Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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archaeology as a discipl<strong>in</strong>e move toward a better <strong>in</strong>tegration of data and published <strong>in</strong>terpretations.
They reflected that the practice of treat<strong>in</strong>g excavation reports as sole data archives had come under
heavy criticism by the 1980s, as more archaeologists came to realize “the dist<strong>in</strong>ction between data and
<strong>in</strong>terpretation was often not as easy to ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong> as previously assumed” (Meckseper and Warwick
2003). The ability to represent uncerta<strong>in</strong>ty regard<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>dividual scholarly <strong>in</strong>terpretations or statements
is one of the reasons the authors chose to use TEI to encode archaeological reports.
Stuart Dunn has also discussed how electronic publication <strong>in</strong> archaeology has both a number of
benefits and difficulties. The deposit of archaeological data <strong>in</strong>to digital repositories or virtual research
environments (VREs), while still preserv<strong>in</strong>g copyright and <strong>in</strong>tellectual property, is a difficult but
ultimately worthwhile goal, he contends. Nonetheless, the potential of l<strong>in</strong>k<strong>in</strong>g, for example, published
articles to the data they reference, also raises questions of data accuracy, controlled access, security
and transparency:
Where a discussion <strong>in</strong> a published article focuses on a particular set of primary data, there is a
clear logic to deploy<strong>in</strong>g VRE tools, where available, to make that data available alongside the
discussion. However, <strong>in</strong> such situations it is <strong>in</strong>cumbent upon the VRE to ensure that those data
are trustworthy, or, if they are not (or might not be), to provide transparent documentation
about the process(es) of analysis and manipulation via which they have come to support the
published discussion. … the term “research” <strong>in</strong> Virtual Research Environment implies that the
outputs meet “conventional” standards of peer review and evaluation (Dunn 2009).
Although develop<strong>in</strong>g new models of peer review and authentication for digital publication will not be
easy, Dunn rightly concludes that this does not mean that such models are not worth work<strong>in</strong>g toward.
Data Creation, Data Shar<strong>in</strong>g, and Digital Dissem<strong>in</strong>ation
Archaeological research provides a wealth of data of greatly different types, as the CSHE report
summarizes:
Archaeological research is somewhat exceptional among its humanistic neighbors <strong>in</strong> its
reliance on time- and location-specific data, abundant use of images, and dependence on
complex <strong>in</strong>terdiscipl<strong>in</strong>ary teams of scholars and specialists, who work on both site excavation
and complex lab-based data analysis. Teams produce a plethora of data types <strong>in</strong> archaeology,
<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g three-dimensional artifacts, maps, sketches, mov<strong>in</strong>g and still images, flora and faunal
assemblages, geological samples, virtual reconstructions, and field notes. (Harley et al. 2010,
30-31)
These greatly vary<strong>in</strong>g k<strong>in</strong>ds of data make the development of any standards for data record<strong>in</strong>g, shar<strong>in</strong>g,
and preservation a considerable undertak<strong>in</strong>g.
In terms of data shar<strong>in</strong>g, the CSHE report suggested that most archaeological scholars shared ideas
through <strong>in</strong>formal networks, e-mail, and small meet<strong>in</strong>gs, but tended to keep all data and work <strong>in</strong>
progress to themselves until formal publication. A variety of factors <strong>in</strong>fluenced these decisions,
<strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g various stakeholder <strong>in</strong>terests, fear of data be<strong>in</strong>g “poached,” the sensitivity of some
archaeological sites, and the “mess<strong>in</strong>ess of the data.” On the other hand, papyrologists tended to work
together, a factor that is discussed <strong>in</strong> greater detail later. While some scholars were familiar with
work<strong>in</strong>g-papers sites <strong>in</strong> classics such as the Pr<strong>in</strong>ceton/Stanford Work<strong>in</strong>g Papers <strong>in</strong> Classics