Refining Archaeological Data Collection and Management

Abstract

Most archaeological investigations in the United States and other countries must comply with preservation laws, especially if they are on government property or supported by government funding. Academic and cultural resource management (CRM) studies have explored various social, temporal, and environmental contexts and produce an ever-increasing volume of archaeological data. More and more data are born digital, and many legacy data are digitized. There is a building effort to synthesize and integrate data at a massive scale and create new data standards and management systems. Taxpayer dollars often fund archaeological studies that are intended, in spirit, to promote historic preservation and provide public benefits. However, the resulting data are difficult to access and interoperationalize, and they are rarely collected and managed with their long-term security, accessibility, and ethical reuse in mind. Momentum is building toward open data and open science as well as Indigenous data sovereignty and governance. The field of archaeology is reaching a critical point where consideration of diverse constituencies, concerns, and requirements is needed to plan data collection and management approaches moving forward. This theme issue focuses on challenges and opportunities in archaeological data collection and management in academic and CRM contexts.

What North American Archaeology Needs to Take Advantage of the Digital Data Revolution

“…Our data are distributed among a variety of federal, state, and tribal agencies, and much data exists only on the computers of individual researchers and companies. And even when tools that improve the discoverability of datasets are created, the work of integrating these into larger datasets suitable for broad-scale research is left to the individual researcher (Heilen and Manney 2023). In other words, there is no system for integrating CRM data in ways that are directly useful for the broader social science research community.…”

A Survey of How Archaeological Repositories Are Managing Digital Associated Records and Data

“…Tools and repositories have been developed to address needs specific to digital archaeological records and data—such as the Archaeological Data Service (ADS), the Center for Digital Antiquity's Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), and Open Context—and many valuable recommendations about best practices in digital associated records and data management have been published (e.g., Archaeological Data Service [ADS] 2013; ADS and Center for Digital Antiquity 2023; Clarke 2015; D'Gluyas and Gibbs 2022; McManamon 2018; McManamon and Ellison 2022; Rivers Cofield and Majewski 2019; Rivers Cofield and Reeves Flores 2014). Additionally, visionary publications have discussed how the digital revolution might be leveraged to increase data integration and make data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) so that archaeologists can move from project or site-based research to a broader, more synthetic understanding of humanity (Heilen and Manney 2023; Nicholson et al 2023; Ortman and Altschul 2023; Wilkinson et al 2016).…”

A Systems-Thinking Model of Data Management and Use in US Archaeology

“…Here, we specifically apply a “systems thinking” approach to produce such a high-level model of this system. We argue that understanding and visualizing this system will help us all “think bigger” (Heilen and Manney 2023); identify sources of knowledge, opportunities for critical analysis, collaboration, and capacity building; and increase much-needed archaeological digital literacy (Kansa and Kansa 2022). We conceptualize this as bringing “equilibrium” to the system, and in this article, we make several suggestions on how to bring this about.…”