This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sharing and reuse of data in archaeological practice. The five papers for this special section address key themes that emerged from these discussions, including: challenges in broadening data literacy by making instructional uses of data; strategies to make data more visible, better cited, and more integral to peer-review processes; and pathways to create higher-quality data better suited for reuse. These papers highlight how research data management needs to move beyond mere “check-box” compliance for granting requirements. The problems and proposed solutions articulated by these papers help communicate good practices that can jumpstart a virtuous cycle of better data creation leading to higher impact reuses of data.

This article introduces a special volume of Advances in Archaeological Practice dedicated to the interpretation and presentation of archaeology. It provides an overview of several essays that came out of a session at the European Association of Archaeology Conference in 2017, which focused upon how interpretation can be implemented within daily practices of (cultural resource management) archaeology in a way that provides heritage value. We bring the arguments together into a call for a creative, interpretive archaeology that does not take compliance or academic publications as its end goal but will speak to a far wider range of audiences through the development and presentation of stories and narratives that truly engage and inspire people. We argue that this can be achieved by implementing “emotion design” methods that dynamically differentiate between information, message, emotion, and media, by working closely together with creatives, interpretive experts, communities, and partners and, ultimately, by integrating interpretation firmly at the core of planning processes, archaeological workflows, and our daily practices.

Over the past several years, we have seen many attacks on publicly funded and mandated archaeology in the United States. These attacks occur at the state level, where governors and state legislatures try to defund or outright eliminate state archaeological programs and institutions. We have also seen several attacks at the federal level. Some members of Congress showcase archaeology as a waste of public tax dollars, and others propose legislation to move federally funded or permitted projects forward without consideration of impacts on archaeological resources. These attacks continue to occur, and we expect them to increase in the future. In the past, a vigilant network of historic preservation and archaeological organizations was able to thwart such attacks. The public, however, largely remains an untapped ally. As a discipline, we have not built a strong public support network. We have not demonstrated the value of archaeology to the public, beyond a scattering of educational and informational programs. In this article, we—a group of archaeologists whose work has focused on public engagement—provide a number of specific recommendations on how to build a strong public constituency for the preservation of our nation's archaeological heritage.

In 2014, the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) conducted a sexual harassment survey of its membership. The survey's goal was to investigate whether sexual harassment had occurred among its members, and if so, to document the rate and demographics of harassment. Our findings include a high (66%) level of harassment, primarily among women, with an additional 13% of respondents reporting sexual assault. This article provides an overview of the survey and responses. Additionally, we analyze survey data aimed at capturing change over time in harassment and assault, correlation between field and non-field tasks and harassment and assault, and correlation between gender of supervisor and harassment and assault. We also discuss the effects of harassment and assault on careers. We conclude with suggestions for decreasing the rate of harassment and assault and urge professional archaeological organizations to document sexual harassment and assault to mitigate the effects on their members and on the discipline as a whole.

Preservation of digital data is predicated on the expectation of its reuse, yet that expectation has never been examined within archaeology. While we have extensive digital archives equipped to share data, evidence of reuse seems paradoxically limited. Most archaeological discussions have focused on data management and preservation and on disciplinary practices surrounding archiving and sharing data. This article addresses the reuse side of the data equation through a series of linked questions: What is the evidence for reuse, what constitutes reuse, what are the motivations for reuse, and what makes some data more suitable for reuse than others? It concludes by posing a series of questions aimed at better understanding our digital engagement with archaeological data.

While our fascination with understanding the past is sufficient to warrant an increased focus on synthesis, solutions to important problems facing modern society require understandings based on data that only archaeology can provide. Yet, even as we use public monies to collect ever-greater amounts of data, modes of research that can stimulate emergent understandings of human behavior have lagged behind. Consequently, a substantial amount of archaeological inference remains at the level of the individual project. We can more effectively leverage these data and advance our understandings of the past in ways that contribute to solutions to contemporary problems if we adapt the model pioneered by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis to foster synthetic collaborative research in archaeology. We propose the creation of the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis coordinated through a U.S.-based National Center for Archaeological Synthesis. The coalition will be composed of established public and private organizations that provide essential scholarly, cultural heritage, computational, educational, and public engagement infrastructure. The center would seek and administer funding to support collaborative analysis and synthesis projects executed through coalition partners. This innovative structure will enable the discipline to address key challenges facing society through evidentially based, collaborative synthetic research.

This article discusses the way development-led archaeology in the Netherlands disseminates archaeological knowledge to and with the public using the way archaeological projects were designed in Dalfsen (Netherlands) as a case study. In the early days of contract archaeology, which in the Netherlands was designed after the Valetta Convention, archaeologists were primarily concerned with the financial and planning aspects of projects, and there was little room for public archaeology. We suggest that this caused archaeologists to forget to involve the public in their projects. In time, it became almost impossible to rectify this mistake because archaeological contractors became extremely bureaucratic. In the case of Dalfsen, a spectacular project was needed to change this situation. The project, and especially its media value, inspired the municipality to invest in community archaeology and make choices that an archaeologist would not primarily be concerned with. Thus, we discuss the effects of these choices and archaeologists’ actions in this process. We conclude that it is important for archaeologists to act as facilitators because it improves the success rate of community archaeology projects.

The impact of natural disasters and climate change on archaeological resources has garnered much recent attention, with impacts of sea level rise and coastal flooding being the two most often cited issues. However, damage caused by flooding of interior areas and waterways has received less consideration. In this article, we present a case study of a collaborative emergency response to a significant weather event and the ensuing impacts on archaeological resources. Our project, located in Middle Tennessee, documented severe erosion and subsequent anthropogenic disturbances to ancient Native American sites following massive flooding of the Cumberland River in 2010. While striving to mitigate this damage via systematic collection of imperiled archaeological samples, we were also able to strengthen partnerships among professional archaeologists working in different arenas (academia, state and federal agencies) and the avocational archaeological community. As these types of weather-related events become more common, published case studies of response efforts will be crucial in archaeological site management, planning, and disaster response.

Addressing archaeology's most compelling substantive challenges requires synthetic research that exploits the large and rapidly expanding corpus of systematically collected archaeological data. That, in turn, requires a means of combining datasets that employ different systematics in their recording while at the same time preserving the semantics of the data. To that end, we have developed a general procedure that we call query-driven, on-the-fly data integration that is deployed within the Digital Archaeological Record digital repository. The integration procedure employs ontologies that are mapped to the original datasets. Integration of the ontology-based dataset representations is done at the time the query is executed, based on the specific content of the query. In this way, the original data are preserved, and data are aggregated only to the extent necessary to obtain semantic comparability. Our presentation draws examples from the largest application to date: an effort by a research community of Southwest US faunal analysts. Using 24 ontologies developed to cover a broad range of observed faunal variables, we integrate faunal data from 33 sites across the late prehistoric northern Southwest, including about 300,000 individually recorded faunal specimens.

This article presents research on archaeological data creation and management practices at two excavations in Europe in order to gain a better understanding of how to align these practices with the data reuse needs of a broader research community. The Secret Life of Data project follows the life cycle of data from the field to the digital repository to better understand opportunities and challenges in data interpretation, publication, and preservation. Our “Slow Data” approach focuses not on maximizing the speed and quantity of data but, rather, on emphasizing curation, contextualization, communication, and broader understanding. Through a mixed-methods approach of interviews, field observations, and excavation data assessments, we recommended changes (both technical and organizational) to improve data creation and management practices. We report our findings and offer readers guidance on streamlining data collection for reuse during excavation.

During the 2014 excavation campaign at Vignale an impressive late antique mosaic depicting Aion, the God of Time, was discovered. This artifact of 100 m2 became a milestone for outreach activities; fund-raising, theatrical performances, and archaeological trekking sessions were tailored to this finding, in collaboration with local associations. The discovery of the mosaic consolidated the promotional lines followed for this project, on-site and off-site, capable of engaging different audiences. Taking into account the recent debate about emotion as an essential constituent of the heritage-making process, a preliminary analysis of these initiatives questions the existence and the development of an emotional connection between the public and the archaeological site. Since an emotional connection emerged, further analyses and studies need to specify the kinds of emotive connection that occur. Assessment of the emotional impact intrinsic to public outreach will provide clues to transforming the “intellectual” emotion of discovery into a shared and valuable emotion for the benefit of both the archaeological project and its stakeholders.

Most archaeological practice involves horizontal excavations of ancient occupations and cemeteries, but the Chachapoya of Peru's eastern montane built tombs along narrow cliff ledges, which require innovative methods of investigation. Many of these sites are becoming exposed and threatened due to increased deforestation. The La Petaca mortuary complex includes 125 constructed platforms, modified ledges, mausoleums, and caves containing human remains across one section of an exposed rock face approximately 200 m across by approximately 80 m high. While the site has been looted and damaged due to various taphonomic processes (including ecological, geological, and cultural), we argue that there are recoverable details, especially in relation to how the ancient Chachapoya people created and accessed these vertical spaces. Through collaboration with technical professionals, we identified and documented many tombs using vertical progression techniques. This valuable partnership between spelunkers and archaeologists allowed us to develop techniques for “vertical archaeology,” including safe access in order to be able to document, sample, and make detailed observations of building methods and burial contents.

“Heritage interpretation” is generally conceived as the development and presentation of knowledge about the past for public audiences. Most obviously evidenced in descriptive signs, guides, and related media installed on archaeological and cultural sites, heritage interpretation has more than a half century of theory and applied practice behind it, yet it continues to sit uncomfortably within the typical archaeological workflow. While the concept can be criticized on many fronts, of concern is the lack of recognition that it is of equal relevance to both nonexpert and expert audiences (as opposed to nonexpert audiences alone). Our profession appears to rest on an assumption that archaeologists do their own kind of interpretation—and, separately, nonexperts require a special approach that heritage interpreters must facilitate but that field specialists have no need for—or from which little obvious expert benefit can be derived. For this reason, it is rare to find heritage interpreters embedded in primary fieldwork teams. Here I call for a rethinking of the traditional workflow, with a view to integrating the heritage interpretation tool kit and heritage interpreters themselves into our basic field methodologies. Their direct involvement in disciplinary process from the outset has the potential to transform archaeological interpretation overall.

The ease of digital data capture and the proliferation of concepts such as the “data deluge” suggest that modern researchers are drowning in datasets. Yet citations of archaeological datasets are few and far between, pointing to low rates of data reuse. This article explores the difficulties that surround data reuse in large-scale regional research, including the cost and coordination necessary to extract useful data from digitized PDF reports. The amount of correction and enhancement matches the effort needed to undertake a small field survey project and can only be circumvented with a thoughtful application of computer-assisted text analysis. Missing data in excavation report PDFs are not only intractable but also insidious due to their concealed nature, leading to poor outcomes in terms of (re)use. Consequently, the degree of data reuse in archaeology has been overestimated.

Structure from motion (SfM) mapping is a photogrammetric technique that offers a cost-effective means of creating three-dimensional (3-D) visual representations from overlapping digital photographs. The technique is now used more frequently to document the archaeological record. We demonstrate the utility of SfM by studying red scoria bodies known as pukao from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). We created 3-D images of 50 pukao that once adorned the massive statues (moai) of Rapa Nui and compare them to 13 additional pukao located in Puna Pau, the island's red scoria pukao quarry. Through SfM, we demonstrate that the majority of these bodies have petroglyphs and other surface features that are relevant to archaeological explanation and are currently at risk of continued degradation.

Absorbed residue studies have been used in subsistence research for decades. Only more recently have the chemical methods employed been used to explore the consumption of ritual concoctions such as those including cacao, yaupon holly, and alcohol. In this article we use mass spectrometry to identify Datura residues in prehistoric contexts from western Mexico and the American Southeast. Datura is a genus of flowering plants that contain hallucinogenic alkaloids. Their use in both regions is known historically and still continues today. This study sampled 55 pottery vessels and 18 shell vessels using both a traditional burr method and a water-based sonicator sampling method. Datura residues were found in 13 pottery vessels and 14 shell vessels using both sampling approaches. These results demonstrate that it is possible to identify Datura residue in pottery and shell vessels and that the use of Datura extends back into prehistory in both regions. The form and decoration of pottery vessels with Datura residues show correlations with specific motifs and themes. Historically, shell vessels were used in the Southeast for the consumption of another ritual beverage, called the Black Drink. The presence of Datura shows that those vessels were used for other kinds of beverages as well.

Quantitative analyses of how the past and archaeological professionals are being depicted in, for example, exhibitions and popular books offer valuable—and sometimes confronting—insights about how presentation practices continue to reflect gender stereotypes. It turns out that very often archaeology and the archaeological past are still almost exclusively associated with males and masculine activities. This, of course, distorts the truth about what actually happened in past societies. It also raises the questions of whether or not such biases have an influence on public participation in archaeology and if they may hinder the sector's ambition to foster inclusivity. In this article, we will share some of the preliminary results of an ongoing systematic evaluation of presentation practice in Dutch archaeology and on the public perception of gender stereotypes in the past.

Theories developed and validated using ethnographic and historical resources are often difficult to examine using sparse or fragmentary archaeological material. However, a number of statistical techniques make it possible to integrate data from ethnographic, historical, and archaeological resources into a single analytical framework. This article introduces Material Correlates Analysis (MCA)—a new method of filling gaps in the archaeological data using a strategic combination of data collection, multidimensional scaling, principal component analysis, and generalized liner modeling. Generalized liner modeling is a particularly useful tool in formal inferential statistics for comparing a priori classified groups of historical and/or ethnographic (known) cases with archaeological (unknown) ones on the basis of relevant variables. MCA allows us to overcome the inherent material culture limitations regarding data on key variables by using available historical or ethnographic evidence to make statistically testable inferences regarding archaeological data. Using the Modes of Religiosity theory as an example, we demonstrate how major gaps in the evidentiary record can be overcome using the techniques we outline. Specifically, we use the MCA approach to ascertain whether the agricultural transition in southwest Asia was associated with a shift from an imagistic to an increasingly doctrinal mode of religiosity.

How do archaeologists share their research data, if at all? We review what data are, according to current influential definitions, and previous work on the benefits, costs, and norms of data sharing in the sciences broadly. To understand data sharing in archaeology, we present the results of three pilot studies: requests for data by e-mail, review of data availability in published articles, and analysis of archaeological datasets deposited in repositories. We find that archaeologists are often willing to share but that discipline-wide sharing is patchy and ad hoc. Legislation and mandates are effective at increasing data sharing, but editorial policies at journals lack adequate enforcement. Although most of the data available at repositories are licensed to enable flexible reuse, only a small proportion of the data are stored in structured formats for easy reuse. We present some suggestions for improving the state of date sharing in archaeology; among these is a standard for citing datasets to ensure that researchers making their data publicly available receive appropriate credit.

This article employs comparative Bayesian chronology building to formally evaluate the quality of a legacy radiocarbon dataset from the southern Appalachian region of the southeastern United States and to interrogate the assumptions that form the basis of the extant chronological narrative for the region. By incorporating alternative assumptions into Bayesian models, a number of alternative chronological frameworks are developed and compared to one another to yield insights into the development of sociopolitical complexity across southern Appalachia between AD 600 and 1600. The treatment of alternative chronological models as working hypotheses concerning the timing, tempo, and nature of sociopolitical transformations makes use of legacy radiocarbon datasets in developing new research trajectories including the encouragement of renewed field- and lab-based investigations. As such, this article provides a case study to illustrate the value of Bayesian chronological modeling in assessing legacy radiocarbon datasets and reevaluating extant chronological frameworks. Beyond initial evaluation of extant datasets and narratives, the methods and procedures outlined below can be used to form baseline models against which newly acquired data can be formally incorporated and interpreted.