Abstract:This article outlines a model for teaching undergraduate and graduate archaeology students the skills for working with open-access archaeological data and using digital tools for analysis. Due to the often limited opportunities for students to learn methods directly for data reuse, large archaeological datasets remain stagnant and unused in digital archives. The bloat of unused data stands as a major ethical hurdle in heritage fields. This article explores an approach for addressing this issue, which is to inc… Show more
“…Archaeologists are increasingly aware of the need for more training in data production and management, and our project builds on this extensive and growing literature (see, e.g., Bevan 2015; Gartski 2022; Kansa 2012; Kansa and Kansa 2018, 2021; Richardson 2013; Watrall 2019). We believe that our pilot program of embedding librarians in archaeological field schools will improve both the educational and research missions of the NAS.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Although questions of data collection, management, curation, and dissemination have always been crucial in archaeology, archaeologists today work within an elaborate research life cycle comprising smaller but complex and interrelated cycles: grant planning, project administration, traditional publication, and a twenty-first-century digital scholarship cycle that includes data management, curation, dissemination, and preservation (Figure 1). Archaeologists must navigate data and research dissemination within an evolving digital environment, whether in academic or cultural resource management (CRM) contexts (see Bevan 2015; Faniel et al 2018; Kansa 2012; Kansa and Kansa 2018), and devise ways of teaching these skills to students (e.g., Cook et al 2018; Gartski 2022). FIGURE 1.Research Life Cycle at University of Central Florida, ver.…”
Participating in an archaeological field school is one of the only educational experiences that nearly all professional archaeologists have during their training. As a result, field schools are uniquely suited to provide experiential education in emerging skills that all archaeologists will need, such as information and data literacies at all stages of the contemporary research and publishing cycle. The “embedded” librarian program in the University of New Brunswick's Downeast Maine Coastal Archaeology Field School is an effective means to deploy that focused expertise to help students better understand the relationship between fieldwork, data, and dissemination. At the same time, being in the field provides librarians with the knowledge to respond more effectively to the complex data management and research needs of archaeologists. We encourage large research projects to consider librarians as specialist members of the research team.
“…Archaeologists are increasingly aware of the need for more training in data production and management, and our project builds on this extensive and growing literature (see, e.g., Bevan 2015; Gartski 2022; Kansa 2012; Kansa and Kansa 2018, 2021; Richardson 2013; Watrall 2019). We believe that our pilot program of embedding librarians in archaeological field schools will improve both the educational and research missions of the NAS.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Although questions of data collection, management, curation, and dissemination have always been crucial in archaeology, archaeologists today work within an elaborate research life cycle comprising smaller but complex and interrelated cycles: grant planning, project administration, traditional publication, and a twenty-first-century digital scholarship cycle that includes data management, curation, dissemination, and preservation (Figure 1). Archaeologists must navigate data and research dissemination within an evolving digital environment, whether in academic or cultural resource management (CRM) contexts (see Bevan 2015; Faniel et al 2018; Kansa 2012; Kansa and Kansa 2018), and devise ways of teaching these skills to students (e.g., Cook et al 2018; Gartski 2022). FIGURE 1.Research Life Cycle at University of Central Florida, ver.…”
Participating in an archaeological field school is one of the only educational experiences that nearly all professional archaeologists have during their training. As a result, field schools are uniquely suited to provide experiential education in emerging skills that all archaeologists will need, such as information and data literacies at all stages of the contemporary research and publishing cycle. The “embedded” librarian program in the University of New Brunswick's Downeast Maine Coastal Archaeology Field School is an effective means to deploy that focused expertise to help students better understand the relationship between fieldwork, data, and dissemination. At the same time, being in the field provides librarians with the knowledge to respond more effectively to the complex data management and research needs of archaeologists. We encourage large research projects to consider librarians as specialist members of the research team.
“…Another important component of the WHAP is to prioritize data management within research, teaching, and collaborative contexts (see discussions in Cohen et al 2020; Garstki 2022; Kansa and Kansa 2021; Smith 2021). Like other large research projects, the WHAP employs a rotating group of student researchers and collaborators, which necessitates a data management plan that ensures consistency in data generation across research cohorts.…”
Section: Integrating Open-source Water Management Data With Archaeolo...mentioning
Geospatial research in archaeology often relies on datasets previously collected by other archaeologists or third-party groups, such as state or federal government entities. This article discusses our work with geospatial datasets for identifying, documenting, and evaluating prehistoric and historic water features in the western United States. As part of a project on water heritage and long-term views on water management, our research has involved aggregating spatial data from an array of open access and semi-open access sources. Here, we consider the challenges of working with such datasets, including outdated or disorganized information, and fragmentary data. Based on our experiences, we recommend best practices: (1) locating relevant data and creating a data organization method for working with spatial data, (2) addressing data integrity, (3) integrating datasets in systematic ways across research cohorts, and (4) improving data accessibility.
“…Again, we recognize that curricular restraints can limit this, but we emphasize that something is better than nothing. Our ideal scenario is the addition of devoted practicum courses as degree requirements that teach collections management, archival methods, preventive conservation, collections-based research, and digital archaeological data (for example, Benden 2019; Gartski 2022). This may not be possible for many programs, but those that can adopt them should.…”
A major problem in collections management is the lack of training about collections in all facets of archaeology. Ignorance about both ethical obligations and practical steps associated with collections is arguably the leading contributor to the ongoing curation crisis. This work summarizes shortcomings in collections training in academia and in cultural resource management, and it proceeds to identify some steps that can be taken to provide training for students and professional archaeologists. The overriding argument is that more training in all aspects of collections is absolutely essential to addressing and beginning to mitigate the overwhelming problems the discipline faces in caring for archaeological collections.
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