Judith Winters, Julian Richards and Mike Heyworth

Introduction

Excavation and fieldwork inevitably creates large quantities of computer-generated information either during fieldwork or in the assessment, analysis or dissemination stages of any project. In this digital era, depending on the nature of the research, data can now go straight into a digital archive or at the other end of the spectrum, be published in fully digital format in for example an electronic journal. The aim of this paper is to explore the boundaries that currently exist between electronic publishing and digital archiving. We will argue that such a division may actually be missing the opportunity to create an integrated and use-able end product.

A little background

Internet Archaeology (http://intarch.ac.uk) is the first fully peer-reviewed electronic journal for archaeology. It was founded in 1995, with funding from the UK Electronic Libraries programme. The project is run by a consortium of UK universities working in partnership with the Council for British Archaeology and the British Academy. It is based in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. The first issue was published in Autumn 1996 and we are now just about to embark on our 10th issue. We have set ourselves the task of publishing articles of a high academic standing which also try to utilise the potential of electronic publication. At present, we have over 26,500 registered readers as well as a growing number of institutional subscribers. We publish articles on archaeology anywhere in the world (as well as the British Isles, we have published articles on aspects of the archaeology of Australia, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Spain, and Senegal, and some forthcoming papers are on the archaeology of Ecuador, Portugal and Java - none as yet on North American archaeology!). Readers are drawn from over 120 countries.

Some 50 articles have been published in the journal so far. Many elements within articles consist of what could be termed the "bells and whistles". These exploit a range of multimedia and hypermedia techniques, including on-line clickable maps and time-lines, searchable databases, VRML and QTVR visualisations, as well as large numbers of colour images. Each article makes extensive use of hypertext links and several of our contributions would, if printed by traditional means, amount to substantial monographs.

For example: talk to [SLIDE - timeline/data] Allan Peacey article in issue 1 - substantial text on clay pipe kilns in Britain since 1630 AD. Alongside the text and images that might make up an equivalent print publication, the article also consists of a fully searchable database of known kilns (the evidence that makes up the basis of the thesis) searchable by a 'conventional' query form, but also via a clickable timeline.

Same article - kiln data information also retrievable by map interface.

Internet Archaeology has no print equivalent. A frequently expressed concern for material published on the web is the question of longevity. This is a cultural issue stemming from the transient nature of content that too often appears fleetingly somewhere on the Internet and then changes or disappears. Internet Archaeology has deliberately taken the policy of not changing content once it has been published, even if mistakes are discovered, or if new data would render an interpretation obsolete. Such changes would be dealt with, as with print publication, by subsequent addenda and new editions.

The contents of the journal are archived with the Archaeology Data Service (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk), whose remit is the long-term preservation of digital research materials. (quote "To collect, catalogue, preserve and encourage the re-use of digital research data created by archaeologists") Thus we have taken all reasonable steps to make sure that our content will be as durable as a hard copy volume.

So, for 5 years now, IA has been able to accommodate the growing requirements of scholars wishing to publish their already digital products in a purely digital form and to present their work in ways that essentially cannot be done on paper, and the wide range of multimedia and the modes of presentation used in the journal has gone some way to show just what can be possible within web publications, addressing in the process some of the problems highlighted by the Frere report written in 1975.

In 1975, the Frere report was particularly concerned to address the problem of how to publish an ever-increasing quantity of archaeological data in UK. The situation is probably not so different in North America. Quote: "We must constantly remind ourselves that future generations of scholars will ask questions which cannot be anticipated today. For this reason mere preservation of significant results in non-published form is insufficient, but that publication in full detail has become an economic impossibility..it will be necessary, in future, to consider a refined publication with synthesised descriptions, supported data, selected finds and specialist reports, as the objective for all rescue excavation reports"

[SLIDE - Frere levels of publication]

The report put forward a model for archaeological projects which saw data managed at a series of levels. This last point - interpretative description of the site, together with evidence supporting it, and, accessibility (something that a subsequent report highlighted) - has always been the problem with print publications. Therefore, in the electronic environment with the relative ease of dissemination and linking, the question must be asked - how can we achieve the links between interpretation and archive and make them use-able?

[SLIDE - levels of dissemination]

As Frere's report revealed, different types of project produce different types of archive and will consequently have different dissemination strategies. An equivalent phased approach to digital archiving and publishing can also be implemented and it is the fourth and last phase that is of particular interest here. For those interested in this in more detail, you are directed to the ADS website and their Guides to Good Practice on Digital Archives from Excavation and Fieldwork.

For many valid reasons, Internet Archaeology has maintained the division between archive and publication. One remit early in IA's history, was to encourage culture change and challenge the perception that the Internet was a dumping ground and that reputable archaeologists did not publish there. However our experience is now revealing that by perpetuating the division between archive and publication in the electronic environment, we may actually be missing the opportunity to create an 'integrated archive', where the raw data _over and above that which IA publishes already_ is articulated with the text of the report, where users would be able to query the entire spectrum of data through a range of interfaces. Although the beginnings of this kind of dissemination have been found in the journal since the beginning, we have recently started to develop our already close relationship with the Archaeology Data Service and moving beyond the theory, have started to explore the integrated archive in practice.

THE INTEGRATED ARCHIVE

The idea of a fully integrated publication and online archive is to allow users to explore the links between interpretation and underlying data through a variety of interfaces, including maps, plans and other graphical means. This is not the mere 'emptying of the contents of notebooks on a reader's head is not publication. A mass of statements which have no point, and do not appear to lead to any conclusion or generalisation, cannot be regarded as efficient publication' (Flinders-Petrie). We strongly believe that the published report should still interpret the site in the light of the original research agenda. It can 'tell a story' but that the complete dataset is also made available, and linked to the interpretation so that users can examine the assumptions and framework upon which the interpretations rest.

[SLIDE - West Heslerton]

IA are currently in dialogue with English Heritage to publish the full final report on the excavations at a site in N.Yorkshire - West Heslerton as a form of 'integrated archive'. Final publication will cover 5 settlement and 2 cemetery reports. But additional features will include multiple interpretations, queries, extra illustrative material plus an online GIS, online searchable dataset as well as links to research archive held by ADS. Likley to appear in a year or so.

A little closer in time however, a publication (out within the next week or so) will be putting our formative ideas into practice.

[SLIDE - Millett snippets]

Article: Prof. Martin Millett and colleagues are publishing in IA the final report after of a 5 year field survey in northern Portugal, where 48 new sites (Iron Age and Roman) were identified based on fieldwalking finds densities. The publication will include the usual fare of text with embedded html links direct to online data, author interpretation & images, e.g. more/less detailed tile and pottery analysis, finds density analysis, geophysics survey results. And even (almost usually!) for Internet Archaeology, a series of searchable online databases of the complete fieldwalking data (855 fields), the full pottery & tile data (over 5000 entries), and the pottery and tile densities, that in turn allowed the authors to suggest new site locations.

[SLIDE - Millett download]

The digital archive of the survey has been deposited with ADS in its ArchSearch catalogue and it will include all the raw data files that make up the journal online databases (e.g. pottery, tile, brick finds field by field). The archive will also include the full geo-spatial data (GIS) as well as all the images and analyses created from the GIS analysis, as well as geophysical survey plots and interpretations. All of these files are available for everyone to download and work with offline.

[SLIDE - Millett pottery db query in journal - image pulled up from digital archive]

But these two, in the past separate, entities, have been interwoven, and the journal publication links not just to the archive download page but it actually retrieves data from the archive while apparently still 'within' the publication. For example as in this slide: the images from the digital archive are retrieved when a query from a database within the journal is made.

This is a small but not insignificant step. There has been a shift from demonstration to praxis - from showing what is possible in the medium, virtues of which we do not need to dwell on to this audience, to integrating the text and data in a practical, useful and use-able way.

[SLIDE - summary points]

• The levels of data that are offered make it easier to accommodate a greater variety of users and readers of our texts. The detail is there for those who wish it. Ultimately, this might force us to reconsider what we say in our e-publications and how we say it.
• In the past, in print, the archive has been the invisible and rarely-accessed element of fieldwork publications. An integrated digital publication and archive allows users to pass seamlessly from the interpretation to the raw data and back and forth and back again... Evidence can be immediately queried, and the assumptions upon which conclusions are based can be questioned and assessed. The offering up of data in this way could, it might be argued, allow for more active readers and users of the data.
• Finally, the data is more closely bound to the interpretation and vice versa - they inform each other. The interpretation gives a new, immediate context and structure to the data. In turn, the data offer up new levels upon which to build an understanding of the interpretation and its framework - reducing ambiguity and providing a deeper understanding. Such a circular, reflexive relationship might widen the dialectic potential between the material and the readers of it - the act of interrogation, itself now more explicit, becomes a new and powerful tool. This has implications for us all. It will open up our interpretations to more detailed scrutiny, and we will in turn have to query our own data and question and face up to what we think it really means.

[SLIDE - publication/archive dead?]

Final thoughts

Given the diversity of readership that web-based journals like IA can demonstrate, the offering up of research interpretation and data as one 'seamless' resource will certainly have wide-reaching implications on the relationships that we as archaeologists have with others outside the discipline as well as having a profound impact on the practice of archaeology itself - not least on the acquisition of our data in the field.

So to conclude: the distinction between Publication and Archive totally dead...or is it? No! Not totally obsolete. Archaeologists still have an obligation to tell a story and to back it up with evidence.

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