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Guides to Good Practice

Logo for tDAR, The Digital Archaeological Record, a service of Digital AntquityThe Guides to Good Practice have been produced as the result of a two-year collaborative project between the UK Archaeology Data Service and Digital Antiquity in the US. The project has encompassed important revisions of the existing six ADS Guides as well as the development of entirely new documents covering areas such as marine survey, laser scanning, close-range photogrammetry, digital audio and digital video. The project has involved previous Guides authors revising existing content alongside new authors, from both Europe and the US, also contributing to the development of the guides into new themes and areas.

The project has been undertaken in collaboration with the Digital Antiquity initiative, a US-based project with the aim of enhancing the preservation of and access to digital records of archaeological investigations. A major aim of the Guides is to provide the basis for archaeological project workflows that will create digital datasets that can be archived and shared effectively by Digital Antiquity’s tDAR archive and repository in the US and by the Archaeology Data Service in the UK. The development of the Guides involves close collaboration with teams in the US at both the University of Arkansas and Arizona State University.

Other ADS projects have also fed into the revision and development of the Guides. ADS involvement in the European VENUS project has formed the basis of a guide focused on marine survey. In addition, the incorporation of findings from the ADS Big Data project, together with the revision of the existing guide on aerial photography and remote sensing data, has seen a significant contribution to the guides from English Heritage funded projects.

Two new hard copy Guides to Good Practice, ”Caring for Digital Data in Archaeology” and ”Geophysical Data in Archaeology” are also now available to purchase from Oxbow Books.

Funders of the Guides to Good Practice:

ACE – Archaeology in contemporary Europe (2007-2012)

ARIADNE

The Andrew Mellon Foundation

English Heritage

European Commission – Sixth Framework Programme

VENUS