Promises and Problems with Electronic Archeological Data and Citizen Science

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archeology, Citizen Science, and the National Park Service" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Instantly replicable and easily shareable, electronic archeological data passed across the internet are ripe with the tantalizing possibility of increasing the discipline's capacity to gather and analyze information, and to interpret and disseminate the results with great efficiency and, (perhaps) creativity. However, the promise of digital data for the purposes of citizen science lies in tension with ethical and statutory imperatives to protect sensitive information about sites from the general public to prevent looting and vandalism. I explore the potential of the National Park Service’s recently modernized Cultural Resources Inventory System (CRIS) --an integrated system meant to lend users robust but appropriate access to information about the National Park System’s historic structures, cultural landscapes, ethnographic resources, and archeological sites – as a tool to assist with citizen science studies in National Parks.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archeology, Citizen Science, and the National Park Service   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1015