The ability to share data and the need to guard against the loss of data are important in any discipline. However, in archaeology they may be critical for two reasons: First, data collection in archaeology-the equivalent of "experiments" in many other disciplines-is never replicable because (a) archaeologists destroy the contexts they are studying as they excavate and (b) all settlements are remnants of unique combinations of people and activities at particular times. Data that are lost are data that can never be duplicated. Second, archaeological fieldwork most often focuses on only one or two settlements. However, in order to understand culture history and culture change in a given region or to examine similarities and differences among regions in trajectories of cultural evolution, there is a need to integrate data from large numbers of settlements. The proposed project will undertake the design of prototype repository processes to extend the ability to share archaeological data and the range of data types appropriately preserved from archaeological fieldwork. A major aspect of the design process will be the identification and delineation of the key institutional, archival, and informatics issues that must be addressed to resolve the growing crisis within social science broadly and within archaeology specifically.
The proposed project will have broader impact in several dimensions. First, as with any preservation activity, there will be an impact on the possibilities for future analysis by preventing the loss of data crucial to that analysis. Second, the design of extended access modes will make practical archaeological analysis of spatial and temporal variation. Finally, the accessibility and preservation of cultural data from archaeological projects has the potential to impact social science scholarship beyond archaeology. Graduate students will be actively engaged in this prototype research.
