Federated Data Tools for Archaeology

Canberra.
The next speaker in this session at DHA 2012 is Shawn Ross, presenting the NeCTAR federated archaeological information management systems project. This is a major, multi-partner project which aims to manage digital data from creation to archival.

The idea here is to break data out of ‘destination Website’ silos, and to develop a federated rather than centralised system; it utilises existing resources wherever possible, and encourages the use of portable, machine-readable, and reusable data.

Archaeological data usage is still very eclectic, and often remains largely paper-based; the use of digital systems remains limited, and this needs to change. The project aims to provide mobile fieldwork tools (on laptops and tablets) which then feed their data into federated data management, storage, and research platforms. This will provide a level of flexibility to enable customisation to user preferences in their fieldwork approach.

The problems here is that data are produced in many and varied formats, and few widely accepted standards exist. There is a need to develop more shared and/or compatible ontologies, but it’s also important to note that comprehensive datasets probably won’t work, but that they’ll need to remain context-specific.