Enhancing Humanities Research Productivity in a Collaborative Data Sharing Environment

This project represents a multi-organizational, interdisciplinary effort to enhance collaborative research in cultural heritage fields by exploring user experience with Web-based technologies. The objective of this project is to document user needs around online systems for sharing primary data and documentation of cultural heritage collections. To this end, we will draw upon the experience and insights of representatives from different stakeholder groups in three broad arenas: academic researchers, heritage managers, and specialist communities. Investigations undertaken in this study will result in best-practice guidelines to guide humanities computing efforts on how to best meet the diverse user needs in future online data sharing systems. Using an iterative cycle of development, deployment, and evaluation, this project will enhance Open Context, a collaborative, open-access data sharing system already in use for archaeology and related disciplines

Open Content in Open Context

This article presents the challenges and rewards of sharing research content through a discussion of Open Context, a new open access data publication system for field sciences and museum collections. Open Context is the first data repository of its kind, allowing self-publication of research data, community commentary through tagging, and clear citation and stable hyperlinks, and Creative Commons licenses that make reusing content legal and easy.The Nov-Dec 2007 issue of Educational Technology magazine is an entire special issue dedicated to "Opening Educational Resources." A series of articles in this issue highlight open educational models, including OpenCourseWare, Connexions and this piece on Open Context, co-authored by Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa

An Open Context for Near Eastern Archaeology

The common use by archaeologists of ubiquitous technologies such as computers and digital cameras means that archaeological research projects now produce huge amounts of diverse, digital documentation. However, while the technology is available to collect this documentation, we still largely lack community-accepted dissemination channels appropriate for such torrents of data. Open Context aims to help fill this gap by providing open access data publication services for archaeology. Open Context has a flexible and generalized technical architecture that can accommodate most archaeological datasets, despite the lack of common recording systems or other documentation standards. It includes a variety of tools to make data dissemination easier and more worthwhile. Authorship is clearly identified through citation tools, including web-based publication systems that enable individuals to upload their own data for review, and collaboration is facilitated through easy download and "tagging" features. Near Eastern archaeologists will benefit from Open Context's flexibility to share a variety of content from diverse projects, no matter how large or small. This article was originally published in Near Eastern Archaeology (ISSN 1094-2076), Volume 70, Number 4, December 2007

Publishing and Pushing: Mixing Models for Communicating Research Data in Archaeology

We present a case study of data integration and reuse involving 12 researchers who published datasets in Open Context, an online data publishing platform, as part of collaborative archaeological research on early domesticated animals in Anatolia. Our discussion reports on how different editorial and collaborative review processes improved data documentation and quality, and created ontology annotations needed for comparative analyses by domain specialists. To prepare data for shared analysis, this project adapted editor-supervised review and revision processes familiar to conventional publishing, as well as more novel models of revision adapted from open source software development of public version control. Preparing the datasets for publication and analysis required significant investment of effort and expertise, including archaeological domain knowledge and familiarity with key ontologies. To organize this work effectively, we emphasized these different models of collaboration at various stages of this data publication and analysis project. Collaboration first centered on data editors working with data contributors, then widened to include other researchers who provided additional peer-review feedback, and finally the widest research community, whose collaboration is facilitated by GitHub’s version control system. We demonstrate that the “publish” and “push” models of data dissemination need not be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they can play complementary roles in sharing high quality data in support of research. This work highlights the value of combining multiple models in different stages of data dissemination

Publishing and pushing: Mixing models for communicating research data

We present a case study of data integration and reuse involving 12 researchers who published datasets in Open Context, an online data publishing platform, as part of collaborative archaeological research on early domesticated animals in Anatolia. Our discussion reports on how different editorial and collaborative review processes improved data documentation and quality, and created ontology annotations needed for comparative analyses by domain specialists. To prepare data for shared analysis, this project adapted editor-supervised review and revision processes familiar to conventional publishing, as well as more novel models of revision adapted from open source software development of public version control. Preparing the datasets for publication and analysis required significant investment of effort and expertise, including archaeological domain knowledge and familiarity with key ontologies. To organize this work effectively, we emphasized these different models of collaboration at various stages of this data publication and analysis project. Collaboration first centered on data editors working with data contributors, then widened to include other researchers who provided additional peer-review feedback, and finally the widest research community, whose collaboration is facilitated by GitHub’s version control system. We demonstrate that the “publish” and “push” models of data dissemination need not be mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they can play complementary roles in sharing high quality data in support of research. This work highlights the value of combining multiple models in different stages of data dissemination

Resource exploitation at late neolithic domuztepe: Faunal and botanical evidence

Domuztepe, in southeastern Turkey, is one of the largest known Late Neolithic sites in the Near East. Ecofactual remains recovered at Domuztepe indicate that the site’s inhabitants relied on a well‐established mixed economy of domestic plants and animals to sustain the settlement’s large population, which may have peaked at more than 1,500 people. Evidence of a long and continuous occupation of this site attests to a successful agropastoral economy, even though Domuztepe was situated at the intersection of uplands, an alluvial plain, and marshy zones, an environment not traditionally considered ideal for agriculture. Integrated faunal and botanical analyses explore the diversity of domestic and wild resources used by the site’s inhabitants. The typical suite of Near Eastern domesticates dominates the excavated assemblage, with sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and cereals prominent. In addition to a nutritional role, these food products were used for clothing, storage, and construction and had symbolic importance in ritual and prestige. Combined archaeobiological data point to a seasonal cycle of activities

Identifying Opportunities for Collective Curation During Archaeological Excavations

Archaeological excavations are comprised of interdisciplinary teams that create, manage, and share data as they unearth and analyse material culture. These team-based settings are ripe for collective curation during these data lifecycle stages. However, findings from four excavation sites show that the data interdisciplinary teams create are not well integrated. Knowing this, we recommended opportunities for collective curation to improve use and reuse of the data within and outside of the team

Identifying Opportunities for Collective Curation During Archaeological Excavations

Archaeological excavations are comprised of interdisciplinary teams that create, manage, and share data as they unearth and analyse material culture. These team-based settings are ripe for collective curation during these data lifecycle stages. However, findings from four excavation sites show that the data interdisciplinary teams create are not well integrated. Knowing this, we recommended opportunities for collective curation to improve use and reuse of the data within and outside of the team

Gazetteer of the Ancient Near East

This grant will support the creation of the Gazetteer of the Ancient Near East. The project’s goal is to develop an authoritative, open access geospatial index of archaeological sites and historical places in the Near East, spanning some twelve thousand years (c. 12,500-600 BCE). The project is based on software developed by the Pleiades project (http://pleiades.stoa.org/), an extant and successful model for open access Web-based gazetteers. By developing a gazetteer of Ancient Near East places, researchers will be able to link events, persons, and archaeological evidence through shared notions of place and time. Thus, this project will help scholars to bring together disparate lines of historical and archaeological evidence. In doing so, this project represents critically needed infrastructure to catalyze research in the Ancient Near East and serves as an exemplar for open, collaborative scholarship