Working Groups/archaeology/nationalstandards

= National standards for archeological data (DRAFT) =

This is a draft of questions made by the Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology that should find an answer for each country, grouped by type. Draft answers follow some question to help understanding.

The idea is to “follow” data in their formation process, starting from fieldwork (excavation, survey) and going on. This will help us getting a wider picture about who is producing archaeological data, who is their owner and what are the rules and policies that regulate their creation and dissemination. Initially we mixed here both policies and technical standards, but for the moment being, we would like to limit our goal to access and dissemination policies.

Once we have a satisfying set of questions, we will create a questionnaire and distribute it via Google forms. It will be useful to have a contact person for each country to help with crowdsourcing. Translating the questionnaire might be useful at that stage.

Excavation

 * who has the right to (allow someone else to) do an archaeological excavation ?
 * basically, in countries with restrictive laws like Italy and Greece, it's the State who has this right and only the Ministry can perform excavation and archaeological field research in general - or give someone else permission to do so (Universities, etc)
 * is some kind of archaeological documentation/data required after the excavation ?
 * in Italy, detailed documentation is due to the Ministry for each excavation, including context sheets, artifact records and general description of the site
 * (if yes to the above) is there a required/recommended standard for documentation?

More free questions:
 * can anyone take a picture of an ongoing excavation (and possibly of features and artifacts found there) ?
 * is there a requirement for publication of excavation reports ?
 * (if yes to the above) is there a time deadline for publishing excavation reports ?
 * (if yes to the above) is there an official journal or other means of publication that is endorsed/recommended by the Ministry ?
 * who has the property right over artifacts found during excavation ?

Survey

 * do you need to ask permission before doing intensive survey ?
 * are there concerns that public dissemination of site locations might cause/favour looting ?

National and regional archives

 * do national/regional archives/catalogues of archaeological sites/artifacts exist ?
 * are these archives in digital form ?
 * are these archives available to the public or just to the archiving body for internal uses ?
 * is there a technical standard for digital archives of cultural heritage artifacts ?
 * (if yes to the above) is the standard enforced/required/recommended ?

Museums

 * is anyone free to take pictures in musems ?
 * do musems put catalogues of their objects on the web, with description and pictures ?