Paper Info
Title
The challenges of digging data: a study of context in archaeological data reuse
Abstract
Field archaeology only recently developed centralized systems for data curation, management, and reuse. Data documentation guidelines, standards, and ontologies have yet to see wide adoption in this discipline. Moreover, repository practices have focused on supporting data collection, deposit, discovery, and access more than data reuse. In this paper we examine the needs of archaeological data reusers, particularly the context they need to understand, verify, and trust data others collect during field studies. We then apply our findings to the existing work on standards development. We find that archaeologists place the most importance on data collection procedures, but the reputation and scholarly affiliation of the archaeologists who conducted the original field studies, the wording and structure of the documentation created during field work, and the repository where the data are housed also inform reuse. While guidelines, standards, and ontologies address some aspects of the context data reusers need, they provide less guidance on others, especially those related to research design. We argue repositories need to address these missing dimensions of context to better support data reuse in archaeology.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2467696.2467712
JCDL
Keywords
Field
DocType
data collection,better support data reuse,data documentation guideline,data curation,data reuse,field archaeology,trust data,data collection procedure,context data reusers,archaeological data reusers,data management,archaeology
Ontology (information science),Data collection,Research design,Reuse,Computer science,Data curation,Documentation,Data management,Archaeology,Reputation
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2575-7865
9
1.02
References 
Authors
6
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ixchel Faniel1102.37
Eric Kansa2293.41
Sarah Whitcher Kansa3142.19
Julianna Barrera-Gomez491.02
Elizabeth Yakel529833.41