Search

This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sharing and reuse of data in archaeological practice. The five papers for this special section address key themes that emerged from these discussions, including: challenges in broadening data literacy by making instructional uses of data; strategies to make data more visible, better cited, and more integral to peer-review processes; and pathways to create higher-quality data better suited for reuse. These papers highlight how research data management needs to move beyond mere “check-box” compliance for granting requirements. The problems and proposed solutions articulated by these papers help communicate good practices that can jumpstart a virtuous cycle of better data creation leading to higher impact reuses of data.

Preservation of digital data is predicated on the expectation of its reuse, yet that expectation has never been examined within archaeology. While we have extensive digital archives equipped to share data, evidence of reuse seems paradoxically limited. Most archaeological discussions have focused on data management and preservation and on disciplinary practices surrounding archiving and sharing data. This article addresses the reuse side of the data equation through a series of linked questions: What is the evidence for reuse, what constitutes reuse, what are the motivations for reuse, and what makes some data more suitable for reuse than others? It concludes by posing a series of questions aimed at better understanding our digital engagement with archaeological data.

The ease of digital data capture and the proliferation of concepts such as the “data deluge” suggest that modern researchers are drowning in datasets. Yet citations of archaeological datasets are few and far between, pointing to low rates of data reuse. This article explores the difficulties that surround data reuse in large-scale regional research, including the cost and coordination necessary to extract useful data from digitized PDF reports. The amount of correction and enhancement matches the effort needed to undertake a small field survey project and can only be circumvented with a thoughtful application of computer-assisted text analysis. Missing data in excavation report PDFs are not only intractable but also insidious due to their concealed nature, leading to poor outcomes in terms of (re)use. Consequently, the degree of data reuse in archaeology has been overestimated.

Archaeology has embraced the shift to digital technology for collecting, analyzing, and sharing data. Digital repositories are now recognized as essential for data stewardship and are setting standards for data deposition. These new technologies and systems support the scientific need for reproducible results through intra-cultural as well as cross-cultural hypothesis testing. Methods of digital data collection in the field, however, are often site specific, restricted by the limited availability of digital technologies, or not well suited for creating systems that support the requirements of the new digital information paradigm. As a small science project, the Chau Hiix Project in Belize will provide examples of the pitfalls in and insights about shifting to digital technology to make its primary data shareable and reusable. These experiences suggest the need for an international collaborative agenda that develops digital data description standards based on controlled vocabulary, facet analysis, and crosswalks implemented at the analog point of collection.

The long-term care of collected and created data is an ethical obligation in the fields of archaeology and cultural heritage management. With the growing application of digital methodologies in these fields and the complexity of the resulting data, this task has become complicated. Digital data preservation firms have emerged since this methodological shift, but their policies—championing the democratization of academic data—may conflict with the legal obligations dictated by the countries where data originate. Scholars thus face an inevitable choice between two obligations, one ethical and one legal. While the amount of digital data grows and the options for preservation remain fundamentally misaligned with research norms and project workflows, the digital dilemma places the integrity of data at risk of loss. This article addresses this dilemma by evaluating the existing data publication, archiving, and preservation repositories and considering how, as solutions to the digital dilemma, they can be integrated into multiple workflows. I also propose new directions for archaeological associations, suggesting that they should establish a means of evaluation and approval for third-party preservation firms managing the future of academic research prior to their inevitable ubiquity.