer from a latency effect, until they are aligned
with the wider network’s sensitivity to their significance.
Our informant reflected:
It takes 10 to 15 years for archaeology to operationalize a way
to answer new questions. So, when everybody is interested in food:
how do you find food archaeologically? Everybody is now inter-
ested in environment: how do you find environment archae-
ologically? So, there is always a methodological lag between
whatever is current in the culture at the time. Then archaeology has
to figure out how you apply it. That’s a tricky business.
A FRAMEWORK FOR INFORMATION
EMBEDDEDNESS IN MATERIAL PRACTICES
Our findings demonstrate the centrality of interaction
effects between levels of analysis, confirming that actors
and their decisions are only meaningful when interpreted
within the context of larger political structures and sys-
tems of social relationships (Granovetter 1985). We have
demonstrated that the meaning of epistemic objects can
only be interpreted in the context of a larger social con-
text of practice. The case study shows that the progress
in the field of archaeology was result of an interchange
between epistemic and technical objects, which repre-
sents the tension between the contextualization and
decontextualization of information.
At the individual level of analysis, it is clear that
researchers do not simply draw upon individual frame-
works for action—their work is situated within a system
of sociocultural structures and influences that impact
how they are sensitized to communal, symbolic mean-
ings (Bruner 1990). Archaeology researchers develop
epistemic objects that are accompanied by rich narratives
that explain the significance of their evidence. These
allow them to make sense of evidence and to develop
alternate frameworks for the interpretation of data. Epi-
stemic objects are created as a response to breakdowns
(Heidegger 1962) that occur when technical instruments
and frameworks suffer a conceptual failure in routine
use. The breakdown results from a cognitive conflict
between the two competing structures of interpretation.
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
Fig. 6. The alignment of epistemic objects with network worldviews.
New information emerges from human interactions with
material aspects of the environment that directly conflict
with information produced by the technical objects
underpinning normative practice. This requires an
explicit period of reflection during which the fit of con-
ceptual structures embedded in research instruments and
frameworks with structures embedded in the context of
their application is examined. It is resolved by the crea-
tion of an epistemic object that embeds information in
ways that allow the researcher to formulate and explore a
replacement structure of interpretation. In the case study
presented in this article, information suggested by the
different process of charring of seeds that were contained
in animal dung conflicted with information suggested by
the undifferentiated treatment of charred seeds that was
the norm in archaeobotany in the early 1980s. This was
resolved by creating a new epistemic object—a distinc-
tion between the interpretation of charred seeds in dung
fuel and seeds from crop-processing debris burned inten-
tionally or accidentally. The generic research evaluation
method employed in Episode 3 of our case study, which
evaluated charred seeds as deriving from one of three
processes, conflicted with the researcher’s sensitization
to evidence for a fourth process in Episode 4. This
caused a breakdown in its use, which led the researcher
to develop a new epistemic object—a method to evaluate
the origin of charred seeds. It is also important to note
that the adoption of an epistemic object depends on the
ability of the researcher to enroll support across various
communities and domains in the network of practice.
At the collective (CoP/disciplinary) level, we
observed that as individuals interact with each other and
with situated material objects, they develop and adapt
155
epistemic objects to provide domain-specific interpreta-
tion structures. This is facilitated by a convincing cul-
tural narrative that translates the local framework for
action to enroll support across community boundaries.
Emergent epistemic objects (evolving conceptual frame-
works and research instruments) act as boundary objects,
in that they provide interpretively flexible abstractions
that mediate specific forms and/or meanings of research
practice across community boundaries without requiring
that researchers understand or adopt the practices of their
originators in full (Star and Griesemer 1989). The wider
adoption of epistemic objects depends upon the
researcher’s ability to develop a compelling theoretical
narrative, which problematizes its purpose to fit with
multiple contexts and research ideologies. For example,
it was the ability to link the use of dung as fuel with an
environmental narrative that mobilized interest across
disciplinary boundaries that led to wider network enroll-
ment around the emerging theory. However, this was not
a simple process:
I talk to the people I’m collaborating with . . . and we *struggle*
to talk about the same thing . . . we *struggle* even on the lowest
levels, because of the different ways that we approach our stuff. It
can be very productive and sometimes it’s a real dead end. They’ll
say “well why did you do that?” or “why would you work on that?”
or “why did you choose those samples?” You need to be willing to
communicate sensitively and proactively.
An effective problematization of the situation struc-
tures network roles and identities around the emerging
object and aligns network interests around adopting these
roles (Callon 1986). As researchers from various
domains collaborate around the epistemic object, they
156 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON

collectively generate a more abstract, generic form of CONCLUSIONS

interpretation structure that is embedded in a compelling
The main contribution of this article has been to explore
theoretical narrative, to problematize its use in terms of
theory creation, communication, and acceptance as a
global interests.
small, creative moment that is facilitated by incremental
At the network of practice level, which spans CoPs,
network enrollment around changes to materially embed-
disciplines, and communities of interest, theoretical nar-
ded structures of signification. Departures from normative
ratives are debated and adapted to emerging evidence
practice that result in the creation of epistemic objects
and frameworks. Whether or not narratives can enroll
appear to be incremental and evolutionary. They result
sufficient support across the network to become stan-
from the breakdown of stabilized technical objects of
dardized depends on the sensitization of the wider net-
practice, when embedded structures of interpretation con-
work to key interests in the narrative. This shift permits a
flict with contextually situated meanings. Changes in the
return to the logico-scientific mode of knowing, which
practice of science proceed through a sequence of small-
allows a generic practice framework to become perform-
scale, creative moments, boundary-spanning interactions,
atively embedded in a standardized package of routines
and a confluence of interests across a nexus of intercon-
and objectual practice (Fujimura 1992). In other words,
nected practice that builds up to gradual acceptance of
the research practices associated with the use of the epi-
paradigmatic change. Epistemic objects—material
stemic object are decontextualized, or “black-boxed,” as
objects that embed new theoretical practices and perspec-
its definition is stabilized (Latour 2005). Its use now
tives—are capable of enrolling network support only
becomes routinized—at which point it constitutes a tech-
when accompanied by a compelling theoretical narrative
nical object (Rheinberger 2000). For example, the
that provides them with a meaningful context of applica-
researcher in our case study developed a quantitative
tion. Because of this, we would categorize emergent nar-
measure to assess dung fuel versus wood fuel. This pro-
ratives as epistemic objects in their own right.
vided a stabilized technical object that embedded infor-
Evolutionary practice across the network is triggered only
mation to structure categorization practices. Over time,
when epistemic narratives align with wider cultural narra-
this enabled consensus across the wider network of prac-
tives of interest to subnetworks. We echo Daston (2000,
tice, the intentional burning of dung as fuel as a mecha-
13) that epistemic objects “grow more richly real as they
nism for inclusion of charred seeds as well as a
become entangled in webs of cultural significance, mate-
compelling theoretical narrative explaining how the use
rial practices, and theoretical derivations.”
of dung as fuel can explain deforestation in a region. We
Information frameworks that promote theory develop-
saw that acceptance of the key epistemic framework
ment are either intrinsic, deriving from narrative devel-
depended upon a shift in the identity of various research
opment around contextualized objectual practice, or
networks around how they problematized the situation.
extrinsic, where shared epistemic objects are decontex-
Over time, various networks shifted their interest in cul-
tualized through the development of generic narratives
tural narratives involving overpopulation to cultural nar-
that align with wider cultural narratives to provide shared
ratives involving environmental change (deforestation).
structures of interpretation. The tensions between con-
The need for narrative alignment meant that there was
textualization and decontextualization need to be
significant latency (10–15 years) between the develop-
resolved for theory stabilization. Acceptance across the
ment of the theoretical narrative and method, and their
network of practice depends on how the theory is prob-
acceptance by wider NoP.
lematizated—how its accompanying epistemic narrative
Our findings demonstrate how individuals enroll sup-
resolves the paradox of embeddedness. The structures of
port for generic structures of interpretation that align the
interpretation embedded within local, epistemic objects
interests of network members around symbolic modes of
need to be translated to become relevant across practice
discourse (theoretical narratives), combined with emer-
domain boundaries. This need requires the researcher to
gent material instantiations (categorization schema). We
structure the research problem in such a way that people
argue that it is the resolution of tensions between
across the network can see how they can use this struc-
Bruner’s (1990) two forms of knowing that supports epi-
ture to advance their own work. An effective problemat-
stemic emergence. The reconciliation of local epistemic
ization defines network roles and identities around use of
objects with global network interests is achieved by (i)
the emerging object—for example, use of a new mea-
developing a standardized framework for action, of per-
surement instrument allows you to locate research evi-
formative routines combined with epistemic structures of
dence that was previously missing from the record, as
interpretation, that is embedded within the design of
with flotation techniques that identified seeds in soil sam-
technical objects, and (ii) developing a compelling narra-
ples that were previously thought to be absent. This rede-
tive problematization that aligns with the generic cultural
fined the research problem to one of how we interpret
narratives of interest to the network of practice.
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
newly discovered seed remains, which in turn aligned
network interests around adopting the new technique.
Defining a generic problem structure that furthers the
interests of researcher in other communities of practice
decontextualizes the epistemic object, which stabilizes
its interpretation, leading to the standardization of prac-
tice—that is, it becomes a technical object.
We conceptualize a network of practice as a nexus of
interconnected practice, formed around materially medi-
ated interdependencies across communities of practice.
We have demonstrated how theoretical innovation
depends on a series of creative moments (breakdowns) in
routinized practice, followed by interactions across the
actor-networks that mobilize support and stabilize inter-
pretations of the epistemic object across research domain
boundaries. We have examined how scientific advance-
ment results from employing an appropriate problemat-
ization to resolve the tensions between local information
structures that are embedded in epistemic objects deriv-
ing from a community of practice and generic knowledge
structures that guide the performative enactment of
research networks of practice. We proposed a multilevel
conceptual framework that explains the mechanisms by
which information about contextual structures is embed-
ded in epistemic objects, is adapted and translated
through narrative construction and objectual practice to
performatively enroll network support across boundaries,
and is translated by decontextualizing and standardizing
the structures of interpretation contained in performative
research objects and the development of culturally signif-
icant narratives that align with issues of interest to the
wider network of practice.
Finally, we conclude that theoretical innovation
depends on the ability of both individuals and members of
the wider network to question the performativity of
accepted “things,” including technical apparatus, accepted
categorization schema, and the implicit information struc-
tures and narratives underpinning methodological
approaches to scientific practice. In the end, the accep-
tance of theory depends upon a compelling narrative:
So we embellish our hard-core annales, convert them into
chroniques and finally into narrative histoires (to borrow Hayden
White’s way of putting it). And thereby we constitute the psycho-
logical and cultural reality in which the participants in history actu-
ally live. In the end, then, the narrative and the paradigmatic come
to live side by side. All the more reason for us to move toward an
understanding of what is involved in telling and understanding
great stories, and how it is that stories create a reality of their
own—in life as in art. (Bruner 1986, 43)
NOTES
1. Processual archaeology was inspired by “hypothetic-deductive
positivism derived from Hemple (deducing statements from general
157
theories and test them against observable data)” (Renfrew and Bahn
2005, 208).
2. Parallel to the works of scholars in the United States on the ori-
gin of agriculture in the 1950s–1960s, archaeologists in a group under
the leadership of Eric Sidney Higgs at the University of Cambridge
were interested in palaeoeconomy. This group also developed meth-
ods for discovery of botanical remains to study agricultural produc-
tion. David French was a student of Eric Higgs at Cambridge and a
member of this group.
REFERENCES
Akrich, M. 1992. The de-scription of technical objects. In Shaping
technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change,
ed. W. E. Bijker and J. Law, 205–24. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Barad, K. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understand-
ing of how matter comes to matter. Signs 28(3): 801–31. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1086/345321
Behrensmeyer, A. K., S. M. Kidwell, and R. A. Gastaldo. 2000.
Taphonomy and paleobiology. Paleobiology 26(4 Suppl.): 103–
44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1666/0094-8373(2000)26%5b103:
TAP%5d2.0.CO;2
Braidwood, R. J., B. Howe, H. Helbaek, F. R. Matson, C. A. Reed,
and H. E. J. Wright. 1960. Prehistoric investigations in Iraqi Kur-
distan. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Braidwood, R. J., J. D. Sauer, H. Helbaek, P. C. Mangelsdorf, H. C.
Cutler, C. S. Coon, R. Linton, J. Steward, and L. A. Oppenheim.
1953. Symposium: Did man once live by beer alone? American
Anthropologist 55(4): 515–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/
aa.1953.55.4.02a00050
Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid. 2001. Knowledge and organization: A
social-practice perspective. Organization Science 12(2): 198–
213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.12.2.198.10116
Bruner, J. S. 1986. Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. S. 1990. Acts of meaning. Cambridge MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press.
Bruner, J. S. 1991. The narrative construction of reality. Critical
Inquiry 18(1): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/448619
Callon, M. 1986. Some elements of a sociology of translation:
Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc
Bay. In Power, action, and belief: A new sociology of knowledge?
Socioogical review monograph 32, ed. J. Law, 196–233. London,
UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Callon, M. 1991. Techno-economic networks and irreversibility. In A
sociology of monsters. Essays on power technology and domina-
tion, ed. J. Law, 132–61. London, UK: Routledge.
Carlile, P. R. 2002. A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries:
Boundary objects in new product development. Organization Sci-
ence 13(4): 442–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.13.4.442.2953
Chen, C. 2006. CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging
trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology 57(3):
359–77. doi:10.1002/asi.20317
Chen, C. 2011. Turning points: The nature of creativity. New York,
NY: Springer.
158 E. KHAZRAEE AND S. GASSON
Childe, V. G. 1936. Man makes himself. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Daston, L. 2000. Introduction: The coming into being of scientific
objects. In Biographies of scientific objects, ed. L. Daston, 1–14.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Desrochers, P., and C. Hoffbauer. 2009. The post war intellectual
roots of the population bomb. Fairfield Osborn’s ‘Our Plundered
Planet’ and William Vogt’s ‘Road to Survival’ in retrospect.
Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 1(3): 73–97.
Ehrlich, P. R. 1968. The population bomb. New York, NY: Ballantine
Books.
Engestr€om, Y., R. Engestr€om, and M. Karkkainen. 1995. Polycontex-
tuality and boundary crossing in expert cognition: Learning and
problem solving in complex work activities. Learning and
Instruction 5(4): 319–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0959-4752
(95)00021-6
French, D. H. 1971. An experiment in water-sieving. Anatolian
Studies 21(January): 59–64. doi:10.2307/3642629.
Fujimura, J. H. 1992. Crafting science: Standardized packages,
boundary objects, and “ translation.” In Science as practice and
culture, ed. A. Pickering, 168–211. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Glaser, B. G. 1978. Advances in the methodology of grounded theory:
Theoretical sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.
Glaser, B. G., and A. L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded the-
ory. New York, NY: Aldine.
Goldman, A. 2010. Introduction. In Social epistemology, ed. A. Had-
dock, A. Millar and D. Pritchard, 1–28. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Granovetter, M. 1985. Economic action and social structure. The
problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology 91(1):
481–510. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/228311
Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and time. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Heller, A. 1988. The moral situation in modernity. Social Research 55
(4): 531–50.
Hillman, G. 1973. Crop husbandry and food production: Modern
models for the interpretation of plant remains. Anatolian Studies
23, 241–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3642543
Hodder, I. 2012. Entangled. An archaeology of the relationships
between humans and things. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hole, F., K. Flannery, and J. Neely. 1969. Prehistory and human ecol-
ogy of the Deh Luran Plain (University of Michigan Museum of
Anthropology Memoir no. 1.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Museum of Anthropology.
Kallinikos, J. 2012. Form, function, and matter: Crossing the border
of materiality. In Materiality and organizing: Social interaction
in a technological world, ed. P. M. Leonardi, B. A. Nardi and J.
Kallinikos, 68–87. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. D. 1999. Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make
knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Knorr Cetina, K. D. 2001. Objectual practice. In The practice turn in
contemporary theory, ed. T. R. K. C. Schatzki and E. Von
Savigny, 175–88. New York, NY: Routledge.
Latour, B. 2000. On the partial existence of existing, and nonexisting
objects. In Biographies of scientific objects, ed. L. Daston, 247–
69. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Latour, B. 2005. Reassembling the social. Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Latour, B.. and S. Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory life: The construction of
scientific facts, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lave, J. 1991. Situating learning in communities of practice. In Per-
spectives on socially shared cognition, ed. L. B. Resnick, J. M.
Levine, and S. D. Teasley, 63–82. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Law, J. 1992. Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering,
strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems Practice 5(4): 379–93.
doi:10.1007/BF01059830.
Law, J. 2004. After method: Mess in social science research. Oxford,
UK: Routledge.
Leonardi, P. 2012. Materiality, sociomateriality, and socio-technical
systems: What do these terms mean? In Materiality and organiz-
ing, ed. P. M. Leonardi, B. A. Nardi, and J. Kallinikos, 25–48.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lincoln, Y. S, and E. G. Guba. 2000. Paradigmatic controversies,
contradictions, and emerging confluences. In Handbook of
qualitative research, ed. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 2nd ed.,
163–88. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
MacKenzie, D. A. and J. Wajcman. 1999. Introductory essay. In The
social shaping of technology, 2nd ed., ed. D. A. Mackenzie, and
J. Wajcman, 3–27. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.
Manovich, L. 1999. Database as symbolic form. Convergence 5(2):
80–99.
Marinova, E., V. Linseele, and M. K€ uhn. 2013. Bioarchaeological
research on animal dung: Possibilities and limitations. Environ-
mental Archaeology 18(1): 1–3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/
1461410313Z.00000000023
Miettinen, R. and J. Virkkunen. 2005. Epistemic objects, artefacts and
organizational change. Organization 12(3): 437–56. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1177/1350508405051279
Miller, N. F. 1984. The use of dung as fuel: An ethnographic example
and an archaeological application. Pal eorient 10(2): 71–79.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/paleo.1984.941
Miller, N. F. 1997. The analysis of archaeological plant remains. In
Research frontiers in anthropology. Volume 2: Archaeology, ed.
C. R. Ember, M. Ember, and P. N. Peregrine, 1–16. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Miller, N. F. and T. L. Smart. 1984. Intentional burning of dung as
fuel: A mechanism for the incorporation of charred seeds into the
archaeological record. Journal of Ethnobiology 4: 15–28.
Minnis, P. E. 1981. Seeds in archaeological sites: Sources and some
interpretive problems. American Antiquity 46: 143–52. http://dx.
doi.org/10.2307/279993
Moore, S. F. 1987. Explaining the present: Theoretical dilemmas in
processual ethnography. American Ethnologist 14(1): 727–36.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1987.14.4.02a00080
Nardi, B. 2007. Placeless organizations: Collaborating for transforma-
tion. Mind, Culture, and Activity 14(1–2): 5–22. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1080/10749030701307663
Orlikowski, W. J. and J. Yates. 1994. Genre repertoire: The structur-
ing of communicative practices in organizations. Administrative
Sciences Quarterly 33(3): 541–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/
2393771
Pearsall, D. M. 1989. Paleoethnobotany: A handbook of procedures.
New York, NY: Academic Press.
Polanyi, K. 1971. The great transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.
 EPISTEMIC OBJECTS AND EMBEDDEDNESS
Rapport, N. 2000. The narrative as fieldwork technique. In Construct-
ing the field: Ethnographic fieldwork in the contemporary world,
ed. V. Amit, 71–95. Florence, KY: Routledge.
Renfrew, C., and P. G. Bahn, ed. 2005. Archaeology: The key con-
cepts. Routledge key guides. New York, NY: Routledge.
Rheinberger, H. J. 1997. Toward a history of epistemic things: Syn-
thesizing proteins in the test tube. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univer-
sity Press.
Rheinberger, H. J. 2000. Cytoplasmic particles: The trajectory of a
scientific object. In Biographies of scientific objects, ed. L. Das-
ton, 270–94. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Small, H. 1973. Co-citation in the scientific literature: A new measure
of the relationship between two documents. Journal of the Ameri-
can Society for Information Science 24(4): 265–9. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1002/asi.4630240406
Star, S. L. 1995. The politics of formal representations: Wizards,
gurus and organizational complexity. In Ecologies of knowledge:
Work and politics in science and technology, ed. S. L. Star, 88–
118. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Star, S. L. and J. Griesemer. 1989. Institutional ecology,
‘Translations,’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professio-
nals in berkeley’s museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39.
159
Social Studies of Science 19: 387–420. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1177/030631289019003001
Struever, S. 1968. Flotation techniques for the recovery of small-
scale archaeological remains. American Antiquity 33(3): 353–
62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/278703
Watson, P. J. 2006. Robert John Braidwood [1907–2003]: A biograph-
ical memoir. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences.
Watson, P. J. 2009. Archaeology and anthropology: A personal over-
view of the past half-century. Annual Review of Anthropology 38
(1): 1–15.
Waugh, D. 2004. Unpacking evidence: Material culture/objects.
Center for History and New Media. https://chnm.gmu.edu/
worldhistorysources/unpacking/objectsmain.html (accessed
November 20, 2014).
Weber, M. 1968. Economy and society: An outline of interpre-
tive sociology. New York, NY: Bedminster Press.
Wenger, E. 1998. Communities of practice—Learning meaning and
identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Werner, O., and G. M. Schoepfle. 1987. Systematic fieldwork.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
White, H. 1973. Interpretation in history. New Literary History 4(2):
281–314. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/468478
Copyright of Information Society is the property of Routledge and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.