What We See, What We Don’t See: Spatial Data Quality in Large Digital Archaeological Collections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In an era of cyber-infrastructures, large digital archaeological collections have the potential to enable deep insights into human history. Yet the life of digital archaeological data post-field recovery is not well understood, and consequently, issues of spatial data quality in large digital archaeological collections have been under-examined. Archaeological practices impact the quality of spatial data and any subsequent analysis and interpretation of those data. We shed light on the quality of digital archaeological data from the perspective of post-colonial and Indigenous archaeology. We re-conceptualize maps in a representational model to examine the role of digital archaeological data and simple map visualization as a part of heritage management in New Brunswick, Canada. We argue that critical examination of maps and map-forms can open broader discussion on the interweaving of power, space and knowledge in archaeology, which in turn, can create opportunities for addressing the quality of digital archaeological data and deepening our understanding of the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24416