Making the Most of Cyberinfrastructure

For the 2010 SAA / DDIG Electronic Symposium

Dean R. Snow
The Pennsylvania State University

Abstract
Problems in cyberinfrastructure development fall into strategic, tactical, and technical categories. I argue that we tend to focus on the last and neglect the other two, to the potential detriment of archaeology. Disciplines vary in what are considered data, the sizes of data sets, the ease of data acquisition, standards of confidentiality, when and how data should be made public, and opinions regarding what should be preserved over the long term. Current efforts to foster cyberinfrastructure in the social and behavioral sciences are dominated by social scientists who tend to work with large survey data sets on a narrow range of problems. While there is considerable variation in standards and objectives within anthropology alone, anthropological standards and practices fall largely outside the realm of the dominant social sciences. Standards and practices in archaeology are at particular risk of being marginalized as science moves forward in this critically important endeavor. This paper discusses ways in which archaeologists can establish links to other disciplines having similar strategic and tactical goals so that archaeology is not left behind in the larger cyberinfrastructure effort.

Download full paper (here).