In the absence of conceptual institutions or forms life that could serve as alternatives to the modern Constitution, we run the risk of remaining engaged in spite of ourselves in wars between realism and social constructivism that do not concern us in the least. (Latour 2003:42)

What might be gained by instrumental facilitation in archaeology? Or again, why is it important? Articulating all the relevant 'data' for a site, TCP, landscape, etc. will, as part of the participation of stakeholder groups, combine a multitude of technological inscriptions. Maps, GIS queries, field-notes, artifact sketches and thermoluminescent results - all already 'standard' for archaeological articulation into a single monograph - will be joined by new mediated inscriptions - audio-recordings, videowork, oral history narratives, non-coordinate 'maps'. The obvious practical problem becomes: how to collate all of the dissimilar 'data' - which are not fungible or inter-mediable (Shanks 2005)? Developed outside of archaeological science, such examples would enlarge the 'data' of the archaeological collective, but unfortunately, for this very complexifying reason, would be discounted as non-intermediable. Obsidian hydration results in the same collective of 'data' as oral history!? (the very exasperation for Mason 2000 vs. Echo-Hawk 2000).

The Mangle of Archaeological Practice - an on-going flux

To get at this, I want turn back to Latour's notion of 'consultation' as an on-going 'diplomatic mediation' process to evaluate inclusion or disclusion from the Parliament of Things (2003:ch4). Worried that "left to themselves, scientists would too quickly agree among themselves as to what (especially what form) is to be admitted" as 'evidence', Latour opens (in this most recent book, 2003) his consultation to politicians with the aim of deliberately politicizing the arbitration process (ibid:145). Politicians - the antitheses to a notion of scientists - are needed precisely to help "detect, for every candidate entity, the jury that is adequate to evaluate its existence according to its own requirements and in relation to its own problems" (ibid). While Latour is not suggesting a relativism, apportioning separate criteria for every bit of data to be judged, there is beginning to be room for inclusion of cultural conceptual models as a requisite background for informed judgment in the sciences (viz. Pickering 1995, 2003). As I have suggested, archaeology in the context of specifically non-Western scientific practices would benefit from 'tempering' Latour's resolute symmetry, and instead think in terms of Ihde's and Pickering's notion of 'degrees of symmetry', attuned to a sensitivity of specific context and not-lodged solely within an 'end-product' material-semiotic analysis.

In summary, how would the respective 'archaeological politicians' know what is relevant to each candidate for inclusion as data, or what are the 'problems' or 'goals' to which such 'candidate data' is directed? Instrumental mediation via hypertext enables presenting, much as in the grass roots organizations of the blogosphere, alternate practical goals and intentions behind 'data' for the politics of archaeology. And for accurately describing the entire process of mediation as inscription, mediation as facilitation, mediation as 'diplomatic consultation' in archaeology: I suggest a mediating archaeology.

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