Justifying the Destruction: Ethical Data Access and Reuse

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The inherently destructive nature of archaeological excavations and the massive data output create a complex problem for data management in archaeology. Data are often limited to use by the original researchers or only made accessible to academics through paywalled publications. The archaeological record is a non-renewable resource. Thus, this inaccessibility makes it difficult to justify its destruction. Accessible digital data repositories such as the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) provide archaeologists with new ways to preserve, share, and reuse data, thus mitigating the seemingly endemic cycle of destruction, hoarding, and inaccessibility. This research investigates how tDAR and other digital data repositories allow for ethically responsible data access and reuse by looking at two case studies: the Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) and the Salt River Project Digital Library (SRPDL). The structure, content, accessibility, and reuse of these projects are analyzed alongside the FAIR and CARE principles of digital data stewardship to understand how MimPIDD and SRPDL use digital dissemination platforms to create opportunities for meaningful interactions with their data. These accessible and reusable projects should serve as blueprints for the future of ethical and accessible data management in archaeological research and beyond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37607.0