Towards improved archaeological archiving in Scotland

Abstract

Excavated artefacts that have clear contextual records are much more informative than those that have none. Twelve distinctive pins found scattered across a site might be taken to indicate that they were common among the people who lived there. However, if the pins were known to have been found together then a range of different interpretations might come to mind drawing information from the context in which they were found. In interpreting artefacts, understanding the find context is every bit as important as understanding the physical properties of the objects themselves. Contextual information however, may be hard to come by in the archives, or hard to understand for researchers without prior knowledge of the site. It ought to be possible to archive archaeological object and site information in such a way that researchers can navigate between artefacts, contexts, site plans and photographs. This paper proposes information groupings that might be created relatively simply in the excavation, post-excavation or archiving process in order to make research information more easily accessible than it is at present. Some changes in practice will be very simple. Others may not be so easy or so cheap, but if we do not do all that we can to create archaeological archives that are intellectually accessible then we fail the public we serve.