Explore the vast range of titles available.

Investments in data management infrastructure often seek to catalyze new research outcomes based on the reuse of research data. To achieve the goals of these investments, we need to better understand how data creation and data quality concerns shape the potential reuse of data. The primary audience for this paper centers on scientific domain specialists that create and (re)use datasets documenting archaeological materials. This paper discusses practices that promote data quality in support of more open-ended reuse of data beyond the immediate needs of the creators. We argue that identifier practices play a key, but poorly recognized, role in promoting data quality and reusability. We use specific archaeological examples to demonstrate how the use of globally unique and persistent identifiers can communicate aspects of context, avoid errors and misinterpretations, and facilitate integration and reuse. We then discuss the responsibility of data creators and data reusers to employ identifiers to better maintain the contextual integrity of data, including professional, social, and ethical dimensions.

The impact of changing climate on terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes can be examined through quantitatively-based analyses encompassing large data samples and broad geographic and temporal scales. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a multi-institutional collaboration that allows researchers online access to linked heritage data from multiple sources and data sets. The effects of sea-level rise and concomitant human population relocation is examined using a sample from nine states encompassing much of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the southeastern United States. A 1 m rise in sea-level will result in the loss of over >13,000 recorded historic and prehistoric archaeological sites, as well as over 1000 locations currently eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), encompassing archaeological sites, standing structures, and other cultural properties. These numbers increase substantially with each additional 1 m rise in sea level, with >32,000 archaeological sites and >2400 NRHP properties lost should a 5 m rise occur. Many more unrecorded archaeological and historic sites will also be lost as large areas of the landscape are flooded. The displacement of millions of people due to rising seas will cause additional impacts where these populations resettle. Sea level rise will thus result in the loss of much of the record of human habitation of the coastal margin in the Southeast within the next one to two centuries, and the numbers indicate the magnitude of the impact on the archaeological record globally. Construction of large linked data sets is essential to developing procedures for sampling, triage, and mitigation of these impacts.

Interdisciplinary collaborations and data sharing are essential to addressing the long history of human-environmental interactions underlying the modern biodiversity crisis. Such collaborations are increasingly facilitated by, and dependent upon, sharing open access data from a variety of disciplinary communities and data sources, including those within biology, paleontology, and archaeology. Significant advances in biodiversity open data sharing have focused on neontological and paleontological specimen records, making available over a billion records through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. But to date, less effort has been placed on the integration of important archaeological sources of biodiversity, such as zooarchaeological specimens. Zooarchaeological specimens are rich with both biological and cultural heritage data documenting nearly all phases of human interaction with animals and the surrounding environment through time, filling a critical gap between paleontological and neontological sources of data within biodiversity networks. Here we describe technical advances for mobilizing zooarchaeological specimen-specific biological and cultural data. In particular, we demonstrate adaptations in the workflow used by biodiversity publisher VertNet to mobilize Darwin Core formatted zooarchaeological data to the GBIF network. We also show how a linked open data approach can be used to connect existing biodiversity publishing mechanisms with archaeoinformatics publishing mechanisms through collaboration with the Open Context platform. Examples of ZooArchNet published datasets are used to show the efficacy of creating this critically needed bridge between biological and archaeological sources of open access data. These technical advances and efforts to support data publication are placed in the larger context of ZooarchNet, a new project meant to build community around new approaches to interconnect zoorchaeological data and knowledge across disciplines.

This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward expansion of Neolithic subsistence technologies combined multiple routes and pulses but did not involve a set 'package' comprising all four livestock species including sheep, goat, cattle and pig. Instead, Neolithic animal economies in the study regions are shown to be more diverse than deduced previously using quantitatively more limited datasets. Moreover, during the transition to agro-pastoral economies interactions between domestic stock and local wild fauna continued. Through publication of datasets with Open Context (opencontext.org), this project emphasizes the benefits of data sharing and web-based dissemination of large primary data sets for exploring major questions in archaeology (Alternative Language Abstract S1).

This study explores issues in using data generated by other analysts. Three researchers independently analyzed an orphaned, decades-old zooarchaeological dataset and then compared their analytical approaches and results. Although they took a similar initial approach to determine the dataset's suitability for analysis, the three researchers generated markedly different interpretive conclusions. In examining how researchers use legacy data, this paper highlights interpretive issues, data integrity concerns, and data documentation needs. In order to meet these needs, we propose greater professional recognition for data dissemination, favoring models of \"data publication\" over \"data sharing\" or \"data archiving.\"

With the advent of the Web, increased emphasis on “research data management,” and innovations in reproducible research practices, scholars have more incentives and opportunities to document and disseminate their primary data. This article seeks to guide archaeologists in data sharing by highlighting recurring challenges in reusing archived data gleaned from observations on workflows and reanalysis efforts involving datasets published over the past 15 years by Open Context. Based on our findings, we propose specific guidelines to improve data management, documentation, and publishing practices so that primary data can be more efficiently discovered, understood, aggregated, and synthesized by wider research communities. Con el advenimiento de la Web, el mayor énfasis en el “manejo de datos de investigación” y las innovaciones en las prácticas de investigación reproducibles, los investigadores tienen más incentivos y oportunidades para documentar y divulgar sus datos primarios. Este trabajo busca ofrecer a los arqueólogos una guía sobre cómo compartir información, señalando los desafíos más recurrentes en la reutilización de datos archivados que recopilamos a partir de observaciones sobre flujos de trabajo y del reanálisis de bases de datos publicadas a lo largo de los últimos 15 años en Open Context. Sobre la base de nuestros resultados, proponemos algunos lineamientos específicos para mejorar el manejo de datos, la documentación y las prácticas de publicación, de modo que los datos primarios puedan ser descubiertos, comprendidos, agrupados y sintetizados de manera más eficiente y por comunidades de investigadores más amplias.

This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sharing and reuse of data in archaeological practice. The five papers for this special section address key themes that emerged from these discussions, including: challenges in broadening data literacy by making instructional uses of data; strategies to make data more visible, better cited, and more integral to peer-review processes; and pathways to create higher-quality data better suited for reuse. These papers highlight how research data management needs to move beyond mere “check-box” compliance for granting requirements. The problems and proposed solutions articulated by these papers help communicate good practices that can jumpstart a virtuous cycle of better data creation leading to higher impact reuses of data. Esta sección especial nace de las discusiones que tuvieron lugar en uno de los foros del Congreso Anual de la Society for American Archaeology en 2017. El foro, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about Digital Data Realities (“Más allá de la gestión de datos: Conversaciones sobre las realidades de los datos digitales”), abordó los retos que se plantean al fomentar una mayor reutilización de los datos arqueológicos digitales actualmente conservados en repositorios. Los participantes del foro sostuvieron que la arqueología digital va más allá de su interpretación tradicional como mera gestión de datos, argumentando que es necesario situar de manera mejor el intercambio y la reutilización de datos en la práctica arqueológica. Los cinco textos que conforman esta sección especial abordan temas clave que surgieron de estas discusiones: el desafío de ampliar el alfabetismo de datos mediante el uso de los mismos como herramientas de instrucción; estrategias para lograr que los datos sean más visibles, mejor citados y más integrados en el proceso de revisión por pares; y formas de crear datos de mayor calidad que se presten mejor a la reutilización. En estos trabajos se destaca además cómo la gestión de datos de investigación debe ir más allá del simple cumplimiento del requisito de “rellenar casillas” para su verificación. Los problemas y las propuestas articulados en estos comunicaciones pueden ayudar a implementar mejores prácticas de creación de datos, que a su vez resultarán en un mayor impacto en la reutilización de los mismos.

The ‘Digital Index of North American Archaeology’ (DINAA) project demonstrates how the aggregation and publication of government-held archaeological data can help to document human activity over millennia and at a continental scale. These data can provide a valuable link between specific categories of information available from publications, museum collections and online databases. Integration improves the discovery and retrieval of records of archaeological research currently held by multiple institutions within different information systems. It also aids in the preservation of those data and makes efforts to archive these research results more resilient to political turmoil. While DINAA focuses on North America, its methods have global applicability.

This essay offers a first-hand look at how one archaeological project (the Athienou Archaeological Project on Cyprus) decided to rethink the definition of “final” and contribute to the growing discourse surrounding 3D visualization, archaeological publication, archival data, and access.

The rise of the World Wide Web represents one of the most significant transitions in communications since the printing press or even since the origins of writing. To Open Access and Open Data advocates, the web offers great opportunity for expanding the accessibility, scale, diversity and quality of archaeological communications. Nevertheless, Open Access and Open Data face steep adoption barriers. Critics wrongly see Open Access as a threat to peer review. Others see data transparency as naively technocratic and lacking in an appreciation of archaeology's social and professional incentive structure. However, as argued in this paper, the Open Access and Open Data movements do not gloss over sustainability, quality and professional incentive concerns. Rather, these reform movements offer much needed and trenchant critiques of the academy's many dysfunctions. These dysfunctions, ranging from the expectations of tenure and review committees to the structure of the academic publishing industry, go largely unknown and unremarked by most archaeologists. At a time of cutting fiscal austerity, Open Access and Open Data offer desperately needed ways to expand research opportunities, reduce costs and expand the equity and effectiveness of archaeological communication.