Chair: S. Paley USA
For the last congress, we received a small number of papers and participants for this workshop. The workshop was however well-attended, suggesting that the issues raised are important to the academy. We would like to repeat this workshop during the October meeting. Questions that we suggest could be raised in this workshop are: Do we abandon old data to the dusty storerooms and file cabinets? Do we view the issue of (re)publishing old excavations in digital format a critical issue not only from a heritage point of view, but also from the research point of view? What new ideas have occurred to us because we use digital technologies to rework old excavation data? Are there more efficient ways of publishing? Is the web an appropriate portal for disseminating our results or should they be stand-alone publications on DVD or CD-ROM, or combined with hard copy? Are we ethically bound to publish the unpublished, if the original research is not our own? Since excavations are increasingly using digital technologies, and there remain literally hundreds of unpublished excavations, we again call upon our colleagues who are “revisiting” old excavations using digital technologies to discuss their methods.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. 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 well, then we may gain more support for these efforts and will have made a contribution to the general knowledge of all humanity.