This does not belong in a museum! Digging for new Archaeology research on ScienceOpen

November 6, 2017 *

Modern research is about weaving together different strands of information, thought, and data to discover something we did not know before. At ScienceOpen, humanities research lives in harmony with Maths, Engineering and the Natural and Physical Sciences. We specialize in integrating research from across the humanities and social sciences from disciplines such as Linguistics with Brill, Literature, History and Cultural Studies with the Open Library of Humanities, and Psychology with Hogrefe. Our ever-expanding humanities section includes rare delights such as Medieval Heritage, Comics, or Greek Linguistics.

Integration leads to discovery

By working with a range of publishers and transcending disciplines, our research network constantly finds new connections for users to explore. This enriched context is based on article-level citation and reference analysis, with each nod, or link, in this network designed to expand the horizons of researchers and help them to discover previously unknown relevant research. Recently, we took the diverse field of Archaeology and integrated it into this mix to see what happens.

Our recent additions to the discipline include the Open Access Internet Archeology, and the researcher-led collection Digital Archaeology (edited by Dominik Hagmann). These latest additions fit beautifully in to our already existing Archaeology corpus of 9980 research articles, with the 5 colourful featured Archaeology journals by Equinox already thriving among them.

Let’s take a look at what all this new research has to offer! They reveal to us the material remains of ancient cultures, historical accounts of past lives, and tell us stories about what is it like doing Archaeology in a modern, digital research environment.

Internet Archaeology

Internet Archaeology is an Open Access, independent, not-for-profit journal. The journal is hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and digitally archived by the Archaeology Data Service. It explores the potential of digital publication through the inclusion of video, audio, searchable data sets, full-colour images, visualisations, animations and interactive mapping in the articles it publishes. Past, meet the present!

One of the core interests of the journal is how to use advanced technologies to produce, document, store, and interpret archaeological data. Exploring potentials in information technology through using laser scanners, 3D modeling, augmented reality systems, or software systems developed directly for archaeologists help to create a journal fit for the digital age. Such innovation also helps to make research more attractive and interactive, providing novel forms of multisensorial engagement with archaeological sites, artifacts, and cultural heritages.

Endeavors of exploring the past through future technology includes:

These emerging forms of archaeological practice and communication suggest that we have to rethink the stereotypical Indiana Jones archetypal archaeologist, bouncing all over the world hunting rare artifacts. I mean, he didn’t even have a laptop.

Making Archaeology more accessible

Digital media employed here make archaeological information and cultural heritage resources more accessible to a wider audience, especially to those who have no opportunity to visit and survey sites or artifacts in person. Along with this aim, a huge portion of articles share good practices of how to put e-infrastructure and digital tools in service of data sharing, dissemination and public engagement and how to turn archaeological production not only to a publicly available common good but also to an enjoyable experience.

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Being indexed on ScienceOpen (a digital tool for public engagement itself) will contribute to all these aims as it helps the journal:

To reach out to readers and gain increased visibility and re-use of research;
To open up research for post publication peer review, commenting and recommendation options;
To make the articles available for content curation in our topical collections.

Digital Archaeology

Creating “virtual journals” from all available articles on ScienceOpen is one of the many ways you can interact with research on our platform. Building a research hub for your own topical selections of articles allows you to make decisions on where to focus the attention of your research community, and also enables you to construct your own research narratives. A very useful resource to share with students coming into the field.

As its title suggests, the Digital Archaeology collection focuses on contemporary aspects from the diverse scope of modern Archaeology. The collection gives an overview of tools, methods, and theories derived from information and communications technology available for archaeological research. As such, it offers a theoretical and methodological toolkit to all different sub-disciplines in the whole field of archaeology for studying and preserving past knowledge in an increasingly digital word.

Relevant articles are collected from more than 20 journals including the Journal of archaeological science, Open Archaeology, or World archaeology. Having a look at the collection, you can also see a natural intersection with Internet Archaeology.

It’s always a great pleasure for us to see new researcher-led collections to emerge on our platform as this is a sure sign of the experts and the content finding each other on ScienceOpen. These interactions initiate a continuous knowledge generation built up as a community process. Oh, we also have over 200 now! How cool is that?

We have place for your research narratives as well. Share with us how the digital era has impacted or even transformed your field of interest or tell us a story about the context of your own research by creating your ScienceOpen collection. You can find some basic instructions on building one here, and can get editorial status by dropping us an email/tweet to let us know that you’re interested.