Chair: S. Paley, USA
Since excavations are increasingly using digital technologies, and there are literally hundreds of unpublished excavations, we call upon those colleagues, who are now rehabilitating old excavations using digital technologies, to discuss their methods. The purpose of this workshop is not only to share successes but also to discuss the problems of this kind of publication, perhaps to come to some common solutions of how to proceed where problems seem to challenge us. Many think that old, unpublished excavations are not worth the effort, that our modern approaches to archaeological excavation and analysis, which we think are “better” than those of our predecessors, belie the necessity to consider their work. If we as a group could show that the applications of digital technologies can rehabilitate the work of our teachers, and can tease out new information, that the application of new technologies can be done and well, then we have made a contribution to the general knowledge of all humanity.
Attractiveness to Funding Organizations
Archaeologists and historians who are seriously contemplating the ethical and practical issues surrounding the publication of unpublished excavations that lie in the file cabinets and storage closets of their institutions, whether their own or the work of others, scholars retired or passed on, might be interested in listening to colleagues who have taken up this challenge.