Archaeological Legacy Data and Archaeological Data Legacies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although digital repositories are well established, many researchers still use informal ways to share data, such as email. This type of sharing runs a great risk of information loss because data is often not well documented or formally described. One could argue, in fact, even new data is legacy data if it is shared in this way. That is, legacy data is not just the data in notebooks or in old file formats on hard drives; it’s also any data we create that isn’t easy for others to access or use. If we all agree that data sharing and access is important for our discipline, we need to stop creating legacy data and find ways to improve the intelligibility, interoperability, and longevity of the data we create. Rather than discuss technological solutions to this problem, this talk highlights the role that people play in improving data sharing and understanding. We use the publication of Richard Redding's zooarchaeological data from Giza to share step-by-step guidelines for data documentation, description, and cleaning as an example of working with archaeological legacy data to establish archaeological data legacies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39013.0