Special Issue

Discusses issues surrounding public access to archaeological data and results in relation to the current situation in the UK and in the context of the DART project: an Open Science research project.

Discusses the background of digital participatory culture, the current entanglement of open source, open access, and for-profit technology in archaeology, and offers a challenge: to create a more ubiquitous, reflexive, open and participatory archaeology on both the institutional and the individual level.

Examines the impact of new approaches to open data sharing, collaborative web tools and social media on the sustainability of archaeological data.

Discusses how new geospatial capabilities enable communities of stakeholders and interest groups to contribute, participate, and draw upon spatial data and mapping services formerly in the domain of expert geospatial and archaeological communities.

Begins with a discussion of the extent to which the expansion of the web has caused fundamental changes in the ways that communities are engaging with participatory events and of how technological developments are providing new platforms for communication. Accompanying these developments there have also been rapid changes in the make-up of communities, which in turn requires that we think differently about the nature of the community itself. Argues that the established methodological approaches of community archaeology must be reconsidered from the perspective of the web, so that we can better integrate online communication with current forms of community engagement. It focuses on the impact of open data on community archaeology's current methods for working with communities and concludes that the project-based approach to community archaeology and the traditional hierarchical structures of archaeological practice are no longer appropriate in the face of the open approaches to knowledge fostered by the web. Also discusses important issues that arise when integrating open data into community archaeology, including Open Data Commons licensing, the reuse of data and the re-contextualisation of legacy data.