Data Literacy and Public Engagement in Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper will explore the need to cultivate deeper and broader data literacy in archaeology. Data and algorithms shape the actions of virtually every institution in modern society. In archaeology, data involve significant conceptual, modeling, and ethical challenges (including cross-cultural intellectual property issues). For data to be meaningfully preserved and used in intellectually rigorous ways, they need to be integrated fully into all aspects of professional practice, including ethics, teaching, and publishing. To succeed over the long term, we need to strengthen the human and community capacity to use data effectively and appropriately. To broaden and deepen our capacity to make better use of data, we need to strengthen instructional and public outreach programs that merge humanistic traditions of critique and wider cultural and historical perspectives with technical competencies. To put these ideas in practice, we propose combining elements of reproducible research, that make data and analytic steps clear and open for review and reuse, with engaging narratives so that data and analyses become more broadly accessible and meaningful to broader audiences.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Capacity Building or Community Making? Training and Transitions in Digital Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25297