Many of the changes in archaeology over the past few years have been driven by technological advances in computing and global communications. As the use of computers has become de rigueur, collection of digital data has steeply increased in the field of archaeology, beginning with laboratory analyses, and more recently extending to locational data collected using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology, as well as increasing use of desktop research using online bibliographies and databases. Publishing of technical reports, brochures, websites, podcasts, and other vehicles of communication to colleagues and the public are also readily available from desktop applications.
GPS/GIS Data Collection
Standard procedure in many archaeological surveys and excavations involves the collection of locational data using GPS equipment. Hand-held GPS receivers are used in conjunction with GIS networks in the mapping of sites within a landscape and features within a site. These maps may be used to interface directly with topographic maps and satellite imagery. Mapped data can then be used as an interpretive database, to better understand site layouts and resource patterning. The use of GPS/GIS has also greatly facilitated landscape archaeology, allowing multiple views of objects and features within a landscape.
Computer-aided Research
As the Internet matures, computer-aided research continues to increase in its utility. Although the capacity to conduct archaeological background research solely online is not as yet feasible, in many universities in the developed world access to scientific journals and historic data has become far more simplified of late, a direct result of the growth in the use of keywords. Writers and editors embed keywords into the coding of their articles; these keywords are collected by search engines (such as Google and Yahoo). A researcher inputs keywords into a search engine, which then retrieves articles marked by those keywords. Keywords are problematic, as any librarian can tell you, because what a writer comes up with for keywords and what a reader searches for may not match. As a result, some modern search engines mechanically collect text from webpages (using different algorithms) for possible search strings. One very recent and promising development has been the introduction of folksonomies, in which the user may attach new keywords (known as tags) to a document written and produced by someone else. Folksonomies (word formation from taxonomies) are not as yet widespread.
Many public and university libraries have their catalogs online for publicly available searches and these may be used to search for books and journals, although not generally for articles. Electronic library catalogs in general use traditional Library of Congress classification systems. Journal article access can be gained using keyworded searches; in fact a researcher may have wider access to articles in many more journals today than in the past. Enormous bibliographic catalogs, such as Academic Search Elite, ISI Web of Knowledge, and LexisNexis Academic by and large restrict access to paid subscriptions. Subscription costs are prohibitive to any but large city or university libraries. Primary online catalogs recently developed specifically for archaeology and anthropology include Anthropology Plus, AnthroSource, and the eHRAF Collections of Archaeology and Ethnology.
In addition, specialized topical bibliographic databases are blossoming on the Internet, through the collaborative work of interest groups. These include the ABIA South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index, the British & Irish Archaeological Bibliography, and the Annual Egyptological Bibliography.
Data Repositories
The reasons for adoption of electronic data collection are clear: an increase in efficiency in time spent mapping in the field and map accuracy; the ease of generation of summary tables and cross-comparison of analytical results; the ease and lowered costs of research and publication; and the ability to store data in an efficient manner.
Although the collection of electronic forms of data has become a fairly common occurrence throughout archaeology, the reposing of that data explicitly for sharing by others is less common. The logical place to archive data generated during archaeological investigations might be with artifact repositories, historic preservation offices, and cultural ministries; however these offices are often government institutions that rarely have the funds to support the technology and personnel required to classify and store the data. Because in most of the world the data collection has been developed by each company or each individual archaeologist, standards have been slow to be developed and implemented at the regional, provincial, or state level.
There are exceptions. The Archaeological Data Service (ADS) has collected archaeological data throughout the United Kingdom since the late 1980s. The ADS maintains a user-accessible catalog, and has developed a set of Guides to Good Practices which are invaluable as a model of progress in this area. The Archaeological Data Archive Project at the Center for the Study of Architecture was one of the pioneers of data archiving in the United States, but is no longer active. There are many other smaller project-oriented data collection entities, too many to discuss here, but an example would include the Perseus Project Database, which maintains images and data on art objects, sites, and buildings from archaic and classical Greek history, from many of the largest museums in the world.
Open Source and Digital Publishing
The Open Source movement has had a slow growth in archaeological sciences. The nonprofit Open Source Initiative was a project borne of the computer science industry, originally to allow free collaboration on software engineering projects - including coding methodologies - via the World Wide Web. The results of this collaboration were that no one owns the copyright on the code, and anyone can use it in whatever capacity they choose. The main vehicle for Open Source editing is a Wiki, an electronic database developed in the 1970s that may be added to or edited by any user given access; the Wikipedia is the best known Wiki application, although not the only one.
In scientific publication, the Open Source movement promotes free access to the data and results of scientific research by way of the placement of articles and research data online and available for download for no or little cost to the user. While the Open Source movement has made some inroads into the hard sciences such as physics and biology, the cost of publication, the requirements of the review process, and the entrenched bureaucracy of long-standing academic journals have slowed the growth of the movement in archaeology. Most difficult, perhaps, are the struggles over copyright issues; a recent initiative called Creative Commons is attempting to resolve some of these issues.
Digital publishing Digital publishing, where edited and reviewed articles are available for download, specifically on a per-article fee basis, has made some progress in archaeology. In addition to the electronic-only journal Internet Archaeology, the content of some long-established traditional journals, such as Antiquity, the Journal of Archaeological Science, and the American Journal of Archaeology, are presently available for download on a per-article basis. Many more physical anthropological journals, which are closer to the hard sciences, are at least a halfdecade ahead of archaeological journals.
However, most journals now use electronic forms of prepublication; and this has made interscholar communications far easier, even if this data is not publicly available. Although most archaeological journals do not participate in Open Source publishing of their entire journals (called ‘Gold’ Open Access), permission is commonly given to individual authors to share and in some cases post their completed articles online elsewhere (called ‘Green’ Open Access). While limited, this does provide for communication among scholars. It is difficult to say why journals do not provide per-copy access to their contents; and it is quite possible that per-article downloads may proliferate in the coming years, particularly as university libraries continue to feel the pinch of budget cuts.
Public Archaeology and the Internet
Until the last decade, mass communication of archaeological information to the public had been limited to the mainstream press or general public magazines such as Archaeology and Current Archaeology. However, in recent years, multiple venues providing public access to archaeological findings and political issues have opened. This stream of data has the potential to influence the public’s perception of archaeology for ill or for good, as a creator of relevant (or irrelevant) information, as a protector (or destroyer) of cultural heritage, and as proponent (or foot-dragger) in terms of repatriation of artifacts and skeletal material.
Interaction with the public has become far more widespread than in previous eras, a change resulting directly from the popularity of the Internet. Archaeology-related e-mail discussion lists, newsletters, and usenet groups have been in use for over a decade. Websites for academic departments, professional associations, and cultural resource management firms have become the standard for groups in the developed world. Often these venues post public-oriented articles on current research. Podcasting, webcams, and online excavation diaries have become fairly common in the recent past. Most recently, weblogs and photo exchange sites such as Flickr have begun to provide day-to-day insights into archaeological investigations as they occur; short films, documentaries, and podcasts have gained a much wider audience for archaeology via The Archaeology Channel and similar programs (see Internet, Archaeology on).
World History
