Digital Data Curation and Access: Why You and Your Organization Should be Actively Involved -- An ACRA White Paper

Summary

Most are aware that the curation of archaeological and historical data and associated records has been a challenge for quite some time. Adequate curation of objects and associated records has received significant attention in the past two decades; however, professional archaeologists within academia, the Cultural Resources Management (CRM) industry, and federal and state agencies are keenly aware that we need to do more, if we are to successfully preserve our heritage, advance evidence-based understandings of the human past, and fulfill an obligation to serve as stewards of the archaeological record of human history (e.g., Society for American Archaeology 1996).

Archaeologists increasingly recognize that addressing our most pressing social and intellectual problems (Kintigh et al. 2014) demands comparative and synthetic research (Altschul et al. 2018). Archaeology uniquely provides access to the long term social and environmental dynamics that must be understood to address important contemporary problems. Archaeology’s long-term perspective is essential because key processes operate so slowly that they are only perceptible over centuries or millennia. An archaeological perspective illuminates and enables the synthesis of information concerning the initial conditions and the outcomes of thousands of completed social “experiments” in the past.

The needed synthetic research critically depends upon access to the vast corpus of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data that the CRM industry has generated over the last 50 years. If we are to leverage those data to advance our knowledge of the past and for the benefit of the public, the data must reside in repositories where they are easily discovered, accessed, used, and preserved for future uses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digital Antiquity Publications and Reports

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Duane E. Peter; Francis McManamon; Keith Kintigh

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