Digital Data Curation and Access: Why You and Your Organization Should be Actively Involved -- An ACRA White Paper

Most are aware that the curation of archaeological and historical data and associated records has been a challenge for quite some time. Adequate curation of objects and associated records has received significant attention in the past two decades; however, professional archaeologists within academia, the Cultural Resources Management (CRM) industry, and federal and state agencies are keenly aware that we need to do more, if we are to successfully preserve our heritage, advance evidence-based understandings of the human past, and fulfill an obligation to serve as stewards of the archaeological record of human history (e.g., Society for American Archaeology 1996). Archaeologists increasingly recognize that addressing our most pressing social and intellectual problems (Kintigh et al. 2014) demands comparative and synthetic research (Altschul et al. 2018). Archaeology uniquely provides access to the long term social and environmental dynamics that must be understood to address important contemporary problems. Archaeology’s long-term perspective is essential because key processes operate so slowly that they are only perceptible over centuries or millennia. An archaeological perspective illuminates and enables the synthesis of information concerning the initial conditions and the outcomes of thousands of completed social “experiments” in the past. The needed synthetic research critically depends upon access to the vast corpus of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data that the CRM industry has generated over the last 50 years. If we are to leverage those data to advance our knowledge of the past and for the benefit of the public, the data must reside in repositories where they are easily discovered, accessed, used, and preserved for future uses.多数人都知晓，考古与历史数据及相关记录的整理工作，长期以来始终是一项棘手的难题。近二十年来，文物及相关记录的规范化整理已受到广泛关注；然而，学术界、文化资源管理（Cultural Resources Management, CRM）行业以及联邦与州级机构中的专业考古学者都清醒地意识到，若要切实保护文化遗产、推进基于实证的人类历史研究，并切实履行作为人类历史考古记录守护者的职责（例如美国考古学会1996年报告），我们仍需付出更多努力。 考古学者日益认识到，破解当前最为紧迫的社会与学术难题（Kintigh等人2014年研究），需要开展比较与综合研究（Altschul等人2018年研究）。考古学独有的优势在于，它能让研究者获取长期的社会与环境动态数据，而要解决当下诸多重大问题，这类数据不可或缺。考古学的长期视角至关重要，因为许多关键进程的演变极为缓慢，仅能在数百年乃至数千年的尺度下才能被观测到。考古学视角能够阐明并助力整合过往数千项已然完成的社会‘实验’的初始条件与最终结果相关的信息。 所需的综合研究，核心依赖于获取文化资源管理行业过去50年间生成的海量考古、民族志与历史数据集。若要利用这些数据深化对人类过往的认知并造福公众，这些数据必须被妥善存放于档案库中，以便于后世发现、获取、使用与长期保存。