Some Fragments on the Future of Archaeological Publishing 3

Yesterday, I started writing again after about two weeks of puttering around with other things. It was a bit like going on run after a few weeks away. It was painful and I was proud to avoid vomiting.

That said, it wasn’t a good writing day. It was dutiful and not entirely unproductive. As the saying goes, I now have something to edit.

Here’s a very drafty-draft of the introduction to the paper that David Pettegrew and I are writing to submit to the Journal of Field Archaeology for their 50th anniversary issue. The paper is titled “Mobilizing the Archaeological Report for the Future Interpretive Community: Linked Open Data, Analysis, and Publication” and I’ve blogged about it a few times already (and you can follow the links here):

Archaeologists conduct fieldwork with the goal of sharing results through publications and reports. Whether completed to meet core professional expectations, to fulfill requirements of public funding, or to build careers, archaeologists do their best work when they have a sharp sense of outcome and purpose. For 50 years, the Journal of Field Archaeology has complemented its commitment to reflexive field practices and methods have with critical reflections on archaeological writing and publishing (e.g. ; Opitz and JFA 11 [1981]). In particular, contributors to the JFA have sought to address how the practice of publishing both shapes and is shaped by the profession. As field methods, ethical commitments, and professional conditions have changed, so has publishing adapted to reflect and at times inspire and accelerate these changes. The JFA 11.1 featured a pair of essays on the ethical issues surrounding the publication of unprovenienced artifacts often acquired on the art market in the 1980s by James Wiseman, then JFA editor, and Oscar White Muscalla of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These essays continue to attract citations well into the 21st century reflecting their contribution to what remains a sticky issue for archaeologists. More recently, contributors to the JFA have added to the long standing critique of gender balance in publishing and brought continued attention to persistence inequality in our profession (Hanscam and Witcher JFA 48 [2023]). At the same time, JFA contributors have recognized the role of technological change in creating both new possibilities and new challenges for archaeological publishing. Rachel Opitz’s article in volume 43, “Publishing Archaeological Excavations at the Digital Turn,” serves as a point of departure for our contribution this issue. 

Following Opitz, we recognize the transformative impact of digital technology on how we report, present, and publish archaeological knowledge. In particular, we share her excitement about the potential of data-embedded scholarship to produce more open-ended kinds of publications that both challenge the traditional notion of a “final report” and attract new audiences to reports and volumes. Our contribution to this issue will offer another case study which shares the spirit, if not the approach of Opitz’s innovative Gabii project. We will also argue that the deployment of digital technologies reflect and shape both the priorities in archaeological publishing and also the role of publishing how our discipline produces knowledge. In this way, our contribution expands on Opitz’s observation that the Gabii project emerged from a collaboration with the University of Michigan Press. 

The follow paper explores the development and publication of David Pettegrew’s book Corinthian Countrysides: Linked Open Data from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey, published in collaboration with William Caraher, the publisher at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. This goal of this book was to introduce to as broad an audience as possible the history, methods, and data from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS), an intensive Aegean-style survey project that ran from 1999-2003 in Greece. By presenting EKAS datasets to a wider audience Pettegrew sought to encourage a plurality of interpretations both by offering context for the complex datasets associated with the survey, and by demonstrating how the survey data can support historical and archaeological arguments. Pettegrew developed this approach in collaboration with William Caraher who directs The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and who worked on EKAS. Caraher developed The Digital Press as a collaborative, laboratory publisher that works closely with authors to produce works that reflect distinct approaches to their scholarship. This approach, common to the “scholar-led publishing movement” seeks to break down the barriers that separated publishing from academic work. As this article will show, this promotes and amplifies the kind of conviviality at the core of ongoing conversations about publishing as a key part of archaeological knowledge making. Moreover, many of conversations and cooperation that occurred as part of this convivial practice sought to engage critically with how digital tools and traditional publishing can work to support a wider range of archaeological knowledge and archaeological arguments. It is this conviviality in archaeological work starting in the field and continuing through the publishing process that can inspire archaeologists and their audiences to do their best work.