The Curation Crisis
General facts:
1. Over digging. Generally, only 10% of artifacts are analyzed and successfully stored, with accessible metadata to researchers.
2. Publication is often behind, missing, or lacking.
3. Archaeological research, artifacts and metadata are rarely accessible to the public, and written for the archaeological community only. Curation of artifacts is made difficult and thus many collections are ORPHANED.
4. Lack of interoperable databases, info and access even within archaeology research community.
Post-Script: The Kharaneh IV project is not contributing highly to the curation crisis and actually examples successful and complete artifact processing. Publications are made and discussions and materials are public, but not catalogued as we would a collection for distributing information. Thus it was perfect for transition into an Omeka S site.
A Social Justice Issue
How do we connect information on past-cultures to the public (not just the archaeological community), during the analysis period that can often take years?
If knowledge sharing or modern development is the reasoning for gathering material culture, why are we not “curating” information as we learn?
CATALOGUING AND INFO-MANAGEMENT IS THE ANSWER!
De-Colonizing Archaeological Metadata
Personally, I didn’t like the final label on the tombstone to be “Credits” or “Contributors” when discussing how we recovered the resource, as it implied that a significance to the cultural material was the archaeological project itself, which I do not agree with. When discussing materials it should be focused on the culture, and mentalities ownership over those materials from a “finder” is perpetuated with the word Credit.
I decided to instead use SOURCE for the final label. There has to be some notation of the work and photos provided to me by the archaeological project as my resources for this information did derive from their studies. However, the key reason I kept SOURCE as a label was to identify where the PHYSICAL OBJECT can be currently located as well.