Abstract
Archaeological data are relevant to research conducted in diverse fields. The rapid destruction of sites worldwide means benefitting from those findings depends on reviewing the only traces of past human activities that survive: original field records produced during archaeological investigations. The volume of these materials makes publishing them financially prohibitive, visiting archaeological repositories is costly in time and money, and handling paper records is destructive. Making information about ancient socio-cultural processes available for use, therefore, requires digitizing and posting online all archaeological field records. The resulting archives enhance multidisciplinary research, high impact practices in classes about the human past, and the ability of different constituents to engage their histories directly through the archives. Achieving these aims requires collaboration among archaeologists, librarians, IT professionals, and varied stakeholders to design protocols and test prototypes for digital archives. Few initiatives have been launched to achieve these goals.
This chapter reviews efforts to digitize, post, and use in and outside the classroom the results of archaeological research conducted from 1983 to 2013 across four valleys in northwest Honduras. The collection contains surveys of 941 sites, records pertaining to excavations conducted at 180 settlements, and analyses of over 1 million artifacts that, together, document nearly 3000 years of human accomplishments. In addition to describing how this work proceeded, examples of how the collection is being used in teaching and research are provided. Readers are directed to the archive itself (http://digital.kenyon.edu/honduras/) where they can explore the collection and experiment with the various ways it can be used.
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to the Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and Kenyon College who have generously supported the Four Valleys Project throughout its history. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Geographic Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, the Margaret Cullinan Wray Fund, California State University Stanislaus, and Kenyon College for their unstinting support of the field research, and undergraduate involvement in those investigations, that generated the Four Valleys archive. The work that constitutes the collection was conducted under the auspices of, and in cooperation with, the Instituto Hondureño de Antropologia e Historia (IHAH), the Honduran government agency that oversees anthropological and archaeological research in that nation. It has been an honor to collaborate with the first-rate directors and staff of this institution as it has been to work with the very many Honduran women and men who were our colleagues in the field and hosts in their communities. The project staff, both in Honduras and in the United States, has been instrumental to the success of the efforts briefly outlined here. We would like to single out Ms. Sharon Fair, Project Administrator of the Four Valleys archive, for her unflagging and critical contributions to the project from the beginning. We have also been considerably aided by the staff of Kenyon’s Finance Department, especially Ms. Terry Karpinsky and Ms. Cathy Riel, who have greatly helped us to manage project funds. It has been a real pleasure to work closely with so many fine colleagues. To all of the above belong the praise for whatever has been accomplished on the Four Valleys Project while all shortcomings in the work remain the responsibility of the authors.
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Schortman, E., Bell, E.E., Nolt, J., Urban, P. (2020). The Past Is Prologue: Preserving and Disseminating Archaeological Data Online. In: Crowder, J., Fortun, M., Besara, R., Poirier, L. (eds) Anthropological Data in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24925-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24925-0_9
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