Contexts, Connections, and Clovis: Opportunities for Collaboration Between Information Scientists and Archaeologists
Justin P. Williams, Rachel Williams · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 2018
Our poster discusses the potential for collaboration between information scientists and archaeologists. In particular, this poster uses a case study of Clovis spear points to illustrate the importance of collaboration between the two disciplines in order to better understand the management of archaeological data. These artifacts are rare and are curated at widespread utilities across North America. We argue that the focus of collaboration between information scientists and archaeologists should be shifted from field methods to understanding data management practices along with digital metadata acquisition and maintenance. Research in this area should also focus on understanding the innovative data creation and curation approaches archaeologists taken given time and resource constraints. In addition, we will also use the preliminary results of a survey of archaeologists’ research data management practices to help support the potential avenues for collaboration. While the Clovis dataset is informative, many other archaeological datasets could benefit from the attention of information scientists.