Collocated Social Practices Surrounding Photo Usage in Archaeology

Archaeology is a domain of work where photographs play a relevant role: here they are used in different phases of the archaeological work for many purposes, some of which are common to other domains or to home usage (e.g., archiving). We focus our attention on one of the initial phases of the archaeological process, namely excavation, since the related activities use photographs in a very particular way and under the constraints of a very demanding physical setting. Moreover, in this phase the use of digitized photographs is recent, and in their adoption they are interestingly combined with photographs printed on paper. This paper presents the results of a study performed at an archaeological site in the south of Italy: it reports the observed collocated collaborative practices surrounding photographs and discusses these practices to identify some functionalities of a supportive technology.