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The
corpus of knowledge on archaeological finds is under threat
to date. The seriousness of this threat is felt to be different
in every country, but is recognised as an actual fact or as
a situation to be expected if current developments continue.
As we all know, the study of material culture, be it of individual
finds or assemblages or complete material categories, forms
the very core of archaeology and archaeological heritage management.
By combining this knowledge of the actual finds and the knowledge
of similar finds found sometime earlier and somewhere else
a continuous accumulation of knowledge takes place.
No archaeological story can be told, no theory can be developed,
without the study of finds. Archaeological heritage management
can only be justified when backed up by solid theory.
What
are these threats?
The Treaty of Valetta has put archaeology definitively on
the map. The principle of the "polluter pays" has
caused a much more serious involvement of City and County
Councils and contracting firms with archaeology. Archaeology
had to adjust itself to the new environment of these firms
and bodies. Not the load of excavation work and subsequent
researches and publications grew tremendously, also many more
people became involved in the process. If this is not enough
we see the emergence of a unified Europe, of great impact
on the way we can and are obliged to operate. Effective communication
between all these players, of which many hop from job to job,
change from specialist to manager and back again poses a challenge
to our traditional means of knowledge sharing. Paper publications
and attending conferences alone are not enough anymore.
To date it is hard to keep track of what is going on next
door. Who is doing what and where. If you want detail information
on material culture to whom should you turn to? Where can
you find specimens to study? Who has published on the subject.
And what name is it given in what determination system? How
should I treat my finds.
There are many more societal developments that together act
as a danger to the body of knowledge we accumulated so far.
Take for example the unbalanced population pyramid of people
involved in knowledge accumulation in archaeology. Our tutors,
who traditionally were very keen on material culture studies,
are leaving the profession at a fast pace. Of course they
produced many a standard work on specific topics. But much
more knowledge has not been published. The dwindling numbers
of specialists means that we may have as little as ten years
left to do something about it. Fortunately new information
technology offers us new means, besides the traditional publications
on paper, to safeguard their knowledge and make it widely
available to archaeologists and the interested public in the
future..
It is these kinds of questions we think we can tackle by a
co-operated effort to launch National Reference Collections
web sites, of which the data structures are accessible, and
presented, in a similar and fully transparent way.
In this workshop we will discuss, with as many interested
attendants as possible, how we think this should and could
be done.
There are two main themes:
what kind of services do we want to offer on the web sites?
how can we finance this?
The consortium will present thoughts and idea's, some pretty
developed, some immature, on how they think how we can make
things happen.
The paradox is that the success of archaeology is at the same
time a great threat to the profession. New ways of knowledge
management have to be developed and implemented now, to keep
pace with developments. The InterNational Reference Collections
is one. We hope you will help us with this development.
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