Cite this as: Novák, D., Kuna, M. and Lecbychová, O. 2021 Taming the Beast. Approaches to Digital Archiving in Czech Archaeology, Internet Archaeology 58. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.58.5
As in other countries, Czech archaeology has embarked on a journey of digitisation. This creates the need to cope with the rapid growth of digital data, which must be stored securely over the long term and be accessible in a comprehensible and useful way. This causes several problems. Although there is a centralised and well-resourced digital agenda that meets the requirements of the Heritage Law, outdated legislation and the absence of comprehensive rules do nothing to regulate the management of the most valuable data - the primary documentation of fieldwork events. At present, only summary information on archaeological fieldwork and the final reports, which should contain a substantial selection of documentation, are centrally collected and stored. This is a situation that is difficult to accept as primary (raw) data with a greater information value is disappearing into thin air. The premise for change lies in supplying the existing central infrastructure - The Archaeological Information System of the Czech Republic (AIS CR) - with the tools to acquire and archive primary data on a larger scale, while at the same time, amending the legal obligations imposed on archaeological practitioners. Sustainable change requires a significant overhaul of the current concept, objectives and especially the practice of archaeological fieldwork projects, particularly in the planning and post-excavation phases.
Corresponding author: David Novák
novak@arup.cas.cz
Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Martin Kuna
Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Olga Lečbychová
Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno
Figure 1: The number of field intervention notifications by region based on the AMCR data. The comparison of sub-periods suggests a positive trend in coverage rates across regions, but also significant differences in archaeological heritage care performance. Created by D. Novák
Table 1: Accessibility of archive collections in individual archaeological organisations based on data from a questionnaire survey. Figures show the proportion of institutions making the collections accessible in a way as specified. Compiled by D. Novák
Table 2: Data types usage in Czechia based on responses to a questionnaire survey of archaeological data curators. Compiled by D. Novák
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