Abstract
This article provides a brief overview of archaeological digital archiving in Turkey. It introduces the legal framework and the stakeholders involved in conducting archaeological excavations and surveys. The current situation in archiving born-digital and digitised documentation produced during archaeological fieldwork is then introduced. Existing repositories serving as hubs for archaeological and heritage archiving are listed and briefly discussed. Analysis of online publishing practices for archaeological digital resources points to an eclectic landscape that only minimally complies with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. We conclude that guidelines for best practice in metadata and semantic technologies, locally applicable standards (especially controlled vocabularies), technical know-how, and a larger acceptance of open data and scholarship remain much-needed assets for archaeological digital archiving in Turkey. We also conclude that the future promises progress towards more interoperable archaeological digital archives thanks to international training, network and knowledge transfer opportunities (e.g. SEADDA Project).
Highlights
The same Development Plans (DPs) assert that all state inventories and any type of documentation should be transformed into digital format (State Planning Organisation 2006; 2014; 2019)
The need for databases by various archaeological projects and individual researchers associated with public and academic institutions during these thirty years led to the creation of individual databases as closed systems, i.e. data silos
Digital gazetteers exist covering archaeological sites in Turkey (e.g. Getty TGN, Pleiades), resolving the issue of toponyms, verifying existing data and aligning different gazetteers still requires a lot of work
Summary
This article provides a brief overview of archaeological digital archiving in Turkey. It introduces the legal framework and the stakeholders involved in conducting archaeological excavations and surveys. The current situation in archiving born-digital and digitised documentation produced during archaeological fieldwork is introduced. Analysis of online publishing practices for archaeological digital resources points to an eclectic landscape that only minimally complies with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. We conclude that guidelines for best practice in metadata and semantic technologies, locally applicable standards (especially controlled vocabularies), technical know-how, and a larger acceptance of open data and scholarship remain much-needed assets for archaeological digital archiving in Turkey. We conclude that the future promises progress towards more interoperable archaeological digital archives thanks to international training, network and knowledge transfer opportunities (e.g. SEADDA Project)
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