Why We Should Reassess How We Define Sensitive Archaeological Data and How We Share It

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Openness & Sensitivity: Practical Concerns in Taking Archaeological Data Online" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We all want to be published and want our archeological research to be relevant, useful, and available to other archeologists, but in this digital age, it may be too easy to share, and too easy for sensitive site location information to end up in places that could cause irreparable harm to the archeology that we are so passionate about. We tend to write our reports for an archeological audience, including all kinds of useful information about where we found those wonderful artifacts and unique features. We often don’t think about where these reports might end up when we write them: A thesis submitted to the university library that is scanned and made available through the libraries database; a technical report submitted to a government archive that decides they need to make all their documents public, even a paper copy sent to a colleague who passes away and leaves his library to relatives who, not knowing what to do with the material, donate it to the local library. Now is probably the time to rethink how we write reports, what we make available, to who, and in what format, for the sake of preserving the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Openness & Sensitivity: Practical Concerns in Taking Archaeological Data Online

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23600