A Focus on the Future of our Tiny Piece of the Past: Digital Archiving of a Long-term Multi-participant Regional Projectuse asterix (*) to get italics

Scott Madry, Gregory Jansen, Seth Murray, Elizabeth Jones, Lia Willcoxon, Ebtihal AlhashemPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2023

<p>This paper will consider the practical realities that have been encountered while seeking to create a usable Digital Archiving system of a long-term and multi-participant research project. &nbsp;The lead author has been involved in archaeological and landscape research in the Burgundy region of France for the past 45 years. This long-lived project has continued across several generations, institutions, continents, and disciplines, and began in the mid 1970’s before many of our commonly used digital data types and capabilities even existed. Over the decades, many individual researchers, students, and local community members have participated in our broadly defined research activities, conducting field and laboratory research, and they have, cumulatively, woven a tapestry of knowledge regarding some 2,000 years of the interaction between peoples and their landscapes in our study area. Many project participants have moved on to other interests and some have passed away. Homes and personal archives have sadly burned, and offices and labs have been flooded. All while an analogue method of work has transitioned to a new digital paradigm that is completely unrecognizable from how we began our journey. As this project slowly winds down, the issues of both analog and digital data preservation and the means of providing continued access to other researchers who may be interested in accessing our vast repositories and datasets has become one of great interest to our group. How can we address the proper archiving and metadata of thousands of individual analog and digital records and datasets located in multiple institutions and attics? &nbsp;How can we even accurately know what we all have? How can these be properly archived and preserved? And most importantly, how can other researchers gain access to these for future use after we are no longer here to share them? This is the topic of our paper. &nbsp;</p>

Digital archiving, archaeology, Burgundy, France, Historical Ecology, Dataverse, Dryad

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Computational archaeology, Environmental archaeology, Landscape archaeology

Isto Huvila isto.huvila@abm.uu.se, Zana Friberg zanna.friberg@abm.uu.se No need for them to be recommenders of PCIArchaeology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct

2023-05-24 18:46:34

Isto Huvila