Presentation at EAA 2017 Maastricht

1. Re-engineering the process:
how best to share, connect, re-use &
provide access to archaeological information?
Presented by
Keith May
@Keith_May

2. EAC 2015 “Amersfoort Agenda” set out 3 key
areas for digital Research & Development
1. Use emerging digital technologies to
share, connect and provide access
to archaeological information; this
will require improved collaboration
and the development of (and
participation in) European
networks.
2. Encourage cooperation with other
disciplines and share data in order
to create a shared benefit.
3. Aim for the greatest possible access
to digital archaeological resources
for various user groups and exploit
digital databases to their full
potential, including uses for the
greater public.

3. Towards an Horizon 2020 platform for
open access publishing?
Forecast is for an outlook that is FAIR
• Findable
• Accessible
• Interoperable
• Reusable
With plenty of Cloud
European Commission has already
made open access an obligation for its
Horizon 2020 grantees
EC report estimates that on average
about 5% of total research expenditure
should be spent on properly managing
and 'stewarding' data in an integrated
fashion

4. Potential for new Heritage Data Analytics research?
Strategic Management Data
• e.g. interventions at National level – more for management statistical or
socio-economic analysis and reporting, demographics, etc…
• Inter-Project data at national or regional levels (geo-locational analysis)
Customer data & Audiences for Heritage Data
• Website, Search, Social Media, ‘present-time’ ‘born online’ – data
analysis
Heritage Research Data
• e.g. potential of data mining approaches, or other analytic techniques
• Intra-Site/project level data – stratigraphy (spatio-temporal), site types,
periods (temporal), etc
• Object level data (finds) - artefacts: ceramics, coins, ecofacts: bones,
plants, etc
• Archaeological Science datasets – analyses of the above:
scientificdating, etc
• GIS - Spatial patterning and distributions – sites or object level (e.g
EngLaid project https://englaid.com/ ), Characterising the heritage of
Places.
• Quantitative methods – Bayesian stats on C14 and Stratigraphy
Data about the Past derived from Data recorded in the Present
and/or Projections of the Future?
“The best way to
predict your future
is to create it” -
Abraham Lincoln
CCby
Wikipedia

5. Multi-lingual Search & Digital Artefacts of the Future –
Rosetta stones or Rosetta discs? - HeritageData.org Persistant URI
Multilingual
Labels

6. Open Archaeological Data somewhere
On or Over the horizon?
Different archaeological recording systems
share common conceptual frameworks and
semantic relationships
By conceptualising common relationships in
our different data sets at a broad level e,.g
CIDOC CRM ISO 21127:2006 and aligning
vocabularies of shared reference terms (e.g.
using SKOS) we can cross-search data for
patterns and broader answers to related
research questions (e.g. STAR, ARIADNE).
The technologies are being developed in
other domains (e.g. Biology & Medicine) but
is there a common will for sharing
archaeological data Openly for re-use in
the interests of improving research
methods?

7. Amersfoort Agenda: Schut, et al. (eds) 2015 Setting the Agenda: giving
new meaning to the European Archaeological Heritage, EAC
Occasional Paper 10, Budapest: Europae Archaeologiae
Consilium. http://www.archaeolingua.hu/books/eac/eac%2010.html
Digital Archaeological Heritage an introduction: May, K. (2017)
http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue43/1/index.html
FISH website: http://heritage-standards.org.uk/
HeritageData.org: http://www.heritagedata.org/blog/
SKOS: https://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/
CIDOC CRM: http://www.cidoc-crm.org/
HE Research Agenda : https://historicengland.org.uk/images-
books/publications/he-research-agenda/ #inform
References: