Chaîne opératoires

French for “operational chain”, or “operational sequence”. A term with two related yet distinct meanings. At a conceptual level, it provides a framework for archaeologists and anthropologists (and others?) to analyse the sequential steps and processes in the production, use, and disposal of material culture. At the same time, chaîne opératoire also refers to the diagrammatic representations and visual models generated through this analysis, which map the stages and relationships in a given operational sequence. In this second sense, the chain becomes a ‘specific way of visualising the heterogeneity and complexity of the particular, related technical process’ (Coupaye 2022)?

Both senses mobilise the chain as a descriptive and interpretive tool, drawing attention away from the outcomes of production, and refocusing it on means and processes. The aim is to make processes visible.

Equally applicable to the production and use of a stone handaxe as a contemporary smartphone.

The chaîne opératoire itself is thus nothing more (and nothing less) than the visual transcription of the performance itself. It is an ‘artefact’ produced by the ethnographer in order to visualise, in another form than a written narrative or a film, the succession of events comprising a process, their sequential unfolding, and what intervenes at which moment. — Ludovic Coupaye, “Making ‘Technology’ Visible: Technical Activities and the Chaîne Opératoires” (2022)

After prehistorian and archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan and André-Georges Haudricourt, students of Marcel Mauss. Big deal in work on lithic (stone tool) technologies.

A chain with its own syntax? Challenging the apparent invisibility of ‘technology’, and revealing the ‘fundamental relationality of artefacts, practices, and networks’ (Coupaye 2022). From the sourcing and acquisition of materials to the abandonment or disposal of the artifact. By breaking down the production process into stages, researchers can identify the tools, techniques, and decision-making processes involved at each step; providing insight into the skill levels, knowledge systems, and traditions of the artifact’s creators. The resulting chaînes are ‘recordings of particular itineraries within reticulated worlds.’ (Coupaye 2022) Anlogous to a transect?

• [?] How might the chaîne opératoire approach be applied to contemporary technologies or consumer products? What might be revealed by tracing their life cycles?

In extending the chaîne opératoire framework to, e.g., software development, we would have to break the process into its constituent stages, from the initial writing of code, to the creation of user interfaces, to ongoing maintenance and repair. At each stage, researchers could examine the tools and techniques employed by developers, the decision-making processes that shape features and functionality, and the social and organizational contexts in which development takes place.

Computational applications create new opportunities for what can be feasibly diagrammed and analysed, given the scale and complexity of modern technological systems. And theories of extended cognition and distributed agency may require rethinking of the boundaries and units of analysis that define an operational sequence.

• [&] See also: experimental archaeology?